|
Forty University of Idaho students and faculty members will present a plan for a carbon-neutral Idaho Environmental Learning Center at the National Sustainable Design Expo in Washington, D.C.
If they win, the group members will win $75,000 to help realize their goal.
The University of Idaho received a $10,000 P3 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Center for Environmental Research last fall.
“The project started with talking about rebuilding MOSS (UI’s McCall Outdoor Science School),” said Bruce Hugland, who is involved with MOSS and a professor with the Architecture department.
The goal was to rebuild the school because it is old.
The department incorporated the plan in a class project for 40 students and faculty members from the College of Art and Architecture’s Departments of Architecture, Interior Design and Landscape Architecture and the College of Natural Resources’ Department of Conservation Social Sciences.
Three conservational social sciences students, one bioregional planet student and one architecture student will go present the project.
“This will be a rich experience for the students,” Hugland said.
Since fall 2006, the participants worked in teams to come up with several designs and master plans.
“On the more professional side we are the host for wilderness medicine and avalanche courses,” said Jacob Dolence, a graduate student of the conservational social sciences who teaches at the MOSS.
The school offers programs for different age groups and seasons.
“The majority of programs in the fall are residential, where 5th and 6th graders from all over Idaho come and stay in our cabins for a week and use the outdoors as an integrating context to learn science,” Dolence said.
In the winter, MOSS hosts the students to teach them about snow science, animal tracking and winter ecology.
“In the spring — sludge season in McCall — we go out on the road and teach all ages, k-7 mostly, about subjects ranging from river physics to GIS,” Dolence said.
As semesters go by “students graduate and new students replace them and some stay on the project as they graduate,” Hugland said.
“We got it and one of the requirements is to present in Washington D.C., so that is why we are going to present there,” Hugland said.
Since so many students were working on the same project there were a lot of designs to choose from.
“We had to decide what plan to follow, the teacher students in McCall and one of the Architecture students worked on coming up with a masterpiece,” Hugland said.
The project plan will be presented in Washington D.C. this month.
The group’s goal is to win the $75,000 award at the expo and rebuild MOSS in the summer.
 Add as favorites (37) | Views: 384
|
