Our Executive Officer, Mo Lovegreen, just announced that UCSB has received a Gold rating by the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS): “We achieved 66.27 points, a Gold rating (the Gold level threshold is 65 points) in version 1.2. We are one of six institutions that have submitted under version 1.2. AASHE will be sending a formal letter to Chancellor Yang acknowledging our Gold rating. You can view our submission here.”
In 2005, Chancellor Henry Yang asked the Campus Planning Committee to create a comprehensive sustainability outline for the campus. A group of approximately 75 individual “change agents” comprised of students, staff, and faculty were trained in the sustainability framework known as The Natural Step in fall 2005. These individuals collaborated with campus sustainability staff to produce the Campus Sustainability Plan and developed the following mission statement: “The University of California, Santa Barbara is committed to global leadership for sustainability through education, research, and action.” The process has brought together students, staff, faculty, and community members, it has generated a great deal of energy and momentum, and it has fundamentally increased awareness of UCSB’s sustainability potential and the steps necessary to achieve this goal (source).
“In 2006, the Higher Education Associations’ Sustainability Consortium (HEASC), an informal network of higher education associations with a commitment to sustainability, issued a call for a campus sustainability rating system. Since then, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) has worked collaboratively with other non-profits and higher education associations on the development of the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS). A Steering Committee, Strategic Advisory Committee, and a Technical Advisory Committee weighed in on the system, and nearly 70 institutions participated in a year-long pilot program”. UC San Diego and UCSB were the only two UC campuses selected for this pilot program.
“STARS is designed to provide a framework for understanding sustainability in all sectors of higher education, enable meaningful comparisons over time and across institutions using a common set of measurements developed with broad participation from the campus sustainability community, create incentives for continual improvement toward sustainability, facilitate information sharing about higher education sustainability practices and performance, and build a stronger, more diverse campus sustainability community. The STARS framework is intended to engage and recognize the full spectrum of colleges and universities – from community colleges to research universities, and from institutions just starting their sustainability programs to long-time campus sustainability leaders. STARS encompasses long-term sustainability goals for already high-achieving institutions, as well as entry points of recognition for institutions that are taking first steps toward sustainability” (Ibid.)
Since March 2011, AASHE has partnered with The Princeton Review, Sierra magazine, and the Sustainable Endowments Institute to establish the Data Collector (The Princeton Review Green Rating, Sierra magazine’s American’s Coolest Schools, and the Sustainable Endowment Institute’s College Sustainability Report Card, respectively). The additional data within STARS allows institutions that want to participate in the various programs to complete the information needed by each organization and enables the organizations to collect this information without having to send out individual surveys to institutions. The Data Collector is a new section within STARS that these groups use to develop their rankings.
If you take the trouble to look at the UCSB STARS submission, you’ll get a rough idea of the tremendous effort that went into compiling this 280 page report. While Mo magnanimously thanks those who participated in the data collection for the submittal and gives “special thanks to the core STARS team of Katie Maynard, Bill Norrington, Matthew O’Carroll, Ryan Kelley, and Felicia Bill who did an excellent job collecting, analyzing, and uploading data into STARS,” it should be pointed out that Mo spent literally hundreds of hours in making this report possible and deserves a gold star of her own.
On January 25, Chancellor Henry Yang sent the following letter to the STARS Steering Committee which sums up UCSB’s commitment to sustainability in this context:
“On behalf of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), I am pleased to verify that our submission for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS) is an accurate representation of our campus’s sustainability initiatives and achievements. We are proud to be a participant in this self-assessment model which will help institutions across the nation measure their sustainability efforts and track their progress. UCSB’s commitment to sustainability is among our core values and is closely tied to our Academic Plan that includes the environment as one of its top priorities.
UCSB began work on environmental issues in 1970 with the establishment of one of the nation’s first Environmental Studies programs. We opened the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management in 1994, and we established the Institute for Energy Efficiency to develop innovative technologies that address energy conservation in 2008. UCSB was the first UC campus to implement interim sustainability policies and to sign the 1990 Talloires Declaration. It was an early signatory to the ACUPCC that has committed the campus to carbon neutrality by 2050. To accomplish its goals, the Chancellor’s Sustainability Committee assembles administrators, deans, Nobel Laureates, senior faculty, staff, and students to make recommendations for campus sustainability projects. In 2006, our students established The Green Initiative Fund to award grants for projects that help reduce our environmental impacts. They went on to establish a student-directed Renewable Energy Initiative sponsoring large scale solar and thermal energy projects. Championed by students, UCSB is currently installing a 500kW Photovoltaic array coupled with 12 electric vehicle charging stations for public use on campus.
We are home to 16 LEED-certified buildings as of 2012, with 17 more on the way, as one of three universities in the country participating in the LEED portfolio project for existing buildings, and we have the nation’s first double-Platinum building. UCSB recommends that all new construction and renovations meet LEED Gold standards. Nearly 90 percent of the campus is irrigated with reclaimed water, and 238 acres are maintained as non-irrigated open space. UCSB was recognized by the EPA as one of the nation’s best workplaces for alternative transportation, and the campus has extensive waste reduction programs that include recycling used cooking oil for biofuel, single-stream recycling, composting 100 percent of pre- and post-consumer food scraps in all dining halls and implementing trayless dining, all of which were initiated a number of years ago. Our Academic Senate was the first to establish a faculty Sustainability Champion in 2009 and is working on a PhD emphasis and an undergraduate environment requirement. UCSB’s Ecological Coalition organizes more than 33 environmentally-related student groups on campus, including the Environmental Affairs Board, which has more than 800 student affiliates…
STARS highlights many of the extraordinary efforts going on at UCSB and will help us improve our tracking of sustainability work to better ascertain our progress. We appreciate AASHE’s efforts in developing a comprehensive system with which to track and report progress, and we hope that our input will encourage other institutions to participate in and benefit from this worthy cause.”
Article by Bill Norrington
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