Northeastern Submits STARS Report

In June 2021, Northeastern University achieved a significant milestone by successfully submitting our STARS report to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) is a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges, universities and other institutions to measure their sustainability performance and progress.

This is a monumental achievement as it establishes a baseline of information and data used for measuring our ongoing sustainability and resiliency efforts, and marks a major goal for us. This was our initial effort with STARS and is the tool that we will use going forward to document our sustainability progress across the University including the global network.

The STARS report is part of our decades long leadership that has resulted in first in class energy reduction, construction of LEED buildings, and an urban campus with arboretum status. Some highlights within our submission include:

• Northeastern students have an above average understanding of sustainability concepts and many opportunities to pursue research to advance sustainability ideals in their chosen fields
• Continuous improvement in supporting our highly diverse student, faculty, and staff 
• A commitment to advancing positive sustainability actions towards the City of Boston’s climate action goals

Our next steps will be to target and build processes to improve our data collection as this was a significant challenge for us. We will also be working to build programs that fill gaps that have been identified. The Northeastern University community can use STARS as it is a supported program within AASHE of which we are a member. As such there are resources for faculty, staff, and students to further integrate sustainability and resilience in their curriculum and day-to-day work.

More information on the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE)