Our Mission and Goal

To pioneer and catalyze changes to the design and construction of the built environment that facilitate a sustainable future. Our goal is to develop and deliver the professionals, scholarship, and leadership necessary for society to realize green products and sustainable building systems that lower our dependency on natural resources while being economically viable, socially acceptable, and aesthetically pleasing.

Need

Sustainable development and the green building movement have been adopted faster than any recent movement in the engineering field. With over 40% of our total US energy usage servicing the operation of commercial and residential buildings, this trend is well founded. Recent surveys of the industry tell us that within 4 to 5 years a vast majority of engineering firms expect their business will be significantly dedicated to green building designs.

Integrated Design

The greater goal is to move our profession and nation into a new era of sustainable solutions for the built environment; our specific goal is to establish a replicable model for student engagement and faculty development in sustainability engineering. Our approach uses a yearlong Integrated Design Experience that ally skilled practitioners with mentoring faculty to guide cohorts of students charged with developing inspired solutions to challenging and contemporary design projects focused on the tenants of sustainability. These cohorts will be composed of students from relevant design disciplines, construction management, and other subject areas as dictated by the project scope. Allied firms will bring current sustainable design practices challenging us to develop analytical techniques and code justifications related to current practice.

The Integrated Design Experience will focus on real projects, serving as a supplement to actual ongoing design and construction with the possibility to enhance the owners, industry and communities. Our version of a sustainable design experience will address challenging design focused projects that require an integration of disciplines to develop inspired designs. This program will unite both undergraduate (seniors) and graduate (MS) from a variety of design and engineering disciplines. Similar level students from supporting disciplines depending on the project requirements will augment these groups. These may include landscape architecture (low impact development), engineering management (minimizing life-cycle costs) electrical engineering (distributed renewable energy), computer science (human interface development), etc. Project outcomes will include comprehensive project design, analysis of complex components, and practice-oriented journal papers