Talking Stick - May/June 2009 - 9

REcyclEMania Forget the basketball courts: the real competition among college and university campuses this spring took place at the recycling bins. RecycleMania, a competition and benchmarking tool for campus recycling programs, celebrated its ninth year with record numbers. This year’s 512 competing schools, a 25 percent increase from 2008 and the most participants the program has seen so far, represented all 50 states and the District of Columbia and included for the first time institutions outside of the United States. Over a 10-week period from January 18 to March 28, schools reported recycling and trash data and were ranked into seven categories. The 2009 Grand Champion is California State University in San Marcos. The other awards and winners include Waste Minimization, North Lake College in Irving, Texas; Per Capita, McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana; and Gorilla Prize (for larger schools), Rutgers University in New Jersey. The Targeted Materials award was given to Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri; McNeese State University; Kalamazoo College in Michigan; and Bard College in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. RecycleMania is a project of The National Recycling Coalition’s College and University Recycling Council (CURC), sponsored in part by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s WasteWise program. It began in 2001 as a friendly challenge between two Ohio schools, Miami University in Oxford and Ohio University in Athens. Beginning in 2008, participants in the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) could receive credit for participating in the program. The Princeton Review and Kaplan college guides both use RecycleMania to report the sustainability commitments of colleges and universities. For more information and to view the winners of RecycleMania 2009, visit www.recyclemania.org. Oregon State Strives to Recruit More International Students Oregon State University in Corvallis is the first university in the United States to partner with INTO University Partnerships, an organization that has worked with institutions in the United Kingdom to increase international student enrollment. OSU’s International Student Initiative will recruit international students into a one-year Pathway program that will assist with the transition to a new country, improve English skills, and introduce courses for their areas of study. The program is expected to enroll 500-650 students annually for the next five years. OSU’s international student population has decreased by half within the past decade, now representing only 4.8 percent of the student body. OSU hopes to increase this to 9 percent. There will be 150-200 new international students entering the program when it is implemented in September 2009. It is estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the students enrolled will continue at OSU as degree-seeking undergraduates. A new residence hall is being constructed that will exclusively house the international students enrolled in the Pathway program. The $52 million hall, which will open in September 2011, will feature classrooms and laboratory spaces specifically designed for the transition program. INTO’s first partner was the University of East Anglia in Norwich England, where the number of international students increased from 40 in 2005 to 540 in 2007, with more than 70 percent becoming degreeseeking students at the university. For more information on INTO, visit www.into.uk.com. For more information on the INTO-OSU partnership, visit www.into. us.com/oregonstate. oregon state University nIng gree uses P caM May + June 2009

http://www.into.uk.com http://www.into.us.com/oregonstate http://www.into.us.com/oregonstate http://www.recyclemania.org

Talking Stick - May/June 2009

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