Editor’s Note: In an effort to see and hear firsthand what some campuses are doing to implement sustainable strategies on campus and specifically in their residence halls, members of the ACUHO-I Sustainability Committee are issuing reports from the field. The first comes from ACUHO-I Sustainability Director Lynne Deninger, principal with Cannon Design.

Amherst College is a small, private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, and is the third oldest college in the state. It is member of the historic Little Three colleges, which includes Wesleyan University and Williams College. With nearly 99 percent of the current student population living on campus, Amherst is committed to the development of living learning communities and as such has committed to developing more energy efficient and financially responsible renovations and new construction on campus without a lot of pomp and circumstance.

Now, Amherst has not signed the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment, nor do they have a full time sustainability director, a taskforce, or even a sustainable living/learning community. They do however know they want to provide appropriate role modeling while improving their energy efficiency and their bottom-line. I think they are moving in the right direction, one small project at a time.

Tom Davies, AIA, the director of design and construction and assistant director of facilities showed off some of the campus’ recent sustainability accomplishments that reflect the “pragmatic New England Puritan tradition” that built the Amherst campus. Following eight years of residential hall renovation projects, many of these successes were combined during the renovation of Hitchcock Hall. The following eight approaches are not necessarily glamorous or full of hype, but have met with great success.

Efficient Planning: Distinctly low tech with a high sustainability factor is the expansion of a building, even if it’s from 35 to 73 beds. Keeping existing structures and maximizing the number of students that use the existing amenities, social spaces and bathrooms, improves efficiencies.

Building Envelope: Amherst used the latest and best technology for insulating their historic masonry structures, open cell foam just to the right thickness to allow it to breathe in both directions. This took some research as if it’s too thick, the brick will disintegrate from the inside out over time. But with help from a strong design team, Amherst was able to significantly reduce heating consumption. Looking at every detail including all the insulation joints in the system at windows, doors, etc. created a new type of quality control system maximize outcomes. The prototype arrangement will be the norm on future projects.

Solar Hot Water: Hot water accounts for about a quarter of all energy consumed in a residence hall, and the solar system will cut that by more than half. The solar system is complex and expensive, but the key to making it effective is something extremely simple and cheap:  high-quality low-flow shower heads that cut the demand for hot water. Amherst tested a number of the best and settled on a model that was developed for high-end hotels in Las Vegas. They are now in every shower on campus. They’re terrific and even at $60 per they pay for themselves in about a year.

Boilers: Another high-tech hidden item is the use of high-efficiency boilers for building heating and hot water. As Davies said, “it’s not bleeding edge stuff, but is now a practical proven technology”.

Sensors: The use of occupancy sensors for lights to shut off when no one is around. This is a no-brainer. However, the use of humidity sensors to throttle back the bathroom exhaust when no one is taking a shower is a novel approach dreamt up by the design and construction office. They are monitoring the installation now to determine success.

Window Points: As many have experienced, students often leave windows open even when it’s five degrees outside. At Amherst, it is the norm for facilities staff to actually go around to every dorm room the day after winter break starts to close the windows. To address this problem, they began testing a system that senses when a window is opened and automatically lowers the thermostat setting to 60. The idea is that when the student gets cold, they’ll close the window again. Tom notes that with clever students, comes many opportunities to circumvent the system, but he believes it’s “worth a try” and perhaps the best outcome will be a general student awareness of the waste resulting from leaving a window open through the winter months.

LED Lighting: Davies notes, “an interesting story on this one is that our engineers wouldn’t believe the manufacturer’s claims about how much light LED lights generate per watt. When we started to light them up it was clear that they were more efficient than the design assumed, so we actually had to remove some to lower lighting levels.”

Vestibules: Designed appropriately, Davies notes, they actually work as air-locks. So often, vestibules are minuscule spaces between two doors, and even with one person entering or exiting both doors end up open at the same time, throwing away energy. At Amherst, all main entries have been redesigned to actually function as an air lock. It’s not going to get a LEED point. It’s not flashy “green” technology. But it’s high-value. Pragmatic New England design indeed.

After watching the speech I wanted to find other discussions or general information regarding green jobs on college campuses. Through a bit of Web surfing I pulled in a blog that highlights the discussion of green jobs. This particular blog did a great job of touching on the transition of brown to green jobs. I think it would be very interesting to see how campuses are creating these jobs and whether they are being fueled by green funding.

During the President’s address I pondered two questions:

Question #1-Have we reached the tipping point in regards to how green jobs are advertised? What I’m trying to say is in this economy are green jobs just jobs? I think we have moved passed the label far enough that we often do not notice the green unless its explicitly spelled out.

Question #2-How well do green positions fold into the housing and residential life organizational chart? In other words are green positions becoming stand alone positions or are they still seen as a collateral assignments for housing and residential life professionals?

Progress is good but with the current economy I could understand why there may be hesitation in reorganizing the organization and adding a position. However there is serious value in recruiting our incoming green students into our greening residential communities.  They will consume less. With this in mind it would be important to consider creatively positioning our organizations now to focus our efforts on attracting these students to live with us now and possibly work for us in the future.

This is my first blog contribution to the sustainability discussion/green movement. I have to admit that just typing this post feels fresh and green.

Hope to post more.

In the press release, Julian Keniry, the senior director of Campus and Community Leadership for the NWF, said: “We scouted projects at more than 160 colleges and universities all across the country. In more than 20 years of supporting student environmental leaders, we’ve never seen this extraordinary degree of student engagement and creativity around sustainability at every level. Our findings demolish the myth that students are apathetic or sitting on the sidelines. Their voices are rising up in ways we haven’t heard since the civil rights or the peace movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s, but the irony is, we are finding that most campus educators and leaders at the state and federal levels aren’t really listening.”

The projects included in the report include cover the spectrum of recycling programs, inter-residence hall sustainability competitions, sustainability-themed housing, and much more. The programs vary in their scope, but the encouraging news is how the students lead these initiatives. A Princeton Review study back in May reported that 68 percent of the students surveyed valued information about a college’s commitment to the enviornment. These students have oftentimes taken matters into their own hands to make a difference, and that will shape behaviors moving forward.

What are the programs on your campus that will get students leading for a more sustainable future?

The results of the Sustainable Endowments Institute’s survey, which constitutes the report card, are now fully available online. You can search for campus, dining, endowment and student surveys from responding schools. It’s a handy way to see how your institution is measuring up against its contemporaries in sustainability.

Who would’ve thought that Standard Oil would lead to this?

Editor’s Note: Spotlight is a recurring feature in this blog as well as

Campus: Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, Massachusetts)
Name: East Hall
Opened: July 2008
Cost: $33 million (construction)
Architect: Cannon Design

When Worcester Polytechnic Institute set out to create East Hall, it was with the goal of attracting upperclass students to stay on campus. When completed, it certainly did that with 232 beds in a mix of single- and double-room suites and studio apartments. Students appreciated the building’s amenities and services such as laundry facilities, waste removal and recycling, a fitness room, academic study space, music practice rooms, a game room, and a parking garage. But the LEED Gold-certified building also made a strong statement to the campus’ sustainability commitment.

The structure boasts a number of energy-saving features: motion-controlled lighting and building sunscreens as well as sensors that minimize heating and cooling of apartments if they are empty for more than 12 hours or will minimize heating and cooling when apartment windows are opened. This is along with dual-flush toilets, low-flow shower heads, sustainable landscaping, and a dedicated storage area for bicycles. The building is topped by an Energy Star palletized green roof system, and includes a storm water monitoring/testing station located on the ground-floor lobby to educate students about the sustainable design and support the campus’ environmental science program.

The WPI community was involved in the green roof from the beginning as students, administrators, and the facilities’ groundskeepers traveled two hours to a nursery and planted more than 10,000 seedlings into 1,200 palettes for the roof. Completed, the green roof provides sound and thermal insulation for the building, absorbs some rainwater, reduces storm water runoff, and filters the air. The chives grown on the roof are even harvested by campus dining services for meals.

The sustainability features are also integral to the buildings aesthetics, illustrated through the signage and the wayfinding system. Each floor has its own LEED category theme, expressed in room signage and featured in educational information posted in the elevator lobbies.

Other portions of the engineering-oriented campus were involved throughout the construction process as well, turning the construction site into a giant classroom. Faculty and students sat in on the charrette process during design. They witnessed the process through weekly construction meetings with the architect, contractors, and campus administration. Civil engineering students modeled the building construction and used software to replicate the building’s appearance at different stages. Students even compared their theoretical schedules with the actual construction schedule.

The brainy and unique nature of the building even extends to the special film that covers the window glass in the first-floor fitness room. The film has a practical application in that it acts as a sunshade and also provides an implied privacy screen. It has a more mysterious purpose, however, as the film was laser cut with a graphic that represents the WPI “E to the X” cheer. (It involves 13 mathematical expressions. No, I don’t understand them.) It also includes the project’s completion date which isn’t uncommon cornerstone material in and of itself; but it’s those unique institutions like WPI that present the date in binary code.