Cascadia Again rated #1 in the nation for our grounds!

We’re #1!

Cascadia College was given the highest ranking in the nation (tied) for our Sustainable (and beautiful) grounds and growing areas!

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) rates and ranks colleges and universities across the nation in a myriad of categories for sustainability. Each year, they put out a report of the top ranked schools, along with individual colleges’ reports, under their Sustainability, Tracking, Assessment, & Rating System (STARS).

As for grounds, Cascadia was ranked first, in a tie with Chatham University (in Pittsburgh). Some of our sustainable features on our grounds are our growing areas including the Food Forest, Campus Farm, Herb Walk, and of course our 58-acre restored Wetland. You can read about all of those features in a previous blog.

This is the second year in a row that Cascadia College is #1 for grounds, despite only having a bronze rating in overall sustainability. There’s a lot of activities and processes we can improve on, and there’s been some updates that we haven’t reported to AASHE yet.

As always, we’d love to have your suggestions on how we can be more sustainable, using our suggestion form found here.

We hope to submit an update after accreditation next year, and with it, rise up to silver or gold! We’re hoping to keep our #1 ranking also, as we’ve added some new growing areas, but also while we build new buildings!

Thank you also to everyone who’s helped keep our campus clean, or help develop with sustainability in mind, and our amazing grounds crew!!