The New School Retains AASHE STARS Silver Rating

The Tishman Center led the effort to complete The New School’s AASHE STARS Certification for 2021. The process started at the beginning of 2021 and was managed by Tishman Center Assistant Director Mike Harrington along with critical support from Ali Sahin and Maryna Arabei, two Tishman Center Research Assistants. We are happy to report that the university retained a silver rating and a slightly higher score than our last assessment.

The collection process involved coordinating across departments to collect data related to not only environmental sustainability, but social justice, social sustainability and a host of additional factors. The data comes from such departments as facilities, human resources, procurement and institutional research, to name a few. We appreciate the cooperation that we received from our colleagues in those and other departments across the university.

This report not only is a snapshot of the school’s sustainability efforts but provides guidance for things that we can do to improve even more. Our public report can be seen here if you are curious about how we scored. Please keep in mind that while this is a good tool, there are other aspects of climate justice that aren’t necessarily included in the reporting tool but that we can address as a university. We can certainly do a lot more, such as passing a climate emergency declaration, ensuring that students are receiving education on the environmental justice movement and climate issues and updating HR practices to give all staff and faculty exposure to how they can be involved in contributing to our climate efforts. Again, thank you to everyone that contributed to this reporting; we appreciate your efforts.

We will be preparing a presentation an report on how the process went and next steps; feel free to reach out to us with any questions or leave a comment below.