Florida Tech has maintained its status as a “Green College” after The Princeton Review included the university in its Guide to Green Colleges: 2025 Edition.
The guide highlights universities who prioritize a healthy and sustainable quality of life for students; prepare their students for employment in the clean-energy economy; and implement environmentally conscious school policies.
This is the eighth consecutive year that Florida Tech has earned this distinction.
The Princeton Review used a survey conducted in 2023-2024 of administrators and students at nearly 600 colleges to make the ranking, focusing on sustainability-related policies, practices and programs. The 2025 ranking features 511 schools. Editors analyzed more than 25 data points from the surveys and sustainability credit reporting to tally Green Rating scores for the schools on a scale of 60 to 99.
Florida Tech received a Green Rating of 87.
For Toufiq Reza, associate professor of chemical engineering and a member of the University Sustainability Council, the distinction serves as recognition of Florida Tech’s sustainability practices both on campus and in the classroom, noting actions in residential life, dining halls, buildings and facilities. The university’s sustainability minor has also become a popular choice among students, Reza said.
Overall, 38 university-wide courses contain sustainability or sustainability focused content, and 179 faculty members have sustainability-focused research interests, he added.
“We only have one world and have limited resources around us. We want to make sure the world is a better place for the future generations to live,” Reza said. “College campuses are a place to learn and to practice sustainability. It is vital both for the university as well as for the students.”
Students across campus are also pursing sustainability-based projects, from designing an interactive map of the university’s Joy and Gordon Patterson Botanical Garden to finding solutions for erosion and debris transport from the garden to a nearby creek, according to Kathy Villegas Murillas, co-chair of the University Sustainability Council.
“It will be together as a whole that the university will make impacts and make strides to be at the forefront of these prestigious accolades,” Murillas said. “We are proud of what we are accomplishing together, and I can’t wait to see what else we do in 2025.”
Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief, noted of the nearly 8,000 college-bound students the company polled for its 2024 College Hopes & Worries Survey, 61% said having information about a college’s commitment to the environment would affect their decision to apply to or attend a school.
“We are delighted to recommend Florida Tech to students who want their ‘best-fit’ college to also be a ‘green’ one,” said Franek. “Florida Tech, which offers excellent academics, also demonstrates a strong commitment to sustainability in its campus programs, policies and practices.”
