October 24, 2016

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Oregon State University has been recognized as a top performer in the 2016 Sustainable Campus Index.

The university ranked seventh overall among universities identified as doctoral/ research institutions, and fifth among all participating universities in the grounds category.

The 2016 Sustainable Campus Index, a publication of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), highlights top-performing colleges and universities in 17 areas and overall by institution type, as measured by the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, or STARS.

Oregon State was the first Oregon university to be rated by STARS, and received gold designations in 2011, and 2013- 2016.

"Being included in AASHE's 2016 Sustainable Campus Index is always great, and it's nice to see a summary of the best sustainability-related work of our fellow higher education institutions," said Brandon Trelstad, OSU's sustainability coordinator.

"However, one of the nicest surprises was we were featured in the very short list of colleges and universities with zero or near-zero data errors in their STARS submission. STARS requires input of thousands of data points and I'm glad that the culture of high-quality control and attention to detail in the Sustainability Office, and our partner departments, is recognized." 

The index also featured a short story on OSU's humanitarian engineering program, which is one of the few of its kind co-located with a Peace Corps Masters International program. Faculty from engineering, the humanities, public health and forestry all participate in the program. Recent projects by students in the program include creating modeling tools for micro-hydro development in Pakistan and ground-sensing stations for an international trans-African hydro-meteorological observatory.

To view the complete index: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxl_G1Xg76XlMTNPZ2pLa3NrUjg/view

For more information on OSU's efforts in sustainability, go to http://fa/oregonstate.edu/sustainability/

Source: 

Brandon Trelstad, 541-737-3307; [email protected]

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