It’s always nice to be recognized for your efforts. Although Dell is honored to take the top slot in Newsweek’s Green Rankings for 2010 (see the complete list here), we also see this award as a reflection of your commitment to environmental stewardship.

Having customers like you who strive to be greener is what inspires us to continually find better ways to help you achieve more. The efficiencies that come from greener practices, products and services are so often the key to finding those better ways.

Newsweek recognized us for building sustainability into our supply chain and operations, which ultimately makes it easier and more cost-effective for you to be green. For example, you have helped us divert more than 484 million pounds of equipment from landfills since 2006 through our convenient recycling programs. And our innovative bamboo packaging provides a strong, renewable packaging alternative that you can compost for easy disposal.

Newsweek also recognized our passion for helping you compute more while consuming less. For example, thanks to the energy management features on our OptiPlex™ business computers, Dell customers have saved more than $5 billion in energy costs since 2006.

About the Ranking

The Newsweek Green Rankings grades America’s 500 largest publicly traded companies, as measured by revenue, market capitalization and number of employees, on their environmental performance, policies and reputation as environmentally responsible companies.

Newsweek partnered with three independent organizations to assemble a “green score” for each company. That score is based on three components:

• Environmental impact — based on data compiled by Trucost
• Green policies — derived from data collected by RiskMetrics
• Reputation — based on an opinion survey of corporate social responsibility (CSR) professionals, academics and other environmental experts who subscribe to CorporateRegister.com

CEOs or high-ranking officials in all companies on the Newsweek 500 list were also invited to participate.

The University is organized into two undergraduate and eight graduate schools. The undergraduate student body comes from all 50 U.S. states and 106 countries. In its 2009 edition, U.S. News & World Report ranked the university’s undergraduate program eighth among national universities, while ranking the medical, law, and business schools among the top 12 in the country. Duke University was ranked as the thirteenth best university in the world in the 2008 THES – QS World University Rankings of universities worldwide.

Duke’s research expenditures are among the largest 20 in the U.S. and its athletic program is one of the nation’s elite. Competing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the athletic teams have won ten national championships, including three by the men’s basketball team.

Besides academics, research, and athletics, Duke is also well known for its sizable campus and Gothic architecture, especially the Duke Chapel. The forests surrounding parts of the campus belie the University’s proximity to downtown Durham. Duke’s 8,610 acres (35 km²) contain three contiguous campuses in Durham as well as a marine lab in Beaufort. Construction projects have updated both the freshmen-populated Georgian-style East Campus and the main Gothic-style West Campus, as well as the adjacent Medical Center over the past five years.

Duke University
Latin: Universitas Dukiana
Motto: Eruditio et Religio
Motto in English: Knowledge and Faith
Established: 1838
Type: Private
Endowment: $4 billion (May 2009)[1]
President: Richard H. Brodhead
Faculty: 2,877
Students: 13,457
Undergraduates: 6,340
Postgraduates: 7,117
Location: Durham, North Carolina, US
36°0′4″N 78°56′20″W / 36.00111°N 78.93889°W / 36.00111; -78.93889Coordinates: 36°0′4″N 78°56′20″W / 36.00111°N 78.93889°W / 36.00111; -78.93889
Campus: Urban
8,610 acres (34.8 km2)
Former names: Brown School (1838–1841)
Union Institute (1841–1851)
Normal College (1851–1859)
Trinity College (1859–1924)
Colors: Duke blue and white

Nickname: Blue Devils
Athletics: NCAA Division I FBS
26 varsity teams
Affiliations: AAU, ACC, UMC
Website: www.duke.edu
Latin text from university archives. Population data for fall 2007; financial data for FY07. UMC ties historic and symbolic, but governance-independent.

Initially called “New College” or “the college at New Towne”, the institution was renamed Harvard College on March 13, 1639. It was named after a young clergyman named John Harvard, who bequeathed the College his library of four hundred books and £779 (which was half of his estate). The earliest known official reference to Harvard as a “university” occurs in the new Massachusetts Constitution of 1780.

During his 40-year tenure as Harvard president (1869–1909), Charles William Eliot radically transformed Harvard into the pattern of the modern research university. Eliot’s reforms included elective courses, small classes, and entrance examinations. The Harvard model influenced American education nationally, at both college and secondary levels.

Harvard is consistently ranked at or near the top of international college and university rankings, and has the second-largest financial endowment of any non-profit organization (behind the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), standing at $28.8 billion as of 2008. Harvard and Yale have been rivals in academics, rowing, and football for most of their history, competing annually in The Game and the Harvard-Yale Regatta.

Harvard University
Seal of Harvard University
Motto: Veritas
Motto in English: Truth
Established: September 8, 1636 (OS)
September 18, 1636 (NS)
Type: Private
Endowment: USD $36.9 billion
President: Drew Gilpin Faust
Faculty: about 2,401
Staff: 2,497 non-medical
10,674 medical
Students: 19,140
Undergraduates: 6,714
Postgraduates: 12,422
Location: Cambridge, MA, USA
Campus: Urban
380 acres (1.5 km2)
Newspaper: The Harvard Crimson
Colors: Crimson
Mascot: John Harvard
Athletics: 41 Varsity Teams
Ivy League
NCAA Division I
Harvard Crimson
Website: www.harvard.edu

The university attracts students from all 50 U.S. states and 93 countries and was named one of the “New Ivies” by Newsweek in 2006. Peer institutions of Carnegie Mellon include Caltech, Cornell, Duke, Emory, Georgia Tech, MIT, Northwestern, Princeton, Rice, RPI, Stanford, Penn and Washington University. Carnegie Mellon is affiliated with at least 15 Nobel laureates.

The university began as the Carnegie Technical Schools, founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1900. In 1912, the school became Carnegie Institute of Technology and began granting four-year degrees. In 1967, the Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to form Carnegie Mellon University. The University’s 140-acre (0.57 km2) main campus is 3 miles (4.8 km) from Downtown Pittsburgh and abuts the campus of the University of Pittsburgh in the city’s Oakland neighborhood.

Carnegie Mellon has seven colleges and schools: the Carnegie Institute of Technology (engineering), the College of Fine Arts, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Mellon College of Science, the Tepper School of Business, the School of Computer Science, and the H. John Heinz III College.

Carnegie Mellon University
Motto: “My heart is in the work.” Andrew Carnegie
Established: 1900 by Andrew Carnegie
Type: Private university
Endowment: US $1.068 billion (June 30, 2008)
President: Jared Cohon
Faculty: 1,012
Undergraduates: 5,892
Postgraduates: 5,066
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Campus: Urban, 144 acres (58 ha)
Colors: Cardinal, Gray, and Tartan Plaid
Nickname: Tartans
Mascot: Scotty the Scottie Dog
Athletics: NCAA Division III UAA
17 varsity teams
Website: www.cmu.edu

Founded by William Barton Rogers in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, the university adopted the German university model and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. Its current 168-acre (68.0 ha) campus opened in 1916 and extends over 1 mile (1.6 km) along the northern bank of the Charles River basin. MIT researchers were involved in efforts to develop computers, radar, and inertial guidance in connection with defense research during World War II and the Cold War. In the past 60 years, MIT’s educational programs have expanded beyond the physical sciences and engineering into social sciences like economics, philosophy, linguistics, political science, and management.

MIT enrolled 4,172 undergraduates, 6,048 postgraduate students, and employed 1,008 faculty members in the 2007/08 school year. Its endowment and annual research expenditures are among the largest of any American university. 73 Nobel Laureates, 47 National Medal of Science recipients, and 31 MacArthur Fellows are currently or have previously been affiliated with the university.

The Engineers sponsor 33 sports, most of which compete in the NCAA Division III’s New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference; the Division I rowing programs compete as part of the EARC and EAWRC. While students’ irreverence is widely acknowledged due to the traditions of constructing elaborate pranks and engaging in esoteric activities, the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT affiliates would make it the seventeenth largest economy in the world.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Motto: Mens et Manus
Motto in English: Mind and Hand
Established: 1861 (opened 1865)
Type: Private
Endowment: US $10.068 billion
Chancellor: Phillip Clay
President: Susan Hockfield
Provost: L. Rafael Reif
Faculty: 1,008
Students: 10,220
Undergraduates: 4,172
Postgraduates: 6,048
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Campus: Urban, 168 acres (68.0 ha)
Nobel Laureates: 73
Colors: Cardinal Red and Steel Gray
Mascot: Beaver
Athletics: Division III (except for Rowing)
33 varsity teams
Affiliations: NEASC, AAU, COFHE, NASULGC
Website: web.mit.edu

Stanford was founded in 1885 by former California governor and senator Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, as a memorial to their son Leland Stanford Jr., who died of typhoid in Europe a few weeks before his 16th birthday. The Stanfords used their farm lands to establish the university hoping to create a large institution in California.

Stanford enrolls about 6,700 undergraduate and about 8,000 graduate students from the United States and around the world every year. The university is divided into a number of schools such as the Stanford Business School, Stanford Law School, Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford School of Engineering, etc.

The university is in Silicon Valley, and its alumni have founded companies like Nike, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Nvidia, Yahoo!, Cisco Systems, Silicon Graphics and Google.

Stanford University
Motto: Die Luft der Freiheit weht
(German)
Motto in English: The wind of freedom blows
Established: 1885
Type: Private
Endowment: $17.2 billion
President: John L. Hennessy
Provost: John Etchemendy
Faculty: 1,807
Students: 14,945
Undergraduates: 6,759
Postgraduates: 8,186
Location: Stanford, CA, U.S.
Campus: Suburban, 8,180 acres (33.1 km2)[6]
Athletic nickname: Stanford Cardinal
Colors: Cardinal red and white
Mascot: The color Cardinal red (official), Stanford Tree (unofficial)
Athletics: NCAA Division I (FBS) Pac-10
Website: www.stanford.edu