Green Campus Initiatives

In keeping with the Jesuit traditions of the pursuit of wisdom and learning, education of the whole person and respect for the environment, we recognize the value of minimizing our environmental impact.

We will endeavor to design, construct and maintain our buildings, infrastructure, and grounds in a manner that ensures environmental sustainability and demonstrates sustainability best practices in a broad range of areas.

Our Climate Action Report highlights the progress we have made through 2021 and establishes a framework to minimize our environmental impact in all areas of our operations. Fordham University remains committed to sustainability as a central consideration in all aspects of our activities, including curriculum, student development and education, faculty and staff involvement, and physical plant and campus operations.

More Green Campus Initiatives

Facilities Overview

We maintain over 42 buildings (comprising of 4.7 million square feet) which are dispersed throughout four campuses.

Installing solar panels on top of Walsh Library on the Rose Hill campus

Solar Projects

Fordham has increased its sustainable energy sources with the use of on- and off-campus solar arrays.

A recycling bin full of empty plastic water bottles

Campus Recycling

More than 208,000 pounds of paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, and metal are being recycled and diverted from the University’s waste stream annually.

Transportation

Fordham’s Department of University Transportation has converted its entire vehicle fleet of vans (50+) to biofuel.

Partnerships

We also work to enhance our impact through strategic partnerships and programs that coordinate sustainability efforts with our NYC community.

Green Buildings

All new buildings will be designed from an energy standpoint to achieve the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) New Construction Silver rating, ensuring that all new properties are environmentally responsible.

New Campus Center Addition

The new campus center addition at the Rose Hill campus was designed to LEED standards and uses passive heating and cooling technology. It is currently under construction and anticipated to be completed by 2025. In addition, all renovations of existing facilities will meet or exceed LEED for the existing buildings criterion.

LEED Gold Certification

Campbell, Salice, and Conley halls, a 172,265 GSF residential complex the University dedicated in 2010, achieved LEED Gold Certification.

LEED Silver Certification

The Law School building and McKeon residential tower are Fordham’s newest LEED Silver certified buildings. The new facilities have added more than 415,000 square feet of residential and academic space to the Lincoln Center campus.

Sustainability News at Fordham

Walsh Family Library: Reflecting on 25 Years

Just after the inauguration ceremony for President Tania Tetlow in October, revelers gathered in front of Walsh Family Library—aglow in purple and blue lights—to boogie down to the sounds of the famed Preservation Hall Jazz Band. It was hard to imagine that in 1994, this was just an empty patch of land, and not a …

Read The Full Story

Climate Action Report Details Path Forward for Sustainability

Maroon is the official color of Fordham, but more and more, the University is embracing green. That’s the message of the University’s latest climate action plan annual report. “As a University, we’re working toward a more sustainable world and doing the part that we can do here, both in the physical plant, as well as …

Read The Full Story

In New Class, Addressing Climate Change and Food Insecurity

We hear regularly about how climate change is impacting the weather. What’s perhaps less obvious is that it is also affecting the food we eat. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture warned in a report that the progress that has been made on global food security is likely to take a hit because of …

Read The Full Story

In Debut Novel, a Fordham Graduate Imagines Our Climate Future, Five Different Ways

Business leaders, economists, political consultants, and military planners often use scenario thinking to prepare for what lies ahead and test possible courses of action—or inaction. For Andrew Dana Hudson, FCLC ’09, it’s a practice tailor-made for speculative fiction, one that influenced his debut novel, Our Shared Storm, which was published by Fordham University Press in …

Read The Full Story

Student’s Research Spotlights an Overlooked Inequality: The Disability Gap

Around the world, as countries grow more wealthy and advanced, what happens to those who face extra challenges with essential things like seeing, hearing, getting around, and interacting with others? That’s the question recently addressed by a Fordham student’s faculty-mentored research project. While scholars have long suspected that people with disabilities tend to get left …

Read The Full Story

Nancy Castaldo’s Latest Book Offers Kids Environmental Solutions, Hope Before the World Runs Dry

Although World Water Day and Earth Day are in the rearview, Nancy Castaldo hopes you won’t shift your attention from the fate of the planet just yet. In her latest book, When the World Runs Dry: Earth’s Water in Crisis, published in January, she dives into global water security—or, more aptly, the lack thereof—tackling infrastructure, …

Read The Full Story

‘What It Will Save Us’: MOSAIC Panel Addresses Environmental and Climate Justice

“I’ve been in this storm so long/ I’ve been in this here storm so long/ Crying Lord, give me more time to pray/ I’ve been in this here storm so long.” Fordham College at Lincoln Center graduate Marquetta L. Goodwine, Queen Quet of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, sang those lines from the spiritual “I’ve Been in …

Read The Full Story

University Honored for Stewardship of Trees

Fordham’s commitment to caring for trees and protecting the environment continues to receive national recognition. For the fifth time, the Arbor Day Foundation included Fordham in its list of colleges and universities recognized for their commitment to trees through Tree Campus Higher Education, a national program launched in 2008 by the foundation. “Trees not only …

Read The Full Story

Fordham and Bronx Schools Collaborating on Air Quality Project

Through a new initiative called Project FRESH Air, Fordham is working with local middle and high schoolers to combat climate change and generate new air quality data in their communities. “We want to set up a network of air quality sensors around the city and map out the air quality—particularly in the Bronx—and help students …

Read The Full Story

Climate Change and the UN Call to Action: Lecture Highlights Need for Multilateralism

Cooperation and multilateralism will be key to combating the climate crisis in the next two to three years, said a U.N. expert on climate action at a Fordham lecture on Nov. 17. Selwin Hart, special adviser to the secretary-general on climate action and assistant secretary-general for the Climate Action Team at the United Nations, addressed …

Read The Full Story

Art and Action on the Bronx River

On a Friday afternoon in April, Matthew López-Jensen stood more than 300 feet above a grassy plaza in Valhalla, New York, on a pedestrian path atop the Kensico Dam. The granite-faced dam blocks a 30.6-billion-gallon reservoir—a major source of New York City’s drinking water—and marks the start of the Bronx River’s 23-mile journey from Westchester …

Read The Full Story

Green Campus Initiatives