The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 2/21/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Andrew Ngeow The Council held a lengthy discussion on the outstanding cases of Delta House and KDR. [Click to enlarge]

Middlebury College will be participating in a nationwide effort to develop and provide feedback on a proposed comprehensive rating system that colleges can use to evaluate their sustainability and compare their environmental practices to those of other schools. Although ratings themselves will not be given to participants in the pilot program, Middlebury will have a role in shaping the final assessment system.

The Sustainability Assessment, Tracking and Rating System (STARS) is entering a pilot phase in which participating colleges like Middlebury will attempt to gain credits towards a sustainability rating by measuring practices at the College while providing feedback on the effectiveness and efficiency of the system.

"In parallel with our doing the project, we'll be participating in feedback conferences with other schools in which we'll share suggestions about how to make this a better final version which will be available in January 2009 or shortly later," said Campus Sustainability Coordinator Jack Byrne.

The STARS program is being coordinated by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). AASHE aims to create a standardized system in which schools can establish and raise their sustainability rating by measuring and proving progress on key sustainability questions such as the strength of a college recycling program and whether an institution directs its investments towards sustainable ventures.

According to Byrne, AASHE requested the help of colleges to test the pilot program at nearly the same time that the Middlebury College Environmental Council was looking for a rating system that it could use to evaluate the sustainability of Middlebury's practices.

"There has been a lot of interest in the higher education community in how to track progress towards sustainability," said Byrne. "There are assessments in the business and government communities, but none are very appropriate for the higher education community. For the past couple of years, there have been a group of people working with AASHE to create a tracking tool. As the tool became more refined, AASHE put out a call for colleges to help test it."

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