Southern Methodist University

College Sustainability Report Card 2007

Southern Methodist University's Environmental Society is a student group that works to encourage sustainability efforts on campus. To date, the student government has passed a resolution recommending that the administration create an environmental stewardship policy. This resulted in the University becoming a partner in the Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Partnership.

The University has an energy management team that ensures the efficient operation of campus utilities. Effort has gone into managing the HVAC system to be energy efficient, and Vending Misers have been installed on all campus soda machines to reduce energy use. The energy management team has posted a long list of suggestions for individual energy stewardship online. The University is also a Green Power Partner with the Environmental Protection Agency, which requires a commitment to obtain 3 percent of its energy from new, renewable sources.

Dining services provides as much local produce as possible, and an in-house herb garden is used by the catering, deli, and retail locations. The University has also adopted a single-stream recycling plan that has the potential to reduce the waste stream by as much as 60 percent.

The University recently completed and opened the J. Lindsay Embrey Engineering Building, designed and built to the LEED Gold standard.

The University's U.S. equity allocations are in separate accounts. The investment managers vote the proxies and report their votes to trustees, senior administrators, and members of the Investment Committee. A list of endowment holdings is available only to trustees, senior administrators, and Investment Committee members.

The University prioritizes investing to maximize profit and has not made any public statements about investigating or investing in renewable energy funds or community development loan funds. However, some of the University’s private equity funds have portfolio companies that are involved in renewable energy activities.

The University asks that its investment managers handle the details of proxy voting.