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The Spring Hill College Student Center
The new Student Center is the third and final anchor of the Rydex Commons where the Marnie and John Burke Memorial Library engages the mind and St. Joseph Chapel nurtures the spirit.
Caring for the student, caring for the Earth
As the “living room” of the College, the center serves as the gathering place for the entire Spring Hill College community. It is the hub that connects students, faculty and staff to out-of-class learning and social and leadership development. Features and highlights of the facility include:
- A modern dining area
- A new “Cloister” grill
- Student Affairs administrative offices
- Campus Ministry offices
- Information center
- Computer center with WiFi
- Student Organization Resource Center
- Several meeting rooms available to the campus community
- The Barnes & Noble College Bookstore
- Multi-purpose rooms for both educational and social programs
- A 300-person capacity event space
- See the new Student Center in our Flickr gallery
In an effort to remind students, faculty, staff and visitors of the importance of sustaining our world, the new student center also features informational wall exhibits on sustainability.
What is sustainability?
The traditional definition of sustainability calls for policies and strategies that meet society’s present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language definition says: 1. To keep in existence; maintain; prolong. 2. To supply with necessities or nourishment; provide for. 3. To support from below; keep from falling or sinking; to prop. 4. To support the spirits; vitality, or resolution of in-spirit; encourage.
The word “sustainable” has many connotations and many meanings for people.
At Spring Hill College, our new Student Center is the nexus of campus life and just one example of how the college is helping sustain its own environment and contribute to the greater good.
Why Build Sustainably?
The environmental impact of buildings is significant:
- Buildings annually consume more than 30% of the total energy and 76% of the electricity used in the United States.
- Buildings and their construction account for nearly half of all the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
- Each day in the United States, five billion gallons of water are used only to flush toilets.
- A typical construction site in the United States generates up to 2.5 pounds of solid waste per square foot of completed floor space.
- Development shifts land usage away from natural, biologically diverse habitats to hardscape that is impervious and devoid of biodiversity.
Green Building practices can substantially reduce or eliminate negative environmental impacts. As an added benefit, green design measures reduce operating costs, enhance building marketability, increase occupant productivity and well being.
LEED Green Building Rating System
The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) began the LEED Green Building Rating System in 1998. LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a voluntary, consensus-based, market-driven building rating system based on proven technology. It evaluates environmental performance from a whole building perspective over a building’s life cycle, providing a definitive standard for what constitutes a “Green Building.”
The rating system is organized into five environmental categories: Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, Indoor Environmental Quality and Innovation & Design Process. Each category has points that satisfy criteria addressing specific environmental impacts inherent in the design, construction and operation and maintenance of buildings. Different levels of Green Building Certification are awarded based on the total credits earned…Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum.
The Spring Hill College Student Center is certified Silver under Version 2.2, New Construction & Major Renovation.
Sustainable Sites
Buildings affect ecosystems in a variety of ways:
- Increased imperviousness and increased sedimentation from building and parking lots adversely impact watersheds.
- Heat from the sun’s reflection off building surfaces and parking lots is radiated back into the microclimate to the extent that it effects temperatures in the entire community.
- A building’s location influences the amounts of fossil fuel that occupants use for transportation.
Sustainable Sites is pursued in the Student Center Building by reducing the building and parking footprints, increasing the reflectivity of building, walking and parking surfaces, providing shower facilities for walkers and bicyclers, eliminating new parking and assigning existing parking to carpools or low emission vehicles.
During construction, care was taken to eliminate pollution and protect native habitat and watersheds from construction activities.
The Student Center is located on the site of the original Student Center, reducing adverse impacts to the Campus, the greater Spring Hill Community and the local ecosystem. Preference and accommodation for bicycling, walking, carpools and low emission vehicles enhance community connectivity and reduce user fossil fuel consumption.
Water Efficiency
Americans extract 3,700 billion gallons of water per year more than they return to natural aquifers and other water sources. Much of this water has been treated, transported, and wastefully used. This situation is not only unsustainable over time, but burdens America with costs of oversized water and sewer systems.
Measurable Water Efficiency includes reducing usage of potable water use and reducing the generation of waste water in the building and on the site. With reductions in volume, costs to manufacture, transport and treat both potable water and waste water are reduced at all levels of delivery.
Water efficiency is pursued in the Student Center Building by reducing potable water usage through the design of low-flow, dual flush toilets, water sensing lavatories and low-flow showers and sinks. On the building site, landscape design with native plants eliminate the need for landscape irrigation.
The Student Center, through the use of dual flush, low-flow toilets, sensing lavatories and low-flow sinks and showers, has reduced potable water use and wastewater generation by approximately 133,333 gallons of water per year; 40% less than other buildings of its size.
Materials and Resources
Building material choices effect the environment through:
- Energy and resource conservation can occur at the extraction, transportation, processing and distribution phases.
- Each step of production of building materials can pollute the air and water, destroy natural habitats and deplete natural resources.
- Construction and demolition wastes comprise approximately 40% of the waste stream in the United States.
Materials and Resource points in the Student Center were obtained by designing and constructing with building materials that are made with 20% recycled content; 20% of the materials were regionally extracted, processed and manufactured; and 75% of construction waste was diverted out of the waste stream and to recycling facilities.
When the building is completed, a waste recycling program will continue to divert waste to recycling centers.
Carpet, sheet flooring and ceiling products in the Student Center contain 20% recycled content.
The structural framing of the building is steel, with 90% recycled content.
Four dumpsters on site during construction sorted construction waste for recycling.
Indoor Environmental Quality
Indoor environmental quality is important for several reasons:
- Designing, constructing and maintaining buildings with materials having low quantities of harmful chemical compounds makes people healthier by reducing their exposure to pollutants.
- Increasing or monitoring the quantity and quality of fresh air entering the building improves air quality and can identify operational problems which may adversely affect occupant health and safety.
- Banning smoking in and near the building contributes to the high quality of fresh air entering the mechanical system.
- Increasing occupant control over their own environment results in happier and more productive occupants.
Indoor Environmental Quality points in the Student Center were obtained by designing and constructing the building with materials having low volatile organic compounds , monitoring the quantity and quality of outdoor air, providing individual control of lighting and careful management of pollutants during construction.
Meeting and dining rooms have been designed to have daylighting, views to the exterior, occupant control of lighting and temperature.
During construction, the ductwork was protected to reduce construction pollution entering into the ventilation and conditioning systems. In addition to these measures, those systems were “flushed out” to remove any remaining pollutants from construction activities and offgassing of newly-installed materials.
Energy and Atmosphere
Buildings consume approximately 37% of the energy and 68% of the electricity produced in the United States. Fossil fuel’s adverse impact on the environment occurs through:
- Extraction, transportation, refining and distribution.
- Coal Fired utilities release carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming; nitrogen oxide, the key element in smog; sulfur dioxide, a key element in acid rain; and fine particulates, a contributing factor for cancer and respiratory illness.
- Natural gas is a major source of greenhouse gases, nuclear fission is a source of significant waste transportation and disposal issues, as well as potential catastrophe, and hydroelectric generators disrupt natural water flows.
Energy and Atmosphere points in the Student Center were obtained by designing and constructing a tight and energy efficient building envelope and using a central plant chiller system for air conditioning. Energy costs were reduced by approximately 16%.
The Student Center has super-insulated walls and roof (provides resistance to heat flow), a fluid- applied air and moisture barrier (provides resistance to air and moisture flow) and a highly reflective roof covering (reduces heat island effect.) The glazing system is insulated and reflective. These measures help reduce the amount of energy used to heat and cool the building.
Energy use for lighting is minimized by the use of programmable lighting controls, motion sensors and photocells. Extensive use of LED lamps also reduce energy consumption when lighting is turned on.
