Campus Notebook: Green colleges ranked; Reducing tuition

NOTRE DAME, IND. — The University of Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture will award the 2018 Evangelium Vitae Medal to Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon, according to a statement by the university's media relations office.

The award is named after Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, and honors a lifetime of work in defending the gospel of life.

"Mary Ann Glendon is certainly among the most accomplished women in the church today and a worthy recipient of this year's award," Holy Cross Fr. John Jenkins, the president of the university said in the statement. "I'm grateful to the Center for Ethics and Culture for recognizing Glendon for her impressive service to the church and to life."

Glendon is the former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, and has served both her country and her church in different capacities over the years, often defending the pro-life position. The medal is awarded with a $10,000 prize, and will be conferred at a mass and banquet on April 28, 2018.

NEW YORK — Several Catholic colleges and universities are included on the Princeton Review's Guide to 375 Green Colleges, 2017 which was released in late September.

In addition to providing a list of the 375 institutions of higher learning that have what the press release calls "the most exceptional commitments to sustainability based on their academic offerings and career preparation for students, campus policies, initiatives, and activities," the Princeton Review ranks the top 50 of such colleges and universities.

Four Catholic institutions are ranked: St. Michael's College is ranked 11th, Santa Clara University 12th, University of San Diego 18th, and Loyola Marymount University 21st.

SPOKANE, WASH. — The Gonzaga University Center for Public Humanities will present a lecture by Angela Davis, activist and distinguished professor emerita of history of consciousness and feminist studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, on Oct. 25, according to a press release by the university.

Davis has written eight books and lectured all across the globe, focusing on justice issues, particularly incarceration and criminalization of communities in poverty and affected by discrimination.

"When you consider the depth of her work and her activism, and when you read her writings going back to the early 1970s, what we can see is that she has had something to say about our current moment long before we got here," Brian Cooney, English professor and director of Gonzaga's Center for Public Humanities, said in the press release. "She is certainly one of the most important voices on behalf of justice — not just racial justice, but class justice, justice for women, justice for the LGBTQ community, and more — that we have had in America in the last half century."

"An Evening with Angela Davis" is free and open to the public. Due to limited space, tickets are required.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Canisius College, a Jesuit college in western New York, announced Excellence Within Reach, a new initiative that will cut tuition by 23 percent next fall, in a YouTube video posted Oct. 3. The initiative will take tuition down to its lowest level in 10 years. In addition, the school will cut its cost of on-campus living by $2,000.

The college says it will maintain its commitment to providing financial aid to students who need it, and that 98 percent of students receiving financial aid will retain it.

The initiative's webpage states that attending a private college has "become a maze of high tuition prices, high discounts and lack of transparency that turns away too many qualified students," and that the new initiative will be a "forward step" in changing that.

[James Dearie is a NCR Bertelsen intern. His email address is jdearie@ncronline.org.]