Salve Regina achieves bronze rating for sustainability efforts across campus

Salve Regina has received a bronze rating by the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) offered through the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). With over 350 colleges and universities participating across 15 countries, the program is the most widely recognized benchmarking framework for sustainability performance indicators across higher education.

The STARS program is a self-assessment tool designed to help colleges and universities provide a framework for understanding sustainability, use a common set of measurements for discussion, create incentives for improvements, and build a more diverse campus sustainability community. 

“The rating helps create a concrete pathway for faculty, staff, students and trustees to advance sustainability at Salve,” said Dr. Theresa Ladrigan-Whelpley, vice president for mission, planning and integration. “This is really important to who we are as a mercy, Catholic institution. In our mission, we emphasize that we are stewards of God’s creation. A commitment to sustainability is part of building a more harmonious, just and merciful world.”

Achieving an AASHE STARS rating

AASHE’s process for institutions of higher education to become rated is rigorous. Salve Regina’s bronze rating is based on a thorough review and vetting of a submitted report detailing the University’s sustainability initiatives in curriculum and research, facilities and operations, planning and administration, campus and community engagement, and innovation and leadership.   

The initiative was spearheaded by Salve Regina’s sustainability committee, which is led by co-chairs Jared Coleman, assistant director of facilities; Dr. Craig Condella, chair of the philosophy department; and Mary Beth Pelletier, program manager of mission integration.

“We were going for ‘reporting status’ just to get on the board and see where we were at,” Condella said. “We didn’t necessarily have a goal to get an actual STARS rating, and we were pleasantly surprised that we were able to achieve the bronze rating.” 

As the sustainability committee began to coordinate what it needed for the AASHE report, the movement continued to grow. “We’ve had a nice mix of staff and faculty, students and administration involved,” Coleman said. “There’s about 70 sections under five base headings to include in the entire report, so it was important for it to be a movement across campus.”

(From left) Dr. Craig Condella, Mary Beth Pelletier and Jared Coleman are the co-chairs of Salve Regina’s sustainability committee.

A movement towards sustainability across campus

As the committee collected data for the AASHE report, people like Michael Caruolo, director of safety and security, became important to the conversation. “Mike was able to provide a ton of information on the campus fleet of vehicles,” Coleman said. “How many vehicles do we have? How efficient are they, and how efficiently are we using them? It was questions like these that helped us realize where there’s room for improvement.”

The electric vehicle charging stations that were installed on campus in 2022 came out of these conversations – an effort led by Eric Milner, associate vice president for facilities. Samantha Angel, purchasing manager, became a member of the committee, and Salve is now planning to make purchasing options across campus greener in the future. 

Students also got involved, including several sections of the course Humans and Their Environment, who crafted projects around these efforts. “They were able to take aspects of the AASHE STARS reporting and do research so that we could incorporate their findings into the report,” Condella said.

Salve Regina’s electric vehicle charging stations.

Where Salve Regina ranked strongly in the report

Salve Regina ranked well in many areas, including public engagement, which gives points to institutions that aim to create sustainable communities through public outreach. The University’s community partnerships with Save the Bay, Aquidneck Land Trust, Aquidneck Community Table, Rose Island Foundation and Tree Campus proved impressive.

Another area was academic research and curriculum, which looks at the number of courses that connect students to environmental issues. Currently, 30 undergraduate courses are sustainability-focused – meaning that the explicit focus of the course is on topics of sustainability – while 23 are considered to include topics of sustainability in other ways.  

Salve Regina also has an interdisciplinary faculty collaborative on earth offered to six faculty through the McAuley Institute for Mercy Education, and the University received credit for its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as an institution that offers trainings in anti-oppression, anti-racism and cultural competence for staff, faculty and students.

In the areas of food and dining, Salve Regina earned points for a thoughtful vegan menu, for Sodexo’s commitment to food waste prevention and trayless dining, for donating food after events, and for composting in many areas. The hydroponics lab on campus also donates herbs and vegetables to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center and Aquidneck Community Table. 

Salve Regina received extra points for innovation and leadership because the campus has been recognized as a Level II arboretum by the Morton Arboretum’s ArbNet Arboretum Accreditation Program. The University is committed to ongoing efforts to preserve and protect its 1,200 trees of more than 100 distinct species.  

Salve Regina has received Tree Campus USA Higher Education recognition from the Arbor Day Foundation.

The future of sustainability at Salve Regina

Now that Salve Regina has an initial rating, there are many ways to improve for the future. The University is already three quarters of the way to achieving a silver rating. “One of the areas we didn’t score high on was building design, as many of our historic buildings were constructed before the sustainable options available today,” Ladrigan-Whelpley said. “So thinking about that for our future can be a priority with new campus renovation and construction.”

No matter what the future holds, the committee is excited to have moved the conversation forward over the past four years. “The committee is pleased to have this report completed, because as a committee we can now move forward and be proud that we made a difference,” Pelletier said. “I’ve seen a deeper level of engagement from the committee now that we’ve got this report, and I’m excited to see where this takes the future of sustainability at Salve.”