The first installation of The College Greening covered the growing trend of electronically submitted papers. This time I’d like to address the “green buildings” campuses around the nation are investing in, not only for their potential for student recruitment, but more importantly for their eco-friendly capabilities.

My small school just opened its first “green” buildings this year, two dorms that utilize geothermal heating. Under construction for about a year, the geothermal piping occupies a good part of the land under our school’s athletic fields, which makes the initial building expensive, but saves on later heating and cooling costs. It also utilizes the school’s expanse of property in a new way- not only for athletic events, but for the very buildings it needs to house the student body.

College and university dormitories are notorious for their energy consumption, with the widespread individual use of large electronics like refrigerators and televisions, as well as individual heating and cooling units, not to mention the amount of energy used for the laundry college students have.

The dorm I live in currently was originally built in 1845, and was last renovated in the mid-nineteen sixties. Each room is equipped with an individual window-mounted air conditioning unit, but the thermostat is placed in the hallway, making temperature control extremely inefficient. It also has extremely small windows on the upper floors, about a foot in height and a yard long, keeping hot air trapped and ventilation possible, but difficult. Granted, this is not the norm for most college dormitories, and I enjoy the style and history of my building, but perhaps some green remodeling is in order. From an eco-friendly standpoint the building is a sore thumb in path of “green” building.

Our new buildings rely, not on oil-based heat pumps, but on heat energy produced by the earth. The underground piping, or “earth heat exchanger,” is used to run fluid that is warmed by the ground and then sent to the individual heat pump units. Unlike my current dorm, this allows separate temperature control for separate zones. It also means that if one system fails, the entire building is not affected; only the zone that system serves.

Our dorms also use a DOAS (dedicated outdoor air system) as well as pre and finial filtration and a dehumidifying/cooling units to reclaim and recycle heat energy lost in the building. A far cry from the AC window units currently in use.

My school is also currently constructing a new performing arts center and dining hall/student center, both of which are planned to utilize DOAS, if not the geothermal heating our new dormitories have. I think it’s about time not just colleges, but schools in general, begin to address the impact humans have on the environment, especially since they educate the next generation of policymakers and builders. I am glad to see these practices enacted by the administration in the hopes that they resonate with the rest of the student body, now and for the rest of their lives.