Dani Gagnon
Features Editor
For most of us, good old Wooster was the last thing on our mind over winter break; however, for others Wooster was at the forefront of theirs. When Wooster received a Silver Rating from The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) the sustainability coordinator at the College, Sb Loder, had the school on her radar.
STARS is a comprehensive survey that tracks sustainability throughout academic, operational and administrative departments of the College. The survey reports colleges’ efforts in sustainability through classes offered, waste and energy reduction, student groups, local food and investments, to name a few.
In Nov. 2012 our former Vice President of Finance, Laurie Stickelmaier, registered the College of Wooster to participate in the report, thus agreeing to gather and submit the data and information one year from the date of registration. Therefore, Loder spent much of the last calendar year gathering information and working to improve areas of on-campus sustainability in order to include new efforts in the report. Specifically, Loder says she became more involved with orientation and promoting the Environmental Studies Department to fulfill and define sustainability in the curriculum for the deadline of Nov. 2013.
The recent report from STARS means that for the first time, we have a detailed, broken-down and quantitative understanding of where the college stands with sustainability. Each section of the report is associated with a points scale and the College’s answers earned a certain percentage of possible points. Wooster’s scores in Education (36.3 percent), Operations (49.9 percent) and Administration (51.3 percent) earned a total score of 45.81 percent, earning a Silver rating.
Loder highlights the Diversity and Affordability sub-section, in which Wooster earned 100 percent, and accredits the Center for Diversity and Global and Engagement as well as faculty development programs and admissions policies. Furthermore student groups and educational efforts on campus earned a 75 percent for the co-curricular section. Overall, the section in which the college brought in the most points was the Operations section with the 51.3 percent score, beating the nation average by 12.8 percent.
With the report as a guide it will be easy to progress to the next steps including identifying what to work on in order to improve sustainability at Wooster. In response to what students can look for to come out of the report, Loder said, “we’re hoping to identify more sustainability courses. From this we can figure out a sustainability major or minor or academic certification might look like.”
Although Wooster scored lower on the scale for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Loder points out that there have already been improvements in reducing emissions through the school’s conversion from coal to natural gas which wasn’t accounted for as a result of too little data. Furthermore, Loder said Wooster received no points on the investment section, “which could easily be remediated by simply identifying positive sustainability (and socially responsible) investments that we’ve already invested the college’s endowment.”
“We missed a good number of points for not having sustainability or climate action plans. We haven’t set goals for ourselves to improve our sustainability work,” Loder reflected on the scores. Before the STARS report, Wooster’s standing in sustainability was more or less vague and based off hearsay, from individual programs without the comprehensive scope we now have. With the numbers to track our efforts, we can see what we’re doing well at Wooster and where we need to improve and target our efforts on campus.
To see the full report go to: https://stars.aashe.org/institutions/the-college-of-wooster-oh/report/2013-11-12/.