Dickinson is Recognized Nationally
For Our Sustainability Initiatives & Performance
At Dickinson, we monitor and report our performance in sustainability education and research, operations, planning, administration & engagement, and innovation using the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Ratings System (STARS) of the Association of Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). Our performance earned us a Gold Rating from AASHE, making us one of a small number of institutions to receive this distinction.
Dickinson earned top marks (straight As) from the Sustainable Endowments Institute on their College Sustainability Report Card. In 2011, the Princeton Review named Dickinson to their Green Honor Roll, one of only 16 schools in the nation to receive a 99 Green Rating, the highest score. In 2010, Sierra Magazine ranked us as the 2nd ‘Coolest School’ in the country for our sustainability efforts. More recent years have been challenged by survey fatigue and survey error, and an effort to focus on streamlining the variable ranking systems for institutions such as Dickinson.
We received a Climate Leadership Award from Second Nature in 2010, the first year of this national award. The award recognized Dickinson for our innovative and aggressive climate action plan and climate change education program. Three of our buildings have earned LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certifications from the US Green Building Council, one of which was the first LEED Gold student residence building in Pennsylvania.
Dickinson has received major grants for sustainability programs in recent years, recognizing the quality of Dickinson’s sustainability efforts while also providing resources to expand and improve our programs A $1.4 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation helped establish the Center for Sustainability Education, add a faculty position in Environmental Studies, expand resources for teaching and use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and provide resources for sustainability curriculum development and student-faculty research. A $500,000 Global Climate Change Education grant from NASA is supporting innovative cross-disciplinary educational program development. A $460,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation supported development of the Watershed-Based Integrated Field Semester, a 4-course Mosaic program that combines aquatic ecology, watershed management and community-based fieldwork in the Chesapeake Bay and lower Mississippi River Basin.