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Article by Kyle Mittan, University Communications, 2025
Thanks to its institutional commitment to sustainability and climate action, the University of Arizona will help the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching develop a new classification to recognize U.S. higher education institutions' sustainability work.
The university is one of 21 institutions recently named to the Elective Classification for Sustainability pilot program, part of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, which classifies the diversity and strengths of the country's colleges and universities. Carnegie has also partnered with the American Council on Education for the new classification.
"The University of Arizona's dedication to sustainability goes back decades and is deeply ingrained in our research enterprise and campus life," said Andrea Romero, vice provost for faculty affairs. "This partnership is a valuable opportunity for us to not only lend our sustainability leadership to institutions across the country, but to also learn from other leaders in this space."
The U of A and other partners "embed sustainability and climate action into their core missions, demonstrating an extraordinary commitment to advancing sustainability," the organizations said in announcing the pilot program.
The 21 participating institutions will spend the next year sharing their sustainability best practices, programs and data to help develop standards for the classification, which is expected to be formally established in 2026.
The university's discussions with Carnegie began last summer, said Trevor Ledbetter, senior director of the U of A Office of Sustainability, with a trip to Georgia to meet with representatives from other prospective participating institutions. A site visit to the Tucson campus followed months later.
"The University of Arizona has been making big strides in sustainability over the last several years," Ledbetter said, pointing to programs in his own office and across campus. "We have many programs that really show how much we're doing in the way of sustainability internally as well as in the community."
Chief among those efforts is its Sustainability and Climate Action Plan, which aims to pave a path to carbon neutrality for the university, and the Campus Sustainability Fund, which divvies up more than half a million dollars in grants every year to campus projects focused on waste reduction, energy use and other green initiatives.
U of A research programs that directly study the impact of a changing climate, especially on underserved populations, include:
- The Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center
- The Arizona Institute for Resilience's Heat Resilience Initiative and Indigenous Resilience Center
- The Southwest Center on Resilience for Climate Change and Health
- The Western Environmental Science Technical Assistance Center for Environmental Justice
The U of A also has many programs that bring sustainability and climate research to the community to inspire local action and connection. Those programs include the College of Education's Cooper Center for Environmental Learning, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences' School Garden Workshop, and Compost Cats, the Office of Sustainability's local food-waste composting program.
The U of A is the only public university from Arizona in the inaugural program – though Southern Arizona holds the largest concentration of participating institutions, which also include Pima Community College and Tohono O'odham Community College.
The two community colleges were invited to apply after Ledbetter and colleagues in the Arizona Institutes for Resilience helped connect them with Carnegie representatives during the U of A campus visit. Broad representation by different sizes and types of participating institutions was a key goal for the program, Ledbetter said.
"That representation in this pilot is really valuable because it will enable us to help make this classification accessible to those smaller schools," Ledbetter said. "With their participation, it also offers the University of Arizona the opportunity to learn how these smaller schools are approaching sustainability, both internally and with their communities."
Each participating institution will complete a detailed report about its sustainability programming by August. Ledbetter and his colleagues plan to convene an advisory team with people across campus to help lead that effort at the U of A. The reports from all participating institutions will inform the standards for the classification before its expected launch next year.
Being a participating institution does not automatically earn the U of A the classification when it is formally lunched. But the upcoming process will lay strong groundwork toward getting the classification, Ledbetter said.
"It sets us up for a relatively easy submission once the full application is launched nationally," Ledbetter added. "But it's also a really helpful self-study for us and provides a valuable opportunity to get the full institutional picture of sustainability."