2020 USGBC Leadership Award recipient Vanderbilt University has committed to powering its campus entirely through renewable energy and to carbon neutrality by 2050. 
 
With 21 LEED certifications, one WELL project, and more projects in the pipeline, Vanderbilt University’s building portfolio is as broad and impressive as some cities. Three of the school’s residence houses are LEED Gold. Two have Silver certifications and two more — Crawford and Sutherland Houses — were the first LEED certified buildings at any college or university in Tennessee. 
 
In 2013, Vanderbilt’s VANTAGE LAB, a genomics core laboratory, became the institution’s 14th certified project. 
 
So it only makes sense to honor an academic institution like Vanderbilt when they clearly agree that it’s incumbent upon all of us to ensure the health and wellbeing of the people who make it their life’s work to preserve our health and wellbeing.  
 
Vanderbilt’s commitment to LEED and to creating a sustainable FutureVU, as they have aptly named it, is inspirational. And in 2020, the school launched the FutureVU Sustainability Leaders Program, to use community engagement and peer mentoring to foster a sustainable campus culture. In addition, the initiative is designed to improve sustainability literacy, improve interaction with sustainability programs such as Net Zero Energy and Zero Waste, and encourage and enable positive behavior change within all VU communities. 
 
With a Sustainability Advisory Council established to guide the university’s long-term sustainability strategies and to hold the school accountable on not only the carbon neutral pledge, and the promise to achieve zero waste on campus by 2030, Vanderbilt is surely setting an example for other institutions and entities.