Campus Green Builder

By Marya McQuirter, PhD
chocolate & arugula 

Clement Hall, Clark Atlanta University
Photo Credit: Clark Atlanta University Office of Alumni Relations

Wouldn't you like to have a complete list of the LEED^® buildings @hbcus available online? I know I would. So here it is! I compiled the list below from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), which keeps a spreadsheet of LEED^®-registered and LEED^®-certified buildings at colleges and universities.

As of 16 February 2010, there are a total of 23 hbcus on the USGBC spreadsheet. Three have achieved LEED^® certification. Is your institution missing? Or is there information that needs to be amended? If so, leave a comment and/or email me so that the list can be as current and accurate as possible. Also, if you have photos or architectural drawings of the buildings, I would love to include them with the list. 

• Bowie State University
  Center for Business & Graduate Studies (#232, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
  New Student Center (#2667, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
• Cheyney University
  Carver Hall (#3388, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
• Clark Atlanta University
  Clement Hall (#1489, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-CI) LEED Silver
  Wright Hall (#2670, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-CI)
• Coppin State University
  Athletic Center (#1230, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
  Health and Human (#253, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
• Dillard University
  Professional Schools and Sciences Building (#2562, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
• Florida A&M University
  Gore Complex Renovation & Remodeling (#2467, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
• Howard University
  Robert & Mary Church Terrell House (#800, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
• Jackson State University
  School of Engineering (#535, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
• Meharry Medical College
  Kresge Learning Resource Center (#2937, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-EB)
• Morgan State University
  Center for the Built Environment & Infrastructure Studies (#1859, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
  (Due to open July 2010 and MSU is pursuing LEED^® Gold.)
• Norfolk State University
  Robinson Technology Center (#236, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
• North Carolina Central University
  Chidley North Residence Hall, (#2449, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
  School of Nursing (#2370, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
• South Carolina State University
  Clyburn Center – Phase 1D (#3408, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
  Engineering/Computer Science Building (#2612, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
• Spelman College
  The Suites Residence Hall (#909, USGBC spreadsheet) - LEED^® Silver
• Tuskegee University
  New Margaret Murray Washington Hall (#3137, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-CS)
• University of Maryland Eastern Shore
  Somerset Hall (#2937, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)
• Virginia State University
  Engineering & Technology Building (#338, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC) LEED^® Certified
  Howard Quad Phase 1 (#2708, USGBC spreadsheet) (LEED^®-NC)

Notes:

• The USGBC spreadsheet was last updated on 16 February 2010.
• I have provided spreadsheet numbers so that you can easily find each institution.
• There are 4 certification levels: LEED® Certified, LEED® Silver, LEED® Gold, and LEED® Platinum.
• LEED®-NC=LEED® for New Construction & Major Renovation.
• LEED®-CI=LEED® for Commercial Interiors.
• LEED®-ED=LEED® for Existing Buildings.
• LEED®-CS=LEED® for Core & Shell.

The U.S. Green Building Council also offers workshops specifically tailored to greening campuses. The next one, “An Integrated Approach to Greening Your Campus: Strategies for Engaging your Campus Community,” will be an all-day workshop on Friday 12 March at the USGBC headquarters in downtown DC.

This past Wednesday, I participated in a pilot of the new Green Building, Design & Construction 200-level faculty-led workshop. The USGBC offices are beautifully designed and one of the best places to sit inside for 7+ hours!

There will also be a National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) pre-conference workshop, “An Integrated Approach to Greening Your Campus,” on Sunday 21 March at the University of Maryland University College. Click here, for more information.

Resource: For the USGBC spreadsheet, click here and scroll down to “Who is Going Green.”

Marya McQuirter, PhD is a sustainability consultant, scholar and blogger based in Washington, DC. She works with universities, businesses and non-profits on researching, writing and marketing their sustainability portfolios. She also lectures widely on sustainability and writes about sustainability on her blog, chocolate & arugula.

By Marya McQuirter, PhD
chocolate & arugula

Walmart Better Living Business Plan Challenge
Photo Credit: Walmart and Net Impact

I have two resources to share:

1. Home Depot's Retool Your School program

Home Depot has allocated $150,000 for its Retool Your School program available solely to HBCUs. Home Depot will give one grant of $50,000 and 10 grants of $10,000 each. Interested administrators must apply online by 15 March 2010. Click here for more information.
 

2. Walmart's Better Living Business Plan Challenge

Walmart's annual competition, Better Living Business Plan Challenge, offers U.S. colleges and universities the opportunity to invent sustainable business products or develop sustainable business solutions and present them to a panel. The winning institution will receive $20,000 toward their project.

Claflin University and Howard University participated in the 2010 challenge. Regional competitions were held over the past few weeks and the final competition will take place April 2010 in Arkansas.

Click here for more information.

Marya McQuirter, PhD is a sustainability consultant, scholar and blogger based in Washington, DC. She works with universities, businesses and non-profits on researching, writing and marketing their sustainability portfolios. She also lectures widely on sustainability and writes about sustainability on her blog, chocolate & arugula.

By Marya McQuirter, PhD
chocolate & arugula

Emancipation Oak at Hampton University
Photo Credit: Hampton University Admissions Office

If you think that sustainability or being green is new in higher education, Hampton University says think again. According to Hampton, the university's alumni magazine, sustainability is old school.

“In this time of global environmental change, Hampton University has responded by implementing “green” practices. In 1868, when General Samuel Chapman Armstrong founded Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, it was built as an environmentally and economically sustainable campus. Now, HU is reclaiming and reinventing that sustainability to adapt to the 21st century.”

(Current adaptations include President William R. Harvey's HU Goes Green Committee, recycling, purchasing hybrid vehicles, eliminating unnecessary vehicles for personnel, using eco-friendly cleaning products, holding forums for student input and establishing guidelines for new construction and renovation.)

I love it!

Hampton University is introducing its sustainability initiatives to alumni by harking back to the institution's development. In doing so, university officials are promoting sustainability as a way to be both true to the university's origins and to the future of the university. Brilliant! This should be exciting news to alumni who are into sustainability and should mitigate concerns about changes to the university.

Hampton University is also implicitly questioning widespread assertions that sustainability is new and foreign to Hampton (and other HBCUs). This is an important discursive move not to be taken lightly. While “catch-up” narratives may make sense in the philanthropic arena, they aren't particularly useful, or should, at least, be critiqued in intellectual spaces.

I would love to see (or hear about) a Hampton student taking on old school sustainability as a research project. I know that 15 acres of the campus that lie along the Hampton River constitute a National Historic Landmark District and that there is a historic & revered tree—Emancipation Oak—on the campus. So I'm curious about the place of the river in the school's history and the impact of the tree on Hampton's architecture and landscape.

Can any Pirates enlighten us about Hampton's green history?

Source:

• Hampton - The Alumni Magazine of Hampton University, Spring 2009, accessed 19 February 2010

Marya McQuirter, PhD is a sustainability consultant, scholar and blogger based in Washington, DC. She works with universities, businesses and non-profits on researching, writing and marketing their sustainability portfolios. She also lectures widely on sustainability and writes about sustainability on her blog, chocolate & arugula.

By Marya McQuirter, PhD
chocolate & arugula

Sustainability Squared
Photo Credit: E-Architect

introduction

Do a Google search on sustainability @HBCUs and the first ten results may not yield much on environmental sustainability. But there will be dozens of results on a different kind of green sustainability—financial sustainability.

brief background

There are currently 105 historically black colleges & universities in 19 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. HBCUs are 4-year private institutions, public institutions, community colleges, technical institutes, business colleges and medical schools. Clearly, they represent a diverse range of institutions. What they share in common is that they were built before 1964 to serve the vast majority of African American students when most historically white institutions mandated and practiced segregation and racism in their admissions policies.

Fast forward to the 21^st century. HBCUs constitute 3 percent of higher education institutions and educate 16 percent of African American students. What a difference forty years make! As a result, HBCUs have regrouped, reconstituted and reconsidered how to remain viable institutions.

sustainability squared

Sustainability squared is one such viability strategy employed by HBCUs who are banking on environmental sustainability—

• new green buildings
• green renovations
• energy assessments
• green endowments

—as a critical component of their financial sustainability. And for the trailblazers, it is paying off!

Spelman College is one of the trailblazers. Indeed, if one googles Spelman College and sustainability all of the first ten results will focus on its environmental sustainability initiatives. And that's great news! Under President Beverly Daniel Tatum's leadership, Spelman College has effectively coupled environmental sustainability with financial sustainability. Click here for Spelman College's 2009 Strategic Plan Report.

The sustainability squared strategy will continue to increase at other HBCUs as local, state and federal monies, as well as private funding and institutional capital campaigns, are dedicated to squaring environmental sustainability with financial sustainability.

Sources:

• “Historically black colleges and universities,” Wikipedia, accessed 12 February 2010.
• Stephen Pelletier, “ A Snapshot Look at Today's HBCUs,” accessed 12 February 2010.
• White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, accessed 12 February 2010

Marya McQuirter, PhD is a sustainability consultant, scholar and blogger based in Washington, DC. She works with universities, businesses and non-profits on researching, writing and marketing their sustainability portfolios. She also lectures widely on sustainability and writes about sustainability on her blog, chocolate & arugula.

By Marya McQuirter, PhD
chocolate & arugula

Bowie State University Students Participate in RecycleMania 2009
Photo Credit: Bowie State University

RecycleMania is an annual competition that encourages colleges and university students to reduce waste on their campuses. The 2010 RecycleMania, which started on 17 January and ends 27 March, is in high gear.

Students compete within their schools and against other schools by:

1. collecting the largest amount of recyclables per capita
2. collecting the largest amount of total recyclables
3. using the least amount of trash per capita
4. having the highest recycling rate

Participating HBCUs include:

• Bowie State University
• Coppin State University
• Delaware State University
• Florida A & M University
• Grambling State University
• Howard University
• Jackson State University
• Morgan State University
• Spelman College
• Texas Southern University
• University of Maryland Eastern Shore
• Winston-Salem State University

Click here for more information about RecycleMania.

Marya McQuirter, PhD is a sustainability consultant, scholar and blogger based in Washington, DC. She works with universities, businesses and non-profits on researching, writing and marketing their sustainability portfolios. She also lectures widely on sustainability and writes about sustainability on her blog, chocolate & arugula.

By Peter Bardaglio, Senior Fellow, Second Nature

New combined heat and power plant at Cornell
Photo Credit Cornell University

Not all green buildings on campus come with lots of windows and sunlight. I recently attended the grand opening of Cornell University's new Combined Heat and Power Plant. Given the quality of the conversation about climate change in the U.S. these days, it’s easy to get discouraged and cynical. But I came away from this particular event feeling like Cornell had taken a real step forward. The new plant will allow Cornell to stop using coal in 18 months and will reduce the university’s carbon footprint by 28 percent. Getting off coal power and hooking up to an interstate natural gas pipeline that runs close by the campus will also save 100,000 gallons a year of diesel fuel used to deliver the coal by truck from West Virginia mines. Now that’s green by anyone’s standards. 

Especially impressive was President David Skorton’s strong expression of support for the ACUPCC at the opening. "When I signed the President's Commitment," he said, "I did not know how we would get to climate neutrality, but I did have faith in our collective ability as a university to educate and discover our way through, and today is an example of finding a piece of the larger puzzle. Although we are celebrating today, we have a long hill yet to climb."

After the remarks and a press conference, I took a tour of the new 15,000-square-foot facility located next to the old coal-fired central heating plant. It was hard to miss the two giant turbines fired by natural gas that drive the electric generators. As was explained to us over the din of the turbines, very little goes to waste; heat from the turbines makes steam that runs another generator and that steam is piped throughout the campus for heating. In fact, so little energy is wasted that solar collectors had to be installed to provide heat and hot water for the new offices and locker rooms attached to the facility!

When thinking about Cornell's switch from coal to natural gas, here's something to keep in mind: only one-third of the energy in coal actually gets used to generate electricity. The rest goes up the smokestack along with much greater carbon emissions than natural gas. Thanks to mountaintop removal, more than 470 mountains in four Appalachian states (West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee) have been destroyed to date providing coal for power plants such as the one that Cornell is shutting down (see "How Do You Kill a Mountain?"). Given the inefficiency of coal, that means only about 156 of those mountains went into producing electricity. The other 314 mountains were not only destroyed, they were a complete waste. Cornell's new power plant will be running at something like 85% efficiency and natural gas emits far less carbon than coal. The obvious conclusion: natural gas may be "bad," but it's dramatically less bad than coal.

No wonder the Sierra Club will be holding Cornell up as a model as it seeks to get other universities and colleges to close down their coal-fired power plants (see Campuses Beyond Coal). One down and (about) fifty-nine to go!

By Marya McQuirter, PhD
chocolate & arugula

Photo Credit: Spelman College

Do you have a green building project in the planning stage on your campus? Or is there a project already underway? If so, don't let the facilities and construction managers have all of the fun. As administators and faculty members, you have an excellent opportunity to leverage green building projects throughout the entire campus.

Here are 4 ways administrators can leverage sustainability throughout their institutions:

• Chronicle the green building process on your website
• Invite students to blog about the green building process
• Engage alumni by asking them to support a specific aspect of the green building process
• Brand the university as a 'green' institution using the new construction as one example

Here are 4 ways faculty can leverage sustainability in their classes:

• If you assign student projects, incorporate the green building process
• If you teach a foreign language, have students write about green building and translate it
• Assign readings related to sustainability that would give meaning to the green building process
• Design/co-teach a new class on sustainability using the green building process as the anchor

If you have already leveraged the green building process, please share by leaving a comment below or emailing me at mmcquirter@gmail.com.

If you would like to learn more about advancing sustainability in the curriculum, you can attend AASHE's excellent 2-day Sustainability Across the Curriculum Leadership Workshop. I attended the January 2010 workshop at Emory University with faculty and administrators from more than 25 institutions in the U.S. and Canada. Click here for information about the next workshop.

Marya McQuirter, PhD is a sustainability consultant, scholar and blogger based in Washington, DC. She works with universities, businesses and non-profits on researching, writing and marketing their sustainability portfolios. She also lectures widely on sustainability and writes about sustainability on her blog, chocolate & arugula.

By Richard Johnson, Director of Sustainability, Rice University

When are reductions in energy consumption verifiable savings?

With the emergence of the ACUPCC and increasing focus on energy costs and supplies, universities across America are pursuing measures to reduce their energy consumption and their greenhouse gas emissions. As these schools attempt to measure their results and document savings, I ask how do they really know when they are saving energy?

Let’s assume that a campus building is metered for all utilities, and that these utilities can be tracked on a weekly basis. And further, let’s assume a two-week experiment, and that at the beginning of the second week space temperatures in the building are changed as part of a new campus building temperature policy to reflect what is considered to be a more efficient range. If the meter readings were lower in week two than week one, can a utility manager conclude that the energy conservation measure was a success? Given our experience at Rice University, we would argue that the answer is no.

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By JR Fulton, Architect, LEED® AP, Housing and Food Services, University of Washington;
Kurt Haapala, AIA , LEED® AP, Associate Mahlum; and
Ron van der Veen, AIA, LEED® AP, Principal Mithun, AASHE Board of Directors

Energy efficient buildings can be designed, built or renovated to use less than half of their present operational energy while maintaining high quality, health, and comfort. This can be done without significant capital investment costs. Energy efficient buildings cost less over the life of the building, reduce the total cost of ownership, reduce energy and operational costs and significantly reduce carbon emissions. Building in energy efficiency can “futureproof” the University and make it more resilient. But you have to ask for it!

In order to significantly reduce our future carbon footprint in campus construction, it is necessary to provide a very strong focus on energy efficient buildings. One of the most prudent ways to do this is to require an aggressive energy reduction requirement for all university new building and major renovation projects. The Architecture 2030 organization has created the 2030 Challenge that provides the framework for producing energy efficient buildings now and carbon neutral buildings by 2030. Adopting and mandating a building energy efficiency standard like the 2030 Challenge for campus construction will significantly reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. The 2030 Challenge should be a cornerstone of your Climate Action Plan.

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By Jeffrey M. Baker, Director, Office of Laboratory Operations, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy

Commercial buildings account for 19% of the nation’s energy consumption, according to the Energy Information Administration, so when the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) decided to build a new office building to house its staff, energy performance was naturally a top priority. The new Research Support Facilities (RSF), currently in construction on the campus of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is utilizing a wide variety of energy efficiency measures to reduce energy consumption by 50% over standard commercial buildings. But the goal to achieve a LEED Platinum rating didn’t override a focus on cost. The RSF’s construction costs are competitive with today’s less energy efficient commercial buildings, proof that energy efficiency doesn’t have to come at a premium.

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