About Us
Sustainability is an ambitious ideal that will require the cooperation of the entire university community and those organizations that work with the university. See our definition and mission to get an idea of what a sustainable EMU means. Sustainability at EMU is directly managed by the president's commission on sustainability. This commission is an 18 member commission of students, faculty, staff and administrators that report directly to the president with recommendations. A commission chair leads the commission in assessing the university's level of sustainability. EMU chose as its sustainability framework a rating system developed by the nationally recognized leader in sustainability in higher education, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). AASHE has developed, over the last couple of decades, the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS), which is a sustainability crediting system used by over 800 institutions on six continents to calculate their sustainability rating. The Sustainability Commission uses STARS as a framework to:
- Gain international recognition for our sustainability efforts. View the stars rating compared to peer institutions.
- Identify best practices for sustainability in higher education institutions.
- Engage students, staff, faculty and administrators in building a culture of sustainability.
- Develop a baseline comprehensive measure of sustainability performance for continuous improvement internally and in comparison to peer institutions.
- Integrate sustainability in strategic planning and budgeting.
- Integrate sustainability into the curriculum.
- Make real progress toward sustainability.