For the second consecutive year, Portland State is participating in the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System, a comprehensive program that collects data from campuses nationwide to determine how universities stack up in terms of sustainability.
The program, commonly known as STARS, considers everything from classes at a university to its waste management and recycling programs. The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education oversees the collection of data from 130 colleges and universities across the nation to offer a comprehensive look at how sustainable a campus is, according to the program’s Web site.
The program includes filling out a form that asks for information regarding several aspects of campus life, ranging from how campus dining is provided to what sustainable classes are offered. After the data has been collected, schools will be ranked according to their overall sustainability efforts, according to Heather Spalding, sustainability leadership and outreach coordinator.
“If we do well [in STARS rankings for 2009–10], it could raise the profile of Portland State,” Spalding said. “We were fortunate to be involved with the pilot last year. It gave us a year’s head start.”
PJ Houser, assistant in the Campus Sustainability Office, said that PSU participated in the pilot year to gather data and look at which areas of sustainability the campus is strong in and where it needs improvement.
“STARS is a comprehensive sustainability rating system that looks at it all, from curriculum to environmental and social aspects,” Houser said. “It’s really quite extensive…[STARS is] very impressive for a university.”
Though there are rankings, Houser said STARS is less of a competition and more of a chance for a school to see where it’s succeeding in sustainability and to see how similar schools are performing.
“Some of the areas are really challenging to track, and you really can’t think of it in terms of A, B, C and D,” Houser said. “I see this as less competitive and more collaborative for schools to look at others and ask how to score higher in areas. STARS is an idea center.”
Houser said the costs related to STARS are limited to a registration fee and the pay of PSU personnel involved, and that the benefits far outweigh the costs. She said the opportunity to collect information in one place will show where PSU excels and, more importantly, where it can improve.
“Filling out STARS makes it very obvious where we’re lacking data collection, where it’s hard to gather info, and where we should change how we do things,” Houser said. “It’s really helpful to have sustainability info together, because it’s been so spread out before, but with STARS, it’ll all be in one place.”
According to Spalding, a comprehensive look at PSU’s sustainability efforts through STARS will help identify how the university should plan in the future, both on the operations side and the academic side.
“It’s a really good project to focus on, even though not a lot of people know about it,” Spalding said. “It’s an important report, a very comprehensive look at all we do.”
Houser said the operations part is looking at how money at PSU is spent on the buildings and services students use every day. The academic part considers funds being spent to recruit professors with sustainability backgrounds and adding classes to the PSU curriculum that focus on green issues.
Both Spalding and Houser said they hope to continue participating in STARS in the future.
“Last year was our first year to look at it all, and we expect this year to be stronger because of that,” Spalding said. “We hope to have more staff, and we have stronger networks [between departments on campus] now, and I’m excited to see how it turns out.”
“It definitely opens us up for a lot of scrutiny and hopefully a positive reputation,” Houser said, regarding the possibility of recruiting sustainability-minded students in the future. “STARS can really help raise our profile.”