The Greenest Colleges in America

Is it any surprise that some of the most forward-thinking solutions come from the country’s colleges and universities?
The Sierra Club (along with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, the Sustainable Endowments Institute, and the Princeton Review) put out a ranking of the greenest four-year educational institutions in the United States.
From aquaponics facilities to solar power projects, the county as a whole can get schooled by these planet-friendly efforts. “Our ranking aims to act as a guide for prospective students who seek a way to compare colleges based on the schools’ commitment to environmentalism,” the Sierra Club explains. “It also serves to spur competition, create aspirational standards and publicly reward the institutions that work hard to protect the planet.”
Here are the top 5 greenest schools in the country (for the complete list, click here):
#5: Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Ore.
This completely solar-powered campus has a whole range of eco-friendly features (it is in Portland, after all), but the Sierra Club ranked it as an impressive No. 5 thanks to its impressive sustainable food program. About 25 percent of campus foods are sourced from within 100 miles, and of course, most of it is organic. Seafood meets the Marine Stewardship Council’s sustainable fishing standards, and as for meat, products are hormone/antibiotic-free, poultry is free-range and beef is grass-fed. Plus, the university doesn’t sell water bottles in most places on school grounds.
 #4: Loyola University, Chicago
We’ve talked about the importance of urban agriculture before, and Chicago’s Loyola University proves that major metropolitan cities can definitely have farms. The Jesuit school has a 3,100-square-foot research greenhouse, aquaponics facilities and the largest geothermal facility in the Windy City where students learn how to make soap and biodiesel. The school also offers five (soon to be seven) environmental bachelor’s programs.
#3: Dickinson College, Carlisle, Penn.
This small liberal arts school knows what to do with rainwater and storm runoff, which is important as climate change forecasts much more severe weather to come. It has rain gardens, cisterns, native lawns and porous pavement. The school also has a bicycle co-op, a farm-to-table dining hall program and about 100 eco-classes across 33 academic disciplines, where students can learn how to turn vegetable oil into biodiesel.
#2: American University, Washington, D.C.
The Sierra Club’s runner-up boasts the largest solar array in the nation’s capital, dozens of buildings that are on their way to LEED certification and a program where students can adopt and take care of trees around the city. The school also has a few future goals in mind: By 2016, clubs will be banned from buying bottled water; by 2017, 50 percent of food on campus will be from sustainable sources and by 2020, the school will divert all its food waste from landfills or incinerators.
#1: University of California, Irvine, Irvine, Calif.
The So-Cal school earned the top spot on the list because it’s the first school in the country to improve its energy efficiency by 20 percent — a goal originally set for 2020 but met a whole seven years early. And because it hit its target so quickly, the school is now aiming for an additional 20 percent energy reduction by 2020. So how did UC Irvine get so green? The campus boasts three solar power projects and a 19-megawatt cogeneration plant that’s powered by combustion and steam. And in a shining water-conversation example for the drought-ridden state, the school’s recycling program saves more than 210 million gallons of H2O a year.
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Hoping to Make the World a Better Place?

Right now, there are scores of ambitious high schoolers who are working hard to maintain high GPAs while participating in several extracurricular activities. Their goal? To impress their dream Ivy League schools by the time college applications roll around.
Not to dash anyone’s hopes, but what these young men and women should know is that graduates from Princeton, Harvard, Yale or any of the country’s “best colleges,” don’t always have the most meaningful jobs, The Atlantic reports.
In their yearly poll, PayScale.com (an online salary, benefits and compensation information company) asked 1.4 million college alumni from more than a 1,000 colleges if they thought their jobs made the world a better place. Answers ranged from “very much so” to “my job may make the world a worse place.”
The results were pretty surprising. The poll found that only 57 percent of graduates from top-ranked Princeton felt like their jobs were meaningful, while No. 2-ranked Harvard was at 66 percent, and No. 3-ranked Yale at 65 percent, the report said.
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On the flip side, the college where the majority of alums felt like their jobs made the world a better place has an empty profile on the U.S. News and World Report ranking of top schools (which is kind of like the bible of “the best colleges” in the country every year).
At Loma Linda University, a small, private health sciences university in southern California, a whoppping 91 percent of grads feel like their jobs are meaningful. The University of Texas Medical Branch (88 percent) and Thomas Jefferson University (86 percent) round out the top three.
Why did these (relatively small) schools rank so high? According to Payscale, grads who have jobs in medical fields, social work and education find the most meaning in their work. Loma Linda University, University of Texas Medical Branch and Thomas Jefferson University all have strong nursing programs.
“Typically, the schools that see the most job meaning have majors that make the world a better place,” Katie Bardaro, PayScale lead economist, tells The Atlantic.
“The average across all included schools is 55 percent, so the top schools … are largely near or slightly above average,” she adds. “This isn’t too surprising as the main factor driving the job meaning measure is major choice and the majors that typically report the highest meaning are things like nursing, education, social work, criminal justice, theology, etc. These are not majors that are very prevalent at [top-tier private institutions].”
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