Concordia Listed in The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges

Green colleges important to incoming students

Concordia College is one of the nation’s most environmentally responsible colleges according to The Princeton Review®.

The education services company features Concordia in “The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges: 2021 Edition.” Concordia is one of 416 colleges profiled in the guide (alphabetically and not ranked overall from 1 to 416). The list can be found at The Princeton Review Green Guide.

The Princeton Review chose the schools based on a survey of administrators at 695 colleges in 2019-20 about their institutions’ commitments to the environment and sustainability. The company’s editors analyzed more than 25 survey data points in the process of choosing schools for the guide. The schools chosen for the guide received Green Rating scores of 80 or higher (on a scale of 60 to 99) in the spring 2020 tallies for this project.

The Princeton Review, a leading tutoring, test prep, and college admission services company, has published its annual “Guide to Green Colleges” since 2010. The company is also known for its dozens of categories of annual college rankings, its books, including “The Best 386 Colleges” and “The Best Value Colleges,” and its many other education services.

“We strongly recommend students … study and live at a green college," said Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief. "Each and every one of the outstanding colleges in this edition of our guide offers both excellent academics and exemplary evidence of environmental commitment."

Franek noted that The Princeton Review has seen a high level of interest among college applicants and their parents in colleges with green practices, programs, and offerings. Sixty-six percent of the 12,845 respondents (college-bound teens and parents) to The Princeton Review’s 2020 “College Hopes & Worries Survey” said that having information about a college’s commitment to the environment would affect their (or their child’s) decision to apply to or attend a school.

Concordia continues to find new ways to incorporate sustainability at the college.

“One major development is via a partnership between Dining Services and the President’s Sustainability Council, we will be relaunching an improved Green-to-Go program this spring,” said Jackie Maahs, sustainability coordinator. “Green-to-Go is a reusable take-out container program in the Maize where participants pay a small refundable deposit then request reusable containers when they pick up food, reducing the college’s use of disposable take-out containers.”

To bring to attention Concordia’s commitment to reaching carbon neutrality, the college also recently launched Carbon-Free Concordia, a campaign to reduce Concordia’s carbon emissions through behavior and systems change. Under this initiative, Concordia will be starting up the Carbon-Free Concordia Collaborative where students will be able to submit ideas for reducing carbon on campus, receive support for how to develop those ideas, identify funding sources, and eventually put the ideas into action.

“This spring Concordia became certified as a Bee Campus, highlighting our commitment to supporting pollinator populations that are vital to the success of our local ecosystem,” Maahs added. “Concordia has always focused on pollinator friendly landscaping but is now voicing its commitment to educating the college community about pollinators and expanding our efforts to support pollinator populations in a variety of ways.”