Even Columbia can be surprised by exam results.
Last week, the Sustainable Endowments Institute released the 2010 results of the College Sustainability Report Card, detailing the sustainability in nine categories of over 300 colleges with the largest endowments in the United States and Canada.
Columbia received an overall grade of B, a huge downturn from the A- it received in 2009 and the B+ it received in 2008. But in 2007, Columbia also received a B.
It seems that administrators, like students, are used to earning A’s.
Nilda Mesa, the University’s assistant vice president of environmental stewardship, said that she was “surprised by the results” and that she doesn’t agree with them.
According to the Report Card’s Web site, “Colleges and universities, as leaders of innovation in our society, have the potential to demonstrate sustainable principles in their campus operations and endowment policies.” The Report Card is meant to “identify colleges and universities that are leaders in sustainability.”
Relative to peer universities, Columbia performed below the curve. Stanford, Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, and Brown all received A- overall grades, the highest letter awarded.
Dartmouth and Cornell both received B grades, and Princeton a B-. In comparison to its neighbors, though, Columbia did okay: New York University also received a B, while Barnard College received a D+.
“Columbia did as well as any school in New York state this year,” Mesa said.
According to Mesa, the Institute changed its “methodology” this year—Columbia had to fill out a much longer survey for this year’s review, which had different questions about its sustainable efforts than it did in the past.
Mesa said that the Office of Environmental Stewardship is still “reviewing the results” to try to understand them, but she strongly believes that “Columbia is as good as any other school” with regard to sustainable endeavors.
She said that, even though its score decreased, Columbia has made “significant achievements in the last year” but is still “always looking for opportunities to improve.”
Despite the “not transparent” process, Mesa said that she believes that “the Report Card and other similar endeavors are important in the college sustainability movement.”
The overall grade was determined by the average of the grades each school received in nine different subcategories: Administration, Climate Change & Energy, Food & Recycling, Green Building, Student Involvement, Transportation, Endowment Transparency, Investment Priorities, and Shareholder Engagement.
Columbia received two A grades in Investment Priorities and Shareholder Engagement and six B grades in Administration, Food & Recycling, Green Building, Student Involvement, Transportation, and Endowment Transparency. The University also received one C in Climate Change & Energy.
Columbia received its worst score in Climate Change & Energy even though the Report Card states that “Columbia is committed to reducing carbon emissions to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2017” and has “created a plan for efficiency projects.” Barnard also received a C in this category.
Columbia’s B in Food & Recycling, according to the Report Card, is due to the fact that it spends “38 percent of its annual food budget on local items,” purchases seafood “in accordance with sustainability guidelines, and has fair trade coffee.” It also mentions Columbia’s recycling program and how “used items are collected for donation during move-out.”
Barnard received a C in Food & Recycling. According to the Report Card, Barnard also offers produce from local distributors and fair trade coffee. Barnard has even eliminated the “use of bottled water at catered events.”
Students are also confused with some of the results.
“In general, I think it’s possible that the grade on the Report Card has to do with funding,” Rebecca Chan, CC ’12, said. “For example, in Food & Recycling, it seems that Barnard has more green initiatives, while Columbia scored much higher in that area.”
APPENDED: An earlier version of this article misstated Nilda Mesa's title.
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