Walls of Sustainable Living Center Erected on Earth Day
On Earth Day, April 22, the walls and the roof began going up on the new Sustainable Living Center — a building that will set a new standard for green building in America by being completely off the grid with respect to electricity, heating and cooling, water, and waste.
Construction proceeded quickly because of the tilt-up construction, with the shell being completed in about a week. The building is expected to be ready for occupation in late fall.
The building uses Whole Tree post-and-beam techniques, with the main support beams being made out of tree trunks rather than sawed timber. Among the advantages of using whole trees is that they are 150% stronger than milled lumber and over 100 times more abundant than millable old-growth trees.
Now that the shell of the building is in place, work will go ahead on the interior: floors, earth block walls, and the early stages of plumbing, electrical, and ventilation work.
The Sustainable Living Center will serve students in the University’s Sustainable Living major. It will have classrooms, workshop, meeting room, greenhouse, kitchen, research lab, recycling center, and offices, as well as east and west covered verandas and a porch on the north.
Non-toxic materials from local sources (as defined by the Living Building Challenge requirements) are being used. All of the electricity will be provided from solar panels on the building and from a wind turbine. Rainwater catchment will be the complete source of the building’s water, with purification of drinking water via ultraviolet technology. Wastewater will be treated onsite using a constructed wetland. Natural daylighting will illuminate the entire interior. Geothermal technology will assist with heating and cooling.
This achievement is remarkable because none of the systems in the building are new or experimental, according to construction manager Dal Loiselle. “The Sustainable Living Center is being constructed using ‘state-of-the-shelf’ technologies,” he said. “This building proves that we can meet our environmental goals for our built environment with the materials, technologies, and green building protocols we already possess.”
The Sustainable Living Center has benefited from material donations by nationally recognized leaders in green building materials: Gerdau AmeriSteel, Pittsburgh Corning and United States Gypsum Corporation, as well as from Green Building Supply of Fairfield.
The building will also be a showcase for the public, and will feature meeting rooms, a real-time energy and renewable systems monitor, and displays of materials and building systems featured in the building to showcase partnerships with leading technologies and materials manufacturers. For more information, please contact Marco Sunseri at (641) 472-7000, ext. 2449.
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Students Learn from Award-Winning Producer/Director, Hollywood Writer
By Maria Chookolingo
Media and Communications students continue to enjoy the advantages of learning from experienced professionals, this block being taught by award-winning producer/director Leigh Badgley and next block by Hollywood writer Meghan Dowd.
Ms. Badgley is teaching a new course, Creating Documentaries from the Inside Out. She is the producer of the documentaries Greenpeace: Making a Stand, True Prince: Vladimir Malakhov, The Dolphin Dealer, and many others.
Students are learning to make a documentary step by step, as well as learning about specific production roles from successful film industry experts via Skype presentations. There will be a public showing of their short documentaries at the end of the course.
In block 10 Ms. Dowd will teach Creative Development in the Television Industry: From Idea to Broadcast.
She has spent six years learning the ropes of the television industry in Los Angeles, working for literary agencies and television shows such as Big Shots, Reunion, Touching Evil, Haunted, and Laguna Beach: The Real OC. Students in this course will create scripts for TV pilots and produce short segments of them.
These two new courses are part of an expansion of the department to accommodate the increasing number of students. Additional new courses will be offered next academic year, including Feature Film Production, Advanced Digital Photography, Graphic Design for Media and Communications, Graphic Design for the Web, The Power of the Word, New Media: From Blogs to Books, and Digital Photography Rotating University in Mexico.
The Media and Communications department also recently changed its name from the former Communications and Media in order to more accurately reflect the strong focus of the department on media.
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Prairie Maintenance on Campus Includes Controlled Burning
Last month a number of prairie burns were held to maintain the rare remnants of native prairie on campus and the areas where prairie is being reconstructed.
According to Kathy Brooks, who along with Tom Brooks heads up the project, annual controlled burning mimics the natural prairie fires that once swept across the plains, warming the soil and encouraging a new round of plant growth from the roots up. It also keeps trees from taking over, and helps control nonnative invasive species.
The area of prairie reconstruction south of Crow Creek, where the former ponds used to be, will take a special effort to control certain invasive species that are hard to eradicate. To avoid chemicals, plastic sheeting will be used to cover the area and Dr. Elaine Ingham’s approach to managing soil biology will be used.
“The Iowa Living Roadway Trust Fund has paid for the sheeting because they’re keen to have us do these organic management field trials,” Ms. Brooks said.
In February the Brookses planted nine acres of native prairie seeds in the reconstructed area north of Swan road, which runs parallel to Crow Creek.
“While we’re accustomed to thinking of seeds being planted in the spring, prairie seeds are planted when it’s still cold,” Ms. Brooks said. “Some seeds need to be in wet, cold conditions, called stratification, for 10 to 120 days.”
“Prairie is a more sustainable approach to landscaping because it’s perennial, coming back year after year, and needs little care,” Ms. Brooks said.
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Research: Winter Crops Can Grow in an Unheated Greenhouse
A study, funded by a $13,000 grant from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, has been completed and has found that winter crops can be successfully grown in an unheated greenhouse.
Steve McLaskey, who runs the campus organic farming operation, experimented with covering the plants with an extra layer of plastic at night to help them survive the extreme cold. He also used a control plot that was heated so that he could compare this energy-saving approach with the conventional. The result was that there was very little loss.
“We saved over $17,000 on energy bills because of this approach,” Dr. McLaskey said.
He presented his research at a special event in April that was held on site at the greenhouse so that growers in the region could learn about this new option.
“About 60 people attended, and they were very interested to see our operation and to hear how this was done,” Dr. McLaskey said.
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School Students Study Area Water Quality, Sweep Top Awards at State
Maharishi School sophomores Pearl Sawhney and Minna Mohammadi recently won the Iowa Junior Academy of Science award, which entails an all-expense-paid trip to an event in Washington, D.C. in February of 2011.
They researched the link between farm feeding practices and the presence of phosphorus in the water in the Jefferson county area.
In March they also swept the top prizes at the earlier Eastern Iowa State Science Fair as well as the State Science and Technology Fair of Iowa. Their project, entitled “Farm Feeding Practices: Exploring Solutions for Environmental Sustainability,” also won a free trip to participate at the Intel International Science Fair in San Jose with their teacher and mentor, Dr. Mousumi Dey, later this month.
The students tested animal feed for unbound phosphorous, which is important for bone growth, and for phosphorous bound to phytates, which is indigestible and excreted by the animals.
“Manure is applied to fields as fertilizer, so pollution occurs when bound phosphorous enters local streams with run-off,” Ms. Sawhney said. This phosphorous increases the algae and phytoplankton populations, which then use up oxygen in the water when they decompose. This lowers the oxygen levels in the water and creates an uninhabitable environment.
She said this type of pollution has created a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey.
The students found that water downstream from organic farms had the lowest phosphorus content, and that water downstream from CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) had the highest phosphorus. “This indicates that organic farms, of the farms we tested, have the least negative effect on nearby water bodies,” Ms. Mohammadi said. “We plan to continue our research and extend it to other counties.”
At the state science fair they won four first-place awards, a grand prize award, and several special awards. Some carried cash prizes as high as $1,000.
The two students were sponsored in part by Jefferson County Farmers and Neighbors association. They received mentoring and testing materials from the USDA. Dennis Dey and Rajeev Sawhney provided additional mentoring.
The project impressed and intrigued judges because it’s an area not previously researched, Dr. Dey said. They tested three different types of farms: confined animal feeding operations, conventional farms, and organic farms.
“The students performed multiple tests,” Dr. Dey said. “All the results were highly statistically significant. The girls collected water under extremely difficult conditions to minimize errors. Also, they took great care and every precaution to get the most accurate results.”
The students said their goal was to find a local solution to a global problem. But the research wasn’t without its challenges. “We didn’t realize what we were getting into,” Ms. Mohammadi said. “It was difficult, cold, muddy work collecting samples.”
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School Students Win Art Awards
Seven Maharishi School Upper School students recently won awards at the Southeast Iowa Superconference Art Competition held at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mt. Pleasant.
Paris Lamoureux placed 1st in the Chromatic Drawing category, Kenzie Wacknov 1st in the Mixed Media category, Ryan Smelcer 2nd in the Pastel category for his drawing, and Raphael Burne 1st in the Photography category.
Receiving honorable mention were Pandy Wadsworth and Jhana Valentine in the Photography category and Derek Thatcher in the Judge’s Choice category for a mixed-media photograph.
The students are taught by Greg Thatcher and Sharon Koelblinger.
There were 11 schools competing and over 150 student works submitted.
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Chamber Singers to Perform “For Love”
The Chamber Singers of Southeast Iowa will perform “For Love,” their annual spring concert, on Friday, May 21, and Saturday, May 22, at 8:00 p.m. in the First Presbyterian Church, 200 S. Main.
The concert program this year contains a wide range of choral and world music selections from many different time periods and cultures, including several contemporary and pop arrangements in English by composers such as Billy Joel, Elton John, and Paul Simon.
Love in all its various forms is the springtime theme: romance, marriage, physical love, parental love, love of freedom, and love of God.
The program includes historically renowned composers such as Monteverdi, Holst, and Barber and will introduce contemporary rising stars such as Paul Ayres and Carol Barnett. Most of the more recent songs have original texts, but some use biblical themes, as in the well-loved spiritual “Witness” and the wedding song “Ruth.” Other songs in the pop repertoire require the singers to cover instrumental parts as well as vocal ones.
“From motets to pop, from Argentina to Wales, the beautiful variety of harmonies, rhythms, and a cappella styles will give everyone something to enjoy,” said Elaine Reding, musical director of the group.
In lieu of ticket sales, the Chamber Singers will rely on your generous free-will donations at the door. For more information, call (641) 472-1539.
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