Ithaca College reports climate progress to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education's Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Reporting System (AASHE STARS) on a biennial basis; the College also shares this data with the organization Second Nature. AASHE STARS is a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance. The system provides organization and accountability to colleges dedicated to reaching long-term sustainability goals and recognizes high-achieving institutions based on their accomplishments.
STARS was 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 international 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.
Ithaca College is a proud member of the 900+ community of higher education organizations reporting to AASHE STARS. Most recently, IC received a GOLD rating using the updated STARS framework. We intentionally chose to benchmark using the more challenging version 2.1, and will use the updated assessment to help further guide our efforts in being a recognized leader in all three pillars of sustainability - social, economic, and environmental. To learn more about Ithaca College's detailed STARS scorecard, read IC's STARS reporting page.