February 5, 2019, Philadelphia, PA — Today, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AAASHE) announced the launch of a new STARS Website and Benchmarking Tool.
The website was redesigned to make it easier for institutions to learn about STARS and get support during the reporting process as well as to offer advanced tools to facilitate benchmarking with STARS data. The site also provides recognition to STARS-rated institutions and is designed to increase participation in the program.
The new website boasts a clean design and intuitive navigation system with improved menu functionality that directs you to the information most applicable to you. It is also fully responsive to mobile devices, making it easy to navigate on a wide range of web browsers and portable devices.
A key feature of the new website is the STARS Benchmarking Tool, an application that allows AASHE members to compare colleges and universities based on the scores and metrics reported through STARS. You can use the Benchmarking Tool to:
- Select institutions or create groups of institutions for comparison.
- Select data points and generate charts to compare your selected institutions or groups.
- Save your Benchmarks for later use or to share with others.
- Download data for further analysis.
An informative “how-to” section provides an overview of the tool and and helpful videos.
“The new STARS Website and Benchmarking Tool is a project that has been a long time in the making”, said Meghan Fay Zahniser, Executive Director, “We are excited to finally deliver this tool that will make STARS data more accessible to users for benchmarking and research.”
Another feature of the new website is the Help Center, which features over 100 articles organized by level of knowledge and by STARS main categories. Each article contains helpful information including FAQs, templates, examples and additional resources.
No changes to the design or functionality of the Reporting Tool or STARS Reports have been made at this time. Users can still login and submit their data in the same format as they did before the redesign. We plan to refresh the Reporting Tool and STARS Reports in a phase two of this project at a later date.
For any questions, suggestions, feedback or comments, please email us.
About STARS
The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS®) is a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance. STARS is intended to engage and recognize the full spectrum of higher education institutions, from community colleges to research universities. The framework encompasses long-term sustainability goals for already high-achieving institutions, as well as entry points of recognition for institutions that are taking first steps toward sustainability. For more information about the STARS program, visit stars.aashe.org.
About the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE)
AASHE empowers higher education administrators, faculty, staff and students to be effective change agents and drivers of sustainability innovation. AASHE enables members to translate information into action by offering essential resources and professional development to a diverse, engaged community of sustainability leaders. We work with and for higher education to ensure that our world’s future leaders are motivated and equipped to solve sustainability challenges. For more information, visit www.aashe.org. Follow AASHE on Facebook and Twitter.