This fall, the Princeton Review recognized Oswego State for its commitment to environmental sustainability by placing the school in its list of 350 “Green Colleges.” The Princeton Review releases this report annually and Oswego State has been on the list since 2012.

The Princeton Review selects colleges and universities based on “three broad buckets including: Whether students have a campus quality of life that is both healthy and sustainable, how well a school is preparing students for employment in the clean-energy economy of the 21st century as well as for citizenship in a world now defined by environmental concerns and opportunities, and how environmentally responsible a school’s policies are,” said David Soto, director of content development for the Princeton Review.

International schools are also considered for the list. Ten Canadian schools and one Egyptian school make the list this year. With every campus in the world beginning to take on the challenges of environmental sustainability, colleges are added, removed and re-ranked every year.

Oswego State’s Office of Sustainability has helped the school attain this recent acknowledgement. The Sustainability Office was established in 2012 when President Deborah Stanley signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, stating that the goal for Oswego State in relation to ecological sustainability was complete carbon neutrality by the year 2050.

Jamie Adams, Oswego State’s sustainability planning coordinator said, “It’s our president’s deliberate commitment to sustainability that has really separated us from other SUNY schools and other schools on the list.”

For example, the SUNY Central building requirement for all new construction on any SUNY campus is the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver certification. This means that every new building must have the sustainability rating of silver, rated by the United States Green Building Council under the LEED program. Oswego State specifically requires every new building to achieve at least a gold rating.

The Village Townhouses, Shineman Science and Technology Center, Waterbury Hall and the Rice Creek Field Station all have LEED gold certification. In the future, Scales and Tyler halls will achieve this standard. Tyler Hall has not yet achieved this standard because a building must operate at that level of sustainable operation for one calendar year.

The Office of Sustainability has a goal for the students of Oswego State and for the campus itself.

“The biggest thing my half of the office is accomplishing is really engaging students and working to educate them about their impact on the environment and to educate them on what they are able to do [to help the environment],” Adams said.

As for the campus itself, according to Mike Lotito, the sustainability engineering coordinator, the goal is “to have all of our new construction and our renovation projects to be energy efficient as possible, and also to work through equipment replacement for things like lighting and metered usage of steam, [natural] gas and electricity.”

A bike sharing program exists to allow students to loan out bikes for transportation around campus and a Farm to SUNY program to promote usage of locally farmed produce and food in campus dining halls. The Think, Eat, Save program audited Oswego State students’ food wastefulness, finding that in 2014, 120,000 pounds of food were wasted per semester. The Think, Eat, Save program pushed for students to be more mindful of the food they threw out and to be more thoughtful about food consumption through games and prizes in Pathfinder Dining Hall.

The Office of Sustainability received funding in part from the state government, from the sustainability fee charged with tuition and is currently pushing for a “Green Revolving Fund,” where money is invested in energy saving infrastructure and the money saved in electricity bills is then again invested in furthering the energy efficiency of the campus.