So, after perusing the Sustainable Carolina website for approximately 3 episodes of Law and Order, I've finally found a program that reallllly interests me: The Leadership Training Program. I feel like the only way that things are really going to change for REAL is for there to be more education and more green skills to be available to everyone! Without strong leaders, no movement would ever be successful, and I think its fantastic that our university has a program like this. It's easy for students be unaware of a lot of the things that this campus does to be green, and I admit, I was pretty clueless myself, but Sustainable Carolina seems to be involved in so many different things around campus. I can't believe I'd barely heard about them before! Also, I love the little side bar on the website with tips on how to green up different aspects of your life.
Wow, I crept the AASHE site for a real long time and maybe I'm website challenged, but I couldn't find many programs. Luckily, I quickly became obsessed with the STARS program! STARS stands for Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System, and it allows universities to get a kind of measurement of how sustainable they are. I was REALLY happy to find that the University of South Carolina was rated GOLD, which is the second highest ranking possible. A school gets a bronze rating for 25 points, silver for 45 points, gold for 65 points, and platinum for 85 points. Points are awarded in several categories including education and outreach, operations, planning, administration and engagement. A school can also receive innovation credits which factor into the overall score.
A question that I would ask Margaret Bounds about Sustainable Carolina, is how effective she thinks that the Leadership Training Program here at USC is at turning out green leaders to go on and make a difference with their leadership skills after leaving university.
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