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Ohlone's Newark Center:
The First LEED Platinum Campus in the World
A Green Technology Interview with Leta Stagnaro

by Racquel Palmese

The Newark Center for Health Sciences and Technology at Ohlone College has been awarded the highest green building rating, LEED Platinum, by the U.S. Green Building Council, making it the first college campus in the world to attain the certification. As associate vice president, Leta Stagnaro oversees all campus operations and has been part of the building project team. In a Q & A with Green Technology Magazine, she shares her thoughts on the challenges and rewards – in terms of energy savings and an engaged and environmentally focused student body – of a green campus.

Congratulations on the Newark Center's LEED Platinum designation.  You are reportedly the greenest campus in the world right now.

We do claim that. I have yet to find another. There are colleges that have buildings with the Platinum designation, but we have yet to find a complete campus that is green to this level. The Newark Center for Health Sciences and Technology campus is four wings, all under one roof, and the whole thing is Platinum, and that is our campus.

Would you give us an overview of the Newark Center for Health Sciences and Technology – its size and scope?

The building itself is about 140,000 square feet and serves close to 3,000 students a semester. The campus opened in January 08 and was certified LEED Platinum in August, so it's all really new. We just started our Environmental Studies program, and we moved all our health science programs over here - Registered Nursing, Respiratory Therapy and our Physical Therapist Assistant Program. We also have an array of general education courses here - English, History, Psychology, Geography - things like that. 

We're working towards a more thematic approach across the curriculum, embedding environmental issues into the curriculum.  This semester we have a couple of learning communities where you'll have a history class and an environmental class working together on the same themes. Or an English and environmental class. 

Teaching about environmental issues within a context of what's going on throughout the world is important. In health sciences, for example, more and more hospitals now are realizing how they impact the environment. They're looking at things like getting rid of waste - are there more environmentally friendly products out there that are biodegradable?  Can they cut down on the massive amounts of electricity they use? Indoor air quality is a huge issue at hospitals. We are beginning to embed these issues into our health sciences courses.

The name of your college also includes Technology. What sorts of technology are you teaching?

We have technology courses, and we also have technology embedded into our classrooms, which are actually called learning spaces. All have projectors and ports, where faculty can plug in their laptops and/or they can use the USB drive on the room's built-in computer. We have wireless technology throughout the campus. We can make any room into a mobile lab, because we have laptop computers in carts so faculty that want to use computers as part of their teaching tools can do that by rolling a couple of carts into a class.

We're looking at emerging technologies and nanotechnologies also. We have a full array of biotechnology classes here. We're in the early stages of teaching green technology. We have our first solar technology classes this semester. For us, a lot of it is being in Silicon Valley. There's a lot going on in this area with technology related to green - solar, wind and some biofuels exploration. 

Were you involved in this building project from the beginning?

I was. I was assigned originally as the dean of the project and my position has evolved into associate vice president. I was involved even prior to the first beam being put into the ground. Ohlone planned the building and the campus culture to focus around sustainability, which is a big piece of what we are working to create here. 

What do you mean by the "campus culture?"

One of the goals of the campus is not only to provide an eco-friendly environment, but a place where students can feel like they are part of what's going on. They had input from the start. The building concept was centered around the students. We had a couple of prototype learning spaces that we had created on our Fremont campus, and we used those as a way to generate ideas and to ask students what they wanted, what works for them, what helps facilitate the learning processes. And we asked faculty what tools they need to help with creating a more twenty-first century learning environment.

Most community colleges were built forty or fifty years ago under a different mindset of what teaching and learning needed to be at the time. Our society was different. Now we're more a knowledge society, more a creative, innovative society where people work differently than they did back then.

We're trying to create that same type of learning space, something that's flexible and can be adapted to anything that the faculty and students might want to do in that space. If they want to create more of a boardroom type atmosphere, they can do that because the furniture is all on wheels. The tables fold up, and you can move them out of the way. We're no longer in a fixed learning environment; we no longer have a tablet arm desk where the student really is more in a fixed position, where they're facing forward basically. Now you have a much different learning space where students can work in teams and can recreate the rooms to adapt to what the learning assignment might be.

The hallways look spacious instead of tunnels connecting classrooms.

They're called informal learning spaces and each wing has them. These can be used as an extension of the learning space,  or as a place where students can gather before or after class, where they can continue on the learning process within their peer groups, not necessarily facilitated by faculty.

Does the building lend itself to being a teaching tool?

It does. There's a giant window on the second floor where you can see the enthalpy wheels working (two 10-foot diameter wheels, fresh-air energy recapture systems, that save up to 25 percent of costs for cooling and heating)
Throughout the building we have ways to point out the recycled parts; for example a display that shows the insulation, which is made from blue jeans. The geothermal coils for heating are displayed. For the community it's a great place to come and see what a green building is all about.

Is the community involved in the college?

Yes, very much so. We just recently had an event for the International Interior Design Association. We have a group coming over from the high school for an advisory group meeting on green technology. Some of the local high schools that we work with are in the initial stages of developing a program focusing on green technology. One of the things we're just starting to explore with the K-12 system is having field trips, so a class can come over here and spend a day on the campus and learn about what's going on here from the perspective of the green building, and also what college is all about.

How did your building project come together?

The entire building structure was funded through a $150 million bond. We had a capital campaign where we've raised close to $5 million so far to be able to equip the campus the way we have. What shifted us to focus to green building was when Dr. Treadway became our college president and asked us to step back and really look at what we were doing with this new campus. After all, how often do you get to build a new campus? Very seldom. We reflected on what it was we wanted to achieve here.

Our college is named after the Ohlone Indians, which inhabited the Bay Area. With Dr. Treadway, we went back to our roots looking at the Ohlones and how they lived on the land. We wondered what they would want to do in our situation, where all of a sudden you have an opportunity to build something new. How would they build it to protect the earth and the environment?

Some of this was also affected by the dot com situation. We were flourishing with students, and all of a sudden we had the dot com bust. We had to reassess our enrollment and assess what was happening around us. Those two pieces played a key role in reframing what we wanted to do with this campus.

Was building to the Platinum level more expensive than it would have been without the rating?

We've had this question asked so many times, and we try to look at it. But how do you really compare it to something that you don't know? One thing I've learned is when you're building a new building like we did and you focus in on building it green from the beginning, it's a lot more cost effective than if you're remodeling and doing it afterwards.

Did we pay a little bit extra? Yes, we did up front. But in the long run, if it provides a healthier learning environment or if it provides a healthier work environment, how do you put a value on absenteeism or productivity? 

For me the main reward is the students and how they interact with the building, how they enjoy the environment. So often, students get turned off to learning because it's not necessarily a fun or an inviting place to come. That is something we looked at here and had a whole shift in thinking about the paradigm of where we need to go with education.  

Are you also saving money with the solar and geothermal?

Absolutely. Look at the cost of oil now and the cost of electricity going up and up.  In essence, what these renewable energy sources do is provide stability to some of the operating costs. You put more money out up front, but in the long run, you save. Look at the length of time that a campus is in existence. We're not going to leave after 5 or 10 years; we'll be here for  50, 60, 70 years.

We haven't even been in here a year yet, but the initial six months are showing that we're actually more efficient than the energy model projected. There are still things that we are learning, but what's great is that the faculty, the staff and the facilities folks really have taken ownership of the building. When the students aren't here, we don' t have all the lights on. We're smart about what we have working and not working as far as the energy areas go.

In six months, according to the architects and project manager, our actual use is about 63 percent of Title 24 standards. The energy model showed that we were going to be at 82 percent. So we're running about another 20 percent more efficient than the model originally estimated.

What were some of the challenges you faced during planning or construction?

That's a great question, because we were all learning together about what's out there in terms of green building - the materials that are available, the different technologies that we could choose from. The team is really critical, and we had a great team of people. The architects, Perkins + Will, really understood what we wanted to do and helped us in many different ways. They brought us suggestions, and we bounced ideas back and forth. Then, Turner Construction was the same way. We thought we were going to hit (LEED) Gold, and we did. Then we started reassessing some of the points and added additional solar to the roof; instead of just doing two of the wings we decided to do all four. By then we were only a few points away from Platinum, and everybody was trying to figure out what we could do to get there. It really became a goal of not only the college but the architect, the construction company and everyone who was working with us to achieve the highest level.

What were the final strokes that put you over the top?

We set aside an acre of land for a restoration project. We added some task lighting.  We added carpool stalls for students in parking areas. We worked with our local bus service to make sure we had the proper routes. We actually added another route. We're currently building our Student Services Center on the Fremont Campus, and right now we're in the same situation. We have enough points for (LEED) Silver, and we're only three or four points away from Gold, so we're looking at what we can do.

Part of that is setting aside some land that you're not going to build on, or you look at how you can be more efficient inside the building with how you operate it.  Some of the points that you think you're far away from are actually achievable. It's really becoming more aware of what the process involves.

Is this having an impact on other colleges or school districts?

Absolutely. Our K-12 system, the Newark Unified School District, may have an opportunity build a new elementary or junior high school, and they now want to build that green. Showing that it can be done is a huge step, not just amongst the community colleges, but amongst educational facilities in general.  This can be done. De Anza college has a LEED Platinum building (Kirsch Center for Environmental Studies), and Butte College (Butte-Glenn Community College District) has done a lot of great things as well.  We learn from each other. It's not a competition, but a sharing of knowledge for bettering the environment and how we live, teach and learn together.

When you look back to the roots of our country, at the way the Indians lived on the land, they got it right. In so many ways, we lost sight of what we should be focusing on. I think now we're kind of going back in time to recapture that.


 

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