Cascade Avenue earns project recognition

The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) 2014 Annual Review, issued earlier this fall by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), includes two special recognitions of sustainability efforts at UW-River Falls.

The first recognition is a STARS Silver rating for campus-wide sustainability efforts at UWRF. The credits included in STARS span the breadth of higher education sustainability and include performance indicators and criteria organized into four categories: Academics, Engagement, Operations and Planning & Administration. UWRF is one of 105 higher education institutions that earned a STARS rating this year, representing institutions in the U.S., Canada, Ecuador, Japan, Netherlands and Switzerland.

The STARS 2014 Annual Review also highlights the innovation of the Cascade Avenue reconstruction project. The report states, "Cascade Avenue is a collaborative redesign and construction of the primary corridor through campus in partnership with the City of River Falls and Wisconsin State Department of Transportation. The corridor is a holistic systems approach to traffic calming for pedestrian and bicycle safety. The locally constructed corridor enhances pedestrian and bicycle safety and uses LED lighting, native species xeriscaping, storm water management and other sustainability features."

Completed in 2012, the Cascade Avenue reconstruction project had previously been named Project of the Year for a transportation project of less than $5 million by the American Public Works Association (APWA).

More information on STARS, including the 2014 Annual Review, is available at https://stars.aashe.org.