ASU received passing grades overall for its green efforts, but the University Foundation took home an 'F', according to the annual Sustainable Endowments Institute report card.
ASU received a 'B' minus overall in the 2008 report card released Oct. 17. The institute is the only independent company that researches and evaluates the sustainability efforts made by colleges around the country, said Mark Orlowski, founder and executive director of the institute.
"A couple years ago, we realized that there was really no independent source of information about schools' activities on campus sustainability initiatives," Orlowski said.
The institute defines eight standards to grade the universities' commitment to sustainability, he said.
The eight categories are Administration, Climate Change and Energy, Food and Recycling, Green Building, Transportation, Endowment Transparency, Investment Priorities and Shareholder Engagement.
The schools are surveyed and assigned points on 39 indicators across the eight categories.
Each category is assigned a letter grade, and the school is given an overall grade based on the average of all the eight grades, Orlowski added.
John Fink, the director of the Global Institute of Sustainability, said he was pleased with the overall ranking in the report card, considering ASU was not ranked last year due to the ASU Foundation not having a large endowment fund last year.
"So we got this 'B' minus, but if you look at the breakdown, it's really not bad," Fink said. "Because the three things we really didn't do well on, we didn't even know about. They had to do with the way that the ASU Foundation invests their money."
Orlowski said the institute evaluates the endowment foundations at each university and the foundations' commitment to furthering sustainability efforts at their respective colleges.
"Most public schools like ASU have their endowment money in a separate foundation than in the university itself," Orlowski said. "We look at the foundation policies and practices, and survey the foundation about their activities on things related to endowment sustainability practices."
Orlowski added that nearly two-thirds of all the universities surveyed received failing or near-failing grades in the categories involving endowment practices — including ASU.
ASU earned an 'F' in Endowment Transparency and Shareholder Engagement categories and a 'C' in Investment Priorities, according to the report card.
Among the issues warranting failing grades were "no known ability to access" information regarding holdings and shareholder voting records in the Endowment Transparency category, according to the report card for ASU.
The report card also cited a lack of public announcements regarding ownership and voting policies under the Shareholder Engagement category.
Jerry Jahn, an ASU foundation spokesman, said he was particularly surprised with the 'F' letter grade in the Endowment Transparency category, because the Foundation publishes and releases an annual report every year on its Web site.
The ASU Foundation has three goals that contribute to the way it functions, Jahn said.
The three goals are fundraising, envisioning and acting as good organizers of the funds and resources donated to the University, Jahn said. The third goal involves the ASU Foundation overseeing and enacting policies regarding the investments by the foundation, he said.
Orlowski said the ASU Foundation is not an efficient enough investor at setting an example for companies to follow in the University's sustainability efforts.
ASU should go to contributing companies' annual shareholder meetings to vote for each company to become more sustainable, he said.
Jahn said he was unaware that was a measured aspect of the Institute's report card. He thought the focus of the report card was only on the University's attempts at becoming sustainable, he said.
Fink said he was also unaware of the Foundation's involvement in the grades but that the school could turn the knowledge into a positive.
"Now that we know about this we can work with the Foundation to adjust their investment policies in a way that will put us even higher in those rankings," Fink said.
Reach the reporter at brittany.mccall@asu.edu.
