UMD’s Golden Sustainability Progress – Exploring the STARS with Jonna Korpi
UMD’s Land Lab is used to produce food, has climate-smat trees and has research experiments for sustainability. Photo from UMD Sustanability website.
A press release on September 15 by University of Minnesota Duluth Communication Specialist Alex Messenger announced that the school had been recognized for its exemplary status and research in the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s (AASHE) Sustainable Campus Index.
In 2014, UMD submitted its first ratings to AASHE. In 2016, the school’s first full STARS report was submitted, receiving a silver rating. In 2019 and 2024, however, UMD took home the gold, with research playing a big part in the score.
Research As A Contributor
“This is the second time that UMD has been recognized for our research contributions in sustainability; we’ve gotten perfect scores on both of our submissions for the last two rounds,” Jonna Korpi, Director of the Office of Sustainability at UMD, said.
31 out of 32 departments at UMD conduct some sort of sustainable research. To be considered sustainable research, the work has to meet more than two of the goal areas for sustainable development.
“So it’s like, you’re looking at water but you’re also looking at habitat impacts,” Korpi explained.
AASHE: From The Index To The STARS
Established in 2005, AASHE is an “organization for benchmarking and collaboration across higher [education] and sustainability,” Korpi explained.
Every year, AASHE produces the Sustainable Campus Index – a publication containing the top-performing college and university campuses in sustainability from across the country and the world.
Performance is determined through STARS (Sustainability Tracking and Rating System) reports submitted by campuses. Scores are calculated throughout multiple categories to draw a picture of the school’s overall sustainability status.
Each year’s Index draws from submissions of the previous year (ie, the 2025 Index honors top performers of 2024). Ratings earned are valid for 3 years.
“There are so many different categories in the report of different things you can score points on,” Korpi said, “so what we’re teaching in the classrooms, whether or not we have things like basic needs for students,” to name a few.
Still Work To Be Done
Despite the esteemed gold rating, it is not time for sustainability at UMD to sit back and relax. Sustainable improvement is a continuous process.
Korpi acknowledges that some things may prove to be more difficult to improve. For example, UMD received a score of 4.02 out of 6.00 in ‘Purchasing.’
“On our campus, we don’t have a blanket policy that says ‘everybody has to do this one thing, and that way we’ll get this STARS point for our sustainable paper purchasing,” she said. While that might seem like a simple solution, it’s difficult to get everybody on the same page. Some have tighter budgets that might only allow for the cheapest option to be bought.
“And some of those things are Twin Cities controlled,” added Korpi, making it harder to implement new strategies on the Duluth campus alone.
Sustainability Is A Group Effort
To Korpi and others who work tirelessly at improving sustainability efforts on campus, it is important to keep in mind the reasons behind changes to ensure priorities are kept straight.
“‘Should we be doing this because it’s a valuable thing to do, or are we doing this for points?’” is the question Korpi and her colleagues across the five University of Minnesota campuses use to keep their goals in check. If the answer is the latter, then it is placed lower on the priority list.
“At the end of the day, we want to do the thing that is most impactful – not the thing that is going to make a shiny accolade,” Korpi said.
Students can get involved in the process too. Those who work closely with clubs, organizations and administration on campus are key in gathering data for the STARS report. “They’re more in the engagement aspects,” Korpi explained. It takes the efforts of all who can achieve a more sustainable campus and future.