Wednesday, August 25, 2010
It’s that time of year again—back to school for millions of students around the country.
To mark the occasion, Sierra magazine issued its “4th Annual Listing of America’s Greenest Universities,” and appropriately Green Mountain College ranked first, receiving a score of 88.6 and moving up from 35th place last year.
Friday, June 4, 2010
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes $600 million specifically targeted for green jobs training programs and additional billions for energy grid expansion and improvement, as well as related renewable energy efficiency projects. Naturally, with unemployment running high across the country, many industry sectors and local governments are hoping green jobs will begin sprouting up like tulips in the spring. But research shows some groundwork will be needed before that can happen.
According to a survey from the Career College Association (CCA), conducted by Harris Interactive, 70% of US adults are familiar with the “idea” of green jobs, but only 29% are aware of the growing availability of green jobs.
Worse, only 1% have considered or obtained the type of education that would prepare them for a green job.
Monday, May 17, 2010
“One specialty area that continues to gain popularity among undergraduate business students is sustainability, and schools are responding by ramping up their offerings.”
—Bloomberg Businessweek
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Many colleges, universities and business schools across the US have begun offering classes, and in many cases degrees, in environmental and sustainability practices. And according to the the “2009-2010 College & University Green Power Challenge,” conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), institutions of higher learning aren’t merely proselytizing, they are plugging in.
Led by the Ivy League’s University of Pennsylvania, which purchased nearly 200 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of green power last year—more that double the amount of the second-place university, Carnegie Mellon—US colleges are actively taking a leadership role in creating a better environmental future for the country.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The global warning debate has created the usual set of conservative and liberal-thinking adversaries, but who knew that many weathermen, and weatherwomen, for the most part trained meteorologists, would side with the bah-humbuggers?
“A National Survey Of Television Meteorologists About Climate Change,” released by George Mason University and the University of Texas at Austin, asked local TV weathercasters around the country if they thought global warming was actually occurring, and although a majority said yes, 25% of them answered no.
In what may have been the scariest finding, 21% didn’t know.
Friday, March 5, 2010
The report, “Sustainability Reporting of the Top 50 Liberal Arts Colleges,” from Roberts Environmental Center at Claremont McKenna College examined the websites of the top 50 liberal arts colleges and rated them on sustainability reporting.
Less than one-half the schools, 48%, had quantitative environmental goals on their websites. Of the schools that did, the majority had only one or two numerical goals.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
A survey of students at the University of Indiana, conducted by Oren Pizmony-Levy, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology, found women are more likely to engage in environmental activism than men.
Roughly half of the female IU undergraduates in the survey had signed a petition supporting green issues, versus only 35% of the male undergrads.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
According to the “2009 Collegiate Athletic Department Sustainability Survey Report,” issued by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), 44% of university athletic departments rank environmental initiatives as a “very high” or “high” priority.
When asked which specific environmental initiatives receive the the highest emphasis, college athletic department managers placed energy conservation first, followed by in-office recycling.
