Macalester Receives STARS Silver Rating for Sustainability

St. Paul, Minn. – The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) has awarded Macalester College a STARS Silver Rating in recognition of its sustainability achievements.  STARS, the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, is a new program that measures and encourages sustainability in all aspects of higher education. 

Macalester’s STARS score is based on the average of the percentage of applicable points it earns in each of the three main categories of STARS credits (i.e. Education and Research, Operations, and Planning, Administration & Engagement). Any Innovation Credits earned are then added to this average determining the total STARS score. 

“This award is due in large part to all the staff and students who helped collect the sizable amount of data we needed for this survey,” said Suzanne Savanick Hansen, Sustainability Manager.

Macalester’s STARS survey information is here.

STARS is a sustainability-focused system, it does not only assess environmental factors but also social and economic ones.

STARS has been developed by the higher education community and is designed to: provide a framework for understanding sustainability in all sectors of higher education; enable meaningful comparisons over time and across institutions using a common set of measurements developed with broad participation from the campus sustainability community; create incentives for continual improvement toward sustainability; facilitate information sharing about higher education sustainability practices and performance and build a stronger, more diverse campus sustainability community.

Macalester College, founded in 1874, is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,985 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its long-standing commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, multiculturalism and civic engagement.  Learn more at macalester.edu.