The International Sustainable Campus Network recently awarded Ball State its Excellence in Integration award for its efforts toward energy sustainability and greener living over the last few years.
Robert J. Koester, chairman of Ball State's council on the environment, said the university achieved several points that led to the award.
"With the recent Silver STARS rating that we got last fall from the sustainable tracking assessment and rating system, and with the more recent development of the geothermal project, Ball State has a very long history [of sustainability]," the professor of architecture said.
The university also has a council on environment that's been around for the last 11 years, and 102 different administrative units on campus have sustainability plans for their areas, Koester said.
Vic Caleca, a senior media relations manager, said the award is unique in part because Ball State is the first university to receive the honor.
"It's basically intended to recognize kind of a breadth and depth of efforts and sustainability," Caleca said. "They want evidence that you have student involvement, that there's curriculum devoted to sustainability, that the campuses are making an across-the-board efforts to both promote and practice the sustainability."
Ball State will receive a plaque for this achievement and will also receive recognition and notification internationally. This could lead to the possibility of Ball State joining ISCN in the future, Koester said.
"Quite a few Ivy schools in the U.S. - Harvard, Yale, Brown - they were behind helping to get this going on the international scene," he said. "So we have not as of this moment joined it; it looks like it might make sense for us to do that in the future."
The university is still making changes to engage in a greener and more sustainable future starting with the new strategic plan.
"We have this thing called the Academy For Sustainability that was created this past year and we're going to try to get some programmatic things happening [there]," he said. "It's not a department, it's not a college, it's a new kind of entity that reaches across departmental lines, across disciplinary lines."
The university is also launching a geothermal conclave that will start in September and span the next five years.
"This is a gathering of folks interested in geothermal technology, they'll come here and see our system, learn from it and then exchange papers and consult with one another on these installations that are going in around the country so we see ourselves as being a kind of geothermal nexus for the country," Koester said.
"I think it's pretty unique. Ball State has been at this for a long time and it's nice to see the recognition."
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