Tufts earns STARS Silver rating

Tufts University’s Certificate of Recognition for earning a STARS Silver rating.

This spring Tufts University earned a STARS Silver rating in recognition of its sustainability achievements from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE)! STARS, the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System measures and encourages sustainability in all aspects of higher education.

The Tufts STARS report is publicly available on the STARS website here.

Earlier this year, the Office of Sustainability helped submit a report to the STARS program which detailed the University’s activities for assessment across the four main categories of Academics, Engagement, Operations and Planning & Administration. In a letter of support for participating in STARS, President Tony Monaco affirmed that “Tufts University recognizes the vital importance of measuring and tracking our sustainability efforts. As we commit to new and more ambitious goals, it is important to reflect upon our accomplishments and identify ways we can continue to make Tufts a more sustainable institution. The STARS platform is an invaluable tool for doing this.”

With more than 800 participants in 30 countries, AASHE’s STARS program is the most widely recognized framework in the world for publicly reporting comprehensive information related to a college or university’s sustainability performance. Unlike other rating or ranking systems, this program is open to all institutions of higher education, and the criteria that determine a STARS rating are transparent and accessible to anyone. STARS 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.
• Build a stronger, more diverse campus sustainability community.

To learn more about what Tufts is doing to be a leader in sustainability, check out our most recent Campus Sustainability Progress Report here, released by the Office of Sustainability this Spring.

About AASHE:

AASHE is an association of colleges and universities that are working to create a sustainable future. AASHE’s mission is to empower higher education to lead the sustainability transformation.  It provides resources, professional development and a network of support to enable institutions of higher education to model and advance sustainability in everything they do, from governance and operations to education and research. For more information about AASHE, visit www.aashe.org.

For more information about the STARS program, visit stars.aashe.org.