The Princeton Review®, known for its many education services and resources for college-bound students, features Hope in the new 2025 edition of its online resource, The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges ().

Accessible for free at , the guide profiles 511 colleges that foster a culture of environmental responsibility and demonstrate a commitment to sustainability.

The Princeton Review chose the colleges for this edition of the Guide based on a survey it conducted in 2023-24 of administrators at nearly 600 colleges about their institutions' sustainability-related policies, practices, and programs. The company also surveyed students attending the colleges about their “green” campus experiences. The school selections were based on more than 25 data points from the surveys.

Hope received a Green Rating score of 91 on the Guide’s scale of 60 to 99.  The profiles also provide notes on the schools’ uses of renewable energy, their recycling and conservation programs, the availability of environmental studies in their academic offerings.  The profiles also include information on the school’s admission requirements, cost and financial aid.

“We are delighted to recommend 鶹ý to students who want their ‘best-fit’ college to also be a ‘green'’ one,” said Rob Franek, The Princeton Review's editor-in-chief. “鶹ý, which offers excellent academics, also demonstrates a strong commitment to sustainability in its campus programs, policies and practices.”

Sustainability efforts at Hope are initiated and pursued by students, faculty and staff, and alumni, and take a variety of forms.  They are supported and encouraged by an advisory committee known as the Green Team consisting of students, faculty and staff.

Student-organized groups at the college include Green Hope, focused on sustainability.  In addition, each year about a dozen students participate in the college’s Hope Advocates for Sustainability internship program coordinated by the Office of Sustainability.  An Alumni Sustainability Affinity Group has supported projects including tree plantings, retrofitting a college-owned residential cottage as a green facility and the installation of solar-powered EV charging stations at a residence hall.

In addition to familiar activities like recycling and upgrading windows and lightbulbs with energy-efficient replacements, projects and practices across campus range from the addition of beehives to provide pollinating insects; to reducing food waste and the use of water in the dining halls; to solar-powered charging stations for the electric golf carts used by the physical plant staff; to using environmentally friendly products in cleaning and groundskeeping.  Hope makes a tradition of planting trees during national Campus Sustainability Month, each October, and Earth Week and Arbor Day, both in April.  College buildings that have LEED certification are the van Andel Huys der Hope Campus Ministries house that opened in the fall of 2019 (LEED v4), the Jim and Martie Bultman Student Center that opened in 2017 (LEED Gold) and the Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts that opened in 2015 (LEED Silver).

Hope also maintains a Green Revolving Fund that underwrites efficiency projects — identified by a team of students faculty and staff — that have both an environmentally positive impact and a positive fiscal impact.  Established through seed funding from alumni and a matching commitment by the college, the fund is now self-perpetuating, with a portion of the savings that it helps achieve placed in the fund to support future projects.

The college also coordinates sustainability efforts with community organizations in a variety of ways.  During the past several summers, for example, faculty and student researchers at the college have partnered with the City of Holland and Holland in Bloom on an Urban Tree Canopy Project to inventory trees on city property and campus.

In addition, Hope offers academic majors and minors in both environmental science and environmental studies.  Multiple faculty-student collaborative research teams pursue environmentally-related projects, and programs at Hope include a Global Water Research Institute based on the college’s strong tradition of research on water quality in particular.

Hope has received several awards through the years for its sustainability efforts.

In September of this year, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) announced that Hope continues to hold a STARS Gold rating from AASHE in recognition of the college’s sustainability achievements.  The college has also been recognized for being among the top colleges and universities in the nation for research related to sustainability.  STARS, the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, measures and encourages sustainability in all aspects of higher education.  Hope was awarded a Gold rating last year (2023) after holding a Silver rating since 2017 and a Bronze rating from 2012 to 2017.

For the past six consecutive years, the college has received Tree Campus USA® recognition from the Arbor Day Foundation.  In October 2022, Hope was named a runner up for that year’s West Michigan Sustainable Business of the Year Award by the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum. In October 2019, Hope received an Honor Award for exceptional grounds maintenance in the Green Star Awards competition of the Professional Grounds Management Society. In 2015, 鶹ý Dining received Gold-level recognition in the SEED sustainability program of Creative Dining Services.  In 2014, the college was certified by the Michigan Turfgrass Environmental Stewardship Program for meeting the organization’s standards in overall grounds management practices.

More information about sustainability efforts at Hope and in the area is available at hope.edu/sustainability

The Princeton Review has published its Guide to Green Colleges annually since 2010. The education services company is also known for its other resources for college applicants including its dozens of other categories of college rankings, and its annual book, The Best 390 Colleges, (2025 Edition published August 2024).

Franek noted that The Princeton Review is seeing substantive interest among college applicants in attending green colleges. Of the nearly 8,000 college-bound students the company polled for its , 61% said having information about a college's commitment to the environment would affect their decision to apply to or attend a school.

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