May 2012

SANTA CLARA, Calif. May 10, 2012—For the third year in a row, Santa Clara University was noted as one of the most environmentally responsible colleges in the U.S. and Canada, according to the noted education-services company The Princeton Review.

The recently released comprehensive guidebook "The Princeton Review's Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2012 Edition"  profiles institutions of higher learning that stand out for their commitment to sustainability in their curriculum, campus infrastructure, activities and career preparation. Princeton Review’s publisher noted that nearly 7 out of 10 students in a recent survey of 7,445 college applicants said that having information about a school’s commitment to the environment would influence their decision to apply to or attend the school.

The guide recognized SCU for offering sustainability-related courses in 26 departments, for its environmental science and environmental studies degree offerings, for winning third place in both the 2007 and 2009 Solar Decathlons, and for its myriad projects and experiential learning opportunities centered on environmental sustainability and justice.

Created by The Princeton Review in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the free, downloadable guide includes the top 322 schools based on proprietary “Green Rating” scores. Those scores take into consideration facts, statistics and summaries of each school’s sustainability initiatives, policies and infrastructure, as provided by administrators from 768 colleges in 2011.

At SCU, the campus community has launched many initiatives to become climate neutral by the end of 2015, including:

*Purchasing more than 30 million kilowatt-hours of green power (which earned the University first place in the “West Coast Conference” division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Challenge)

* Installing a solar thermal collector to heat water, a smart microgrid, a wind turbine, and solar panels;

* Ensuring that new buildings are LEED certified;

* Adopting water conservation practices such as using recycled water for irrigation purposes and replacing old urinals and toilets with ones that are waterless or ones that use reclaimed water;

* Encouraging the use of reusable water bottles by providing water filling stations in populated campus locations;

* Creating a paperless writing center, where an interactive whiteboard allows students to project text from their laptop onto the board via Bluetooth technology;

* Challenging students to adopt ways to go green while living on campus; and

*Encouraging students to donate items that would have otherwise ended up in dumpsters at the end of the academic year.

The guide was developed by Princeton Review in collaboration with the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), with generous support from United Technologies Corp, founding sponsor of the Center for Green Schools.

About Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located 40 miles south of San Francisco in California’s Silicon Valley, offers its more than 8,800 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, theology, and engineering, plus master’s and law degrees and engineering Ph.D.s. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. master’s universities, California’s oldest operating higher-education institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see www.scu.edu.

Media Contact
Deborah Lohse | SCU Media Relations | dlohse@scu.edu | 408-554-5121