ACU pulled up its annual grade on its “Green Report Card” to D+ for 2011 from a D in 2010. The Sustainable Endowments Institute has yet to give ACU a passing grade in environmental friendliness

Dr. Jim Cooke, professor of agriculture and environmental science, said these grades have two interpretations.

“The first interpretation is that we have a long way to go,” Cooke said. “But we’re moving in the right direction.”

Cooke has helped coordinate ACU’s participation in the College Sustainability Report Card for the past three years. He asked Samantha Futrell, sophomore environmental science major from San Angelo, to fill out the Green Report Card survey this summer.

Futrell, with the support of President Schubert, went to departments and staff across the university to get information on environmental practices on campus. She recorded the university’s sustainability activities in nine categories, including food and recycling, administration and student involvement. The information was later verified by the Sustainable Endowments Institute before it gave its final grade.

ACU’s food and recycling grade shot up to a B from last year’s D. Futrell said she was very impressed with the practices of the Food Services. It uses a chemical-free floor cleaning and a waste food centrifuge, which spins off fluid from leftovers to go down the drain rather than in a landfill with solid wastes, Futrell said. The trayless program also reduces the amount of water used for cleaning.

Student involvement fell to a D from a C. Futrell said this was because the Environmental Society – of which she is president – had just been created and did not have a chance to accomplish anything.

Now several clubs are involved in a recycling campaign that has been educating students on the impact their choices make on the environment. The Recycling Raid the ACU Environmental Society recently developed and executed has attracted attention from other universities and will be used on other campuses, such as Texas Tech.

Cooke said that in addition to student involvement, ACU needs to centralize staff and faculty efforts with an office or position devoted to sustainability, though the creation of the Environmental Task Force has improved this. The task force contributed to a raise in the administration’s grade from a D to a C.

Initiatives can be more effective and maintained much longer when practiced at an administrative level, Cooke said.

“We need all of it,” Cooke said. “We need administration from the top down and students and faculty from the bottom up.”

ACU has received an F in both endowment transparency and shareholder involvement for the past three years, according to www.greenreportcard.org. Under these areas the website reported that the Abilene Christian University Foundation “has no known policy of disclosure of endowment holdings or its shareholder voting record,” and “has not made any public statements about active ownership or a proxy voting policy.”

Futrell said the survey’s questions on these topics were more formatted for public schools than private schools, which invest their funds differently. Because of this, Investment Services chose not to answer any of the questions.

“ACU has a history of keeping its financial information private,” Futrell said.

Private educational institutes Texas Christian University and Baylor University made three Cs and a D between them in these two categories in their 2011 report cards, according to www.greenreportcard.org. Futrell said this may be because they attempted to answer the questions.

Cooke said he did not know why ACU chose to leave that part of the survey unanswered, but the two Fs had a very negative effect on the university’s overall grade, which weighs each of the nine categories equally.

Futrell said the way to raise the grades in any area on the report card would be for students to express concern in that area. She said she hoped the recycling initiatives the Students’ Association and clubs are developing would raise ACU’s green grade to a C+ next year.

“At the end of the day the administrators work for the students – students are the driving force behind these kinds of changes on campus,” Futrell said. “The more student involvement we have, the more likely it will be that our recycling campaign will have a long-lasting effect.”

For the full report card of ACU and other universities students can visit www.greenreportcard.org.