Academic program spawns green solutions

Williams Village North, the University of Colorado’s newest residence hall, is so green, it’s luminescent.

Students’ rooms come with motion-sensitive light switches and Energy Star appliances. “Vampire” electricity usage (from computers in sleep mode and digital devices on standby) can be nixed with master switches in each room.

Water is sipped, not guzzled. Gray water from showers is recycled through toilets—a safe and efficient setup that was illegal until the state Legislature made an exception to Colorado water law.

The ultra-efficient construction of Williams Village North reflects the raison d’être of the Residential Academic Programs—or RAPs—just launched there.

Williams Village North, which opened this fall, will be home to students from different disciplines who will study sustainable design and social entrepreneurship. The idea is that engineers, social scientists and even humanists working together will speed progress toward sustainable living.

The two RAPs in Williams Village North are called “Sustainable by Design” and “Social Entrepreneurship for Equitable Development and Sustainability,” or SEEDS. In each program, the building will be a living and learning laboratory.

CU-Boulder has 12 campus RAPs that allow students to live and learn together in the same residence hall with other students who have similar interests. The RAP programs are designed to introduce students to faculty and to allow them to take selected courses and to participate in educational and social events—all within their residence hall.

“One of our main objectives with the SEEDS RAP is to bring students from different academic backgrounds together and have them work together to learn about sustainability,” said Professor Susan Clarke, faculty director of the SEEDS RAP.

“Figuring out how to solve problems coming from different disciplines is what we want the students to take from this program.”

Professor Joann Silverstein of the College of Engineering and Applied Science is the faculty director of the Sustainable by Design RAP.

Students from both new RAPs are required to take a course titled “Social Innovation and Design for Sustainable Communities,” which highlights the multidisciplinary aspect of the programs.

Matthew Jelacic, an assistant professor of architecture, will serve as the faculty in residence for both RAPs, and he will be one of the professors team-teaching the course.

The course is centered on the concepts of design, innovation and sustainability. It uses the concept of design to bridge engineering and social-science domains, Jelacic said.

“My hope for this course is that it helps prepare students to work on solving the complex local-to-global problems faced in the world today such as environmental pollution, sustainable resources, energy scarcity, hunger and socio-economic disparities,” Jelacic said.

The RAPs will have an annual theme. This year, it’s food.

“The issue of sustainability is not a straightforward concept,” Clarke said. “Sustainable food production is a very difficult problem to solve, but it is also something that students can relate to and learn about with a hands-on approach.”

The kitchen itself is a visual feast, and Clarke likens it to “kitchen stadium” from “Iron Chef,” the TV cook-off show that originated in Japan.

Throughout the school year, local chefs, farmers and others involved in sustainable food production will visit Williams Village North to share their experiences with the students. And students will get to sample recipes made from locally produced food.

“Having vibrant sustainability entrepreneurs in Boulder is a real bonus to our program because it shows our students the value in what they are learning,” Clarke said. “There are numerous opportunities available to graduates who can apply sustainability to real-world problems like food production.”

Karen Morian, residence hall director, is supervising five graduate students who are teaching in the program. Only one third of the dorm population this year is RAP students.

The programs hope to fill Williams Village North with SEEDS and Sustainable by Design students. Morian and her colleagues believe that growth will happen.

One barometer is parents of new students, Jelacic said. “The parents are excited. They want to be here.” A host of students do, too.

“I assumed I’d have a building full of engineers,” Morian said. But the student population runs the gamut from engineering and social science to film studies and women’s studies. “I think that’s what’s exciting. They’ll get to work with people who care about the same issues.”

Morian noted that students who interact with faculty tend to stay in school through graduation. Besides living in the building and inviting students to dinner in his residence, Jelacic spends every Monday in the lobby from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Students can chat with him during “Mondays with Matt.”

Like Morian, Cathy Comstock, associate director of the SEEDS RAP, sees the program as ground-breaking and exciting. “It’s remarkable—one might even say, revolutionary—to see this kind of multidisciplinary collaboration across colleges as well as disciplines. And in the service of applied learning, with concrete and helpful results the students can experience now. I’m very proud of the university for supporting this extraordinary endeavor.”

Comstock teaches humanities classes. But actually solving real-world problems requires skills that “the humanities haven’t had at their disposal,” she said. On the other hand, engineers need an understanding of the humanities and social sciences: analyzing ethical issues and understanding policy-making, for instance.

Built to a high Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, standard, the Williams Village North building is itself designed for sustainability.

The facility is equipped with energy-efficient lighting with windows that capture maximal daylight, advanced heating and cooling systems with automatic controls and native landscaping.

The energy use of each of the building’s five wings can be monitored on a central display. This is designed to encourage students to compete for the title of most-efficient wing.

Additionally, more than 50 percent of all of the construction waste was diverted from the landfill. The building also is on track to be the first LEED Platinum building on campus.

“Compared to a building of the same size that wasn’t constructed with these sustainability features, Williams Village North is expected to use about 39 percent less energy,” said Heidi Roge, building project manager from CU-Boulder’s Housing and Dining Services department.

“This translates into more than $220,000 in annual utility savings.”

The $46.5 million residence hall includes 131,246 gross square feet, 500 beds, five classrooms, one faculty apartment, a residence hall director apartment, a great room/lobby and study spaces on each floor. Construction on the residence hall began in January 2010.

The cost of the residence hall has been financed through bonds taken out by the campus Housing and Dining Services department. The bonds will be repaid through revenue generated by the 500 additional beds.

Additional building features include:

• Solar-heated water
• On-site solar photovoltaic renewable energy on the carport at Bear Creek Apartments
• Covered bike parking
• Light emitting diode, or LED, lighting
• Building materials and construction maximized by the use of regional, high recycle content and low Volatile Organic Compound, or VOC, materials
• Storm water diverters for roof drainage to provide irrigation to landscaping

For more on the Sustainable by Design and SEEDS RAPs, see http://ceae.colorado.edu/rap/. The CU Office of News Services Contributed to this report.