SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Green Mountain College tops this year's list of Sierra magazine's "Coolest Schools" -- a roster of the 20 colleges and universities that the publication scored the highest in combatting climate change and teaching students about sustainability.
Founded in 1834, Green Mountain College, a four-year liberal arts college in Poultney, Vt., has its own biomass plant (pictured left). Also for the past four years, the college has used energy from the Central Vermont Public Service's Cow Power program, which is fueled by burning methane from manure produced at Vermont dairy farms. The college has about 820 undergraduates and a student faculty ratio of 14 to 1.
Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, released its fourth annual Coolest Schools list yesterday. To compile the list, Sierra sent a questionnaire to 900 schools; 162 responded to survey that covered 10 categories -- energy supply, efficiency, food, academics, purchasing, transportation, waste management, administration, financial investments and other initiatives.
The scores were based on the survey responses with followups by phone and email as needed. Out of 100 possible points, scores for the top 20 schools range from a high of 88.6, Green Mountain College's score, to 80.5, the score received the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Here are Sierra's Coolest Schools for 2010 listed in descending order of their scores:
1. Green Mountain College
2. Dickinson College, Carlisle, Penn.
3. Evergreen State College, Olympia, Wash.
4. University of Washington, Seattle, Wash.
5. Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.
6. University of California, Irvine
7. Northland College, Ashland, Wisc.
8. Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
9. College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine
10. Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass.
11. University of California, Santa Cruz
11. [TIE] Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt.
13. University of Colorado, Boulder
14. Warren Wilson College, Asheville, NC
15. University California, San Diego
16. University of California, Davis
16. [TIE] University of Vermont, Burlington
18. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
19. New York University, NYC
20. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
Next Page: A Call to Action from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education
