The Peralta Community Colleges District, in Oakland, Calif., faces questions over a land deal in which it gave up rights to a vacant lot to a developer in 2003, only to buy them back in 2008 for $300,000.

The Contra Costa Times, a local newspaper, reports that "district officials issued a quitclaim deed on the half-acre lot near Merritt College to Dr. Collin Mbanugo, an Oakland surgeon and developer, on Dec. 1, 2003, noting that maintenance costs of the lot exceeded the land's value. County records listed the property's 2003 value as $5,722." However, the college soon wanted the land back, "with administrators seeking approval to spend $300,000 to purchase the land from Mbanugo."

The Metropolitan Greater Oakland Democratic Club has questioned the deal. The newspaper's reporter had difficulty getting officials from the college to respond to his own questions. Sadiq Ikharo, a vice...

Here's an update on an item we ran two months ago about Towson University's bid for ownership of a landmark movie theater in Baltimore. Towson is withdrawing its proposal to acquire the Senator Theatre and transform it into a performing-arts center and home for WTMD, the university's public-radio station.

According to an article in The Sun, in Baltimore, the plan foundered on Maryland's rocky economic predicament. "Due to the continuing economic pressures faced by the State of Maryland and thus Towson, and the uncertain economic climate that we expect to face the remainder of this year, we have determined that it is best not to take on this complex new venture at this time, but rather concentrate on the needs of our students," said James Sheehan,  vice president for administration and finance.

That leaves a lone contender for the Art Deco theater: James "Buzz" Cusack, owner of an...

Portland State University announced Tuesday that it had formed a strategic partnership with Portland General Electric to address issues like urban transportation, renewable energy, and sustainable design.

The partnership, which has been formalized through the signing of a memorandum of understanding, will be governed by three executives from each organization. The exact plans for the strategic partnership are unclear, aside from the focus on urban mobility and the integration of energy and sustainable design.

“Partnerships like this are the way forward for universities like PSU,” said Wim Wiewel, president of the university. “Rather than just looking for philanthropy, we are looking to work with business and other partners to work jointly on research, education, and demonstration projects that serve our mutual interest—as well as those of Portland and Oregon. This project is a perfect ...

The University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh plans to build an anaerobic biodigester that will generate enough biogas to generate 400 kilowatts of power, 5 percent of the university's electricity and heating needs.

The feedstock for the digester will be cafeteria and yard waste -- no manure. It will use a dry-fermentation process that will not produce wastewater, which would need to be treated. This type of digester, at this size, will be the first of its kind in the country, Oshkosh says. Anaerobic composting can produce some pretty awful smells, but the university says its digester will feature fans and air filters and will be situated next to a sewage-treatment facility.

The project is supported by more than $700,000 in state and federal grants.

An annual report on achievements and progress in the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment has been released. You can get a copy of the report online through the project's Web site.

The report, in snapshots, details the various actions that colleges have taken to fulfill their commitments up to this point. It also calculates the cumulative impact the actions have had on carbon emissions (a potential to reduce carbon emissions by 33 million metric tons), and provides short case studies of colleges that have taken on energy projects, green-building programs, or sustainability curricula.

The report also lists the commitment's signatories and notes whether they are in good standing. The vast majority are, but a significant number are not.

New York University is planning a vast expansion that would increase the size of its physical plant by 40 percent over 20 years, including three million square feet of space for classrooms, offices, and dormitories, and a satellite campus on an island in the middle of New York harbor, according to today's New York Times. The university, which has often fought over its development plans with its neighbors in Greenwich Village as well as historic-preservation groups, pledged that this time the plan would take into account those local interests. The expansion plan, which the university says is needed to accommodate its growing enrollment, would be subject to approval by city agencies.

The deadline to submit information for the Sierra Club magazine's annual "Cool Schools" list came and went over the weekend -- and Ithaca College let it pass. In a letter to Sierra, the college's administrators said they declined to participate in the survey because they found it too time-consuming, opaque, and of questionable value. (A copy of the letter, which was shared on a green-colleges e-mail list, follows below.)

In an interview, Marian Brown, special assistant to the provost for sustainability and a co-author of the letter, said she understands and supports the underlying purpose of green-related surveys and ratings -- to push colleges to be better.

"The problem is, with the proliferation with so many of them, each one demands a fair amount of time," she says. The Sierra survey, in particular, asks for a lot of information that Ithaca does not collect, and she wonders how some...

This week's Tech Therapy podcast features a discussion with Bill Tomlinson about ideas in his forthcoming book, Greening Through IT. Mr. Tomlinson, an associate professor of informatics at the University of California at Irvine, raises issues that sustainability advocates on campus should be well aware of by now. The IT sector is responsible for about 2 percent of global carbon emissions, equal to those of the airline industry, he says.

A lot of people talk about carbon footprints, he says, but the computational footprint -- made by the delivery and storage electronic materials -- is a bigger and bigger part of the problem. And few people think about it.

He assigns his students to solve this problem: Which has a greater effect on the environment: Sending a letter or sending an e-mail message? "On the one hand, with a letter there is a clear impact -- you have paper and ink, and it...

Forbes magazine recently came out with its list of "The World's Most Beautiful Campuses," and it cites some fine examples. I approve of the inclusion of University of California at Santa Cruz. Oxford, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale are there, of course. Also featured are some campuses that are not often seen on such rankings, which usually go for the obvious. Gracing the Forbes slide show, for example, is a picture of Kenyon College at the height of autumn. The list also includes the University of Cincinnati, which has hired a slew of star architects to make its campus more interesting and attractive (not least to the news media).

Predictably, people have raised questions about the rankings in the comments. Where's Smith College? Where's Cornell University? Oxford, but not Cambridge? "This list is highly suspect," wrote one commenter, as if authoritative scores of campus beauty existed...

Progress on two building projects at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee has slowed amid disagreements over their siting.

University officials want to move the School of Freshwater Sciences, which is now housed in the Great Lakes Water Institute. They had once considered expanding the school on that site, near Lake Michigan. But the chancellor, Carlos Santiago, points out that it is also next to giant coal-storage piles, which makes raising money for an expansion difficult.

Administrators would like to see the school moved to the Reed Street Yards, a planned redevelopment of a former industrial site. But faculty members and scientists say the location would obstruct the school's research ship, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Both sides hope to resolve the debate soon.

Meanwhile, the university has redesigned its plans for a new engineering campus, in response to...