A new 169-bed residence hall at Lewis & Clark College in Southwest Portland will serve two groups in one community. The building, designed by Mahlum and under construction in a design-build partnership with Walsh Construction, will house both undergraduates and graduate and law students.

“Graduate and law students have specific and different needs from typical underclassmen,” said Kurt Haapala, an associate principal and senior project manager with Mahlum.

The building will have two distinct sections, which will be separated vertically. Each of the building’s four floors will have one nine-apartment unit with shared kitchen and living space for graduate and law students. The remainder of the building will be dedicated to single, double and suite rooms for sophomores, juniors and seniors.

“(Housing the students together) is unusual and, dare I say, innovative. We’ll see how it works in practice, because they just do live very different lives,” Haapala said.

The building will include a number of green features; the goal is to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold certification, Haapala said. Input from students influenced some decisions; for example, some materials are from local sources.

“One of the coolest things about (the design) is that it uses a lot of repurposed wood,” said Maisha Foster-O’Neal, a recent Lewis & Clark College graduate who was a student adviser on the project. “Almost all of the wood in the building, including things like the tables in the kitchens, will be from the trees that were cut down to make space for the new dorm.”

The building will have double-flush toilets and on-site storm-water management. With bicycle storage capacity and minimal parking for motor vehicles, the facility is designed to encourage greener means of transportation.

Another project challenge was to incorporate accessibility.

“We’re providing more than the (Americans with Disabilities Act) requires, with as much universal design on the hilly campus as possible,” Haapala said. “The building is fully accessible. We tried to create equity.”

The residence hall is scheduled to open in fall 2012.

Other project members at Mahlum include LeRoy Landers, principal-in-charge; Jeremy Rear, project manager; JoAnn Wilcox, project designer; Joren Bass, project architect; and Bonnie Chiu, intern.

The design team includes Miyamoto International, structural engineering; PAE Consulting Engineers, mechanical, electrical and plumbing; Harper Houf Peterson Righellis Inc., civil engineering; Atelier Dreiseitl Waterscapes, landscape architecture; and Altermatt Associates, acoustic engineering.

The post Lewis & Clark residence hall designed by Mahlum appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Lewis & Clark projects, programs and more

In 1970, Lewis & Clark College founded the country’s first environmental law program. It has the oldest student-run environmental law review and hosts many law clinics.

In 1991, the school added sustainability and green building into its master plan to guide future expansion. In 2001 the school began an institution-wide Sustainability Council to promote environmentally responsible practices.

In 1995, the school established its environmental studies major.

In 2005, Roberts Residence Hall was awarded LEED silver certification and Howard Hall was awarded LEED gold.

In 2008, Lewis & Clark partnered with Honeywell International to supply the school’s Pamplin Sports Center with solar power. The power purchase agreement between Honeywell and the school was the first of its kind for a higher educational institution in Oregon.

For the past two years, students have been working on a collaborative research initiative with other colleges around the country. The collaborative effort covers several aspects of environmental studies and will culminate in the conference of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences, which will be held June 17-20, 2011 at the Lewis & Clark campus.

Earlier this month, the school hired its first sustainability manager, Amy Dvorak. The position is uncommon in smaller colleges like Lewis & Clark.

The Graduate School of Education and Counseling is one of only a handful of programs around the country that offers coursework in ecopsychology. The field recognizes a connection between the natural environment and mental health.

All renovation projects in residence halls at the school are required to have no or low environmental impact.

Lewis & Clark was the first school in the nation to reduce greenhouse emissions in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. Students at the school voted to raise their own fees to help offset the costs of compliance.

Related

» A student’s definition of sustainability
» What exactly is a sustainability manager?

The lush, fir-lined walkways across the rolling, hilly campus of Lewis & Clark College don’t appear to be the starting point for a revolution – certainly not against the somewhat amorphous concept of sustainability.

But don’t tell Jim Proctor, head of the school’s environmental studies program.

It’s not that the enthusiastic professor is opposed to the notion of sustainability – far from it, he says – but he does take issue with the way that sustainability is judged and categorized.

“How do you measure sustainability? It’s not easy at all,” Proctor said, strolling across campus toward a gym capped with solar cells. “It’s more than just green building.”

Proctor and others at the school feel that the environmentally focused ranking systems, which often create grades based on physical construction elements like alternative energy sources or building design, neglect many other important aspects related to sustainability – like the learning environment, student projects and research.

Lewis & Clark recently got a C on the Sustainable Endowments Institute’s Green Report Card for 2011.

But that’s not due to any lack of environmental consciousness at the campus – it’s just that the school refused to participate in the group’s survey because it took issue with the definition of sustainability, Proctor explained.

“Colleges like us get into reactive mode when any sort of ranking comes out because everybody has their own system to measure sustainability,” Proctor said. “But how do you define that, really?”

The includes a whole section dedicated to its arguments against ranking systems that have been created by groups like the Sierra Club, Princeton Review and the Sustainable Endowments Institute.

It also includes a link to a somewhat that college vice president Carl Vance sent to the institute in response to a request for the school to fill out the SEI survey.

“When we think about creating a more sustainable world, isn’t it vitally important to take into account what our institutions of higher education are teaching the next generation of thinkers and leaders? Isn’t it important to take into account sustainability-related research? We encourage you to consider moving in this direction in future iterations of your survey, and we are more than willing to offer our ideas and suggestions,” Vance said in that letter.

Rob Foley, a senior research fellow at the institute, admits that other colleges have made similar arguments about the group’s methods. But it’s not financially feasible for the SEI to spread itself thin by focusing on so many different areas, he said.

“Obviously Lewis & Clark isn’t the only school that would prefer to have a focus on research, and we understand that,” Foley said. “But it’s been our methodology for some time that we don’t need to evaluate things like research or educational programs. Those aren’t our areas of focus. And when we began, we noticed there was a need to look more deeply at campus facility operations.”

Even if the focus were only on facilities, some groups use questions that are extremely vague, hard to quantify or simply unfair, Proctor said.

“I remember in one of them somebody asked me, ‘Do you participate in Recyclemania?’ ” Proctor said with a laugh. “We were like, ‘Uh… what’s that?’ They jotted down ‘no’ and we lost points for that, even though we had a very good recycling program.”

Lewis & Clark in fact has quite a long list of environmental achievements. In 1970, it created the country’s first environmental law program. The school began adding sustainability and green building codes into its master plan in 1991. Its residence halls use environmentally-friendly carpeting made of recycled material that can be recycled again after it wears out.

The school also uses solar cells, water conservation programs and a host of other things that should lead to a good score on any ranking system.

But that’s not really what the Lewis & Clark revolution is about. It’s about whether it’s worth trying to transform a nebulous concept like sustainability into some sort of ranking system that makes universities or other groups compete against one another, Proctor said.

After all, it’s hard to even come up with a definition of sustainability that anybody can agree upon, much less quantify, he said.

One of the most common definitions comes from a major report from the United Nations in 1987 by the Brundtland Commission. It reads: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

That broad definition is usually combined with another definition often called the “three-legged stool,” which looks at sustainability as an equal balance between environmental, economic and social factors.

Neither definition appears to lend itself to any sort of tracking or monitoring system. And while it’s tempting to just throw out all the ranking systems, there could be some ways to find larger scoring methods that are fairer, Proctor said.

“We need to come up with means of tracking what we’re learning and what we’re doing with sustainability through a broad system of measurement,” Proctor said. “These systems should also move beyond the college campus and incorporate a suite of institutions.”

That means finding ways to track things outside the realm of construction, however. A broader system would have to be able to measure things like gender equality, impacts of a project on a community and how it changes or adds to efforts on a global scale, he said.

It would even include some odd aspects that don’t appear to be sustainability-related on the surface, said Tom Krattenmaker, a spokesman for the university.

“It actually also involves marketing,” Krattenmaker said. “Every time you work on a project that involves the environment, you’re going to have to promote it. Take a look at global climate change – in the scientific community, global climate change is a fact; yet the public isn’t buying it. So how do you fix that?”

There could also be some means to track legal efforts on behalf of the environment, research projects into new technology and even things like an institution’s impacts on social justice and poverty, Krattenmaker and Proctor said.

That’s a whole lot of complexity, they admit.

And if you try to look at a system with all of those added layers, you can see that it draws the usefulness of some of the more popular ranking systems into question, Proctor said.

So ultimately that’s why Lewis & Clark opted out of the Sustainability Report Card, why it is fully grounded in the revolution and why it joined almost 100 other liberal arts colleges in the Annapolis Group – which in 2007 announced they wouldn’t partake in most of the data collection for a similar study by U.S. News, according to the school’s sustainability website.

“Measuring college sustainability is, clearly, no easier than measuring schools overall. … virtually all rankings are based on questionnaires that cover a handful of a campus’ green practices. At Lewis & Clark we support ecological campus practices, and we applaud other schools that do so as well. However, we know that sustainability means much more than being green, and that it stretches far beyond what we do on our campus,” the site reads.

The post Lewis & Clark College redefines sustainability appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Sustainability encompasses far more than basic environmental concepts, said Amy Dvorak, who recently was named the first sustainability manager at Lewis & Clark College.

“It can be a difficult idea for people to get their arms around,” Dvorak said. “It’s not in my opinion entirely environmentally focused. It can also be economically focused. I think people don’t realize that you don’t always have to pay more or give something up to be more sustainable. Sometimes it can be a way to save money.”

For example, shrinking the size of a planned building can save money and energy, and installing recycled carpeting can be cheaper than buying it new, she said.

Dvorak has a master’s degree in environmental management from Portland State University. She had another offer on the table when she graduated, but she chose Lewis & Clark because she said she was impressed by the school’s dedication to the broader concept of sustainability.

“The one thing that seems pretty clear is that sustainability and environmental values are deeply embedded in the college,” Dvorak said. “It’s mainstream across the disciplines they study, the facilities and the operations here.”

As sustainability manager, Dvorak said she wants to increase involvement with environmentally conscious student groups, search for new ways to manage and gather environmental data, and find more ways to do education and outreach.

The post Dvorak the first sustainability manager at Lewis & Clark College appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Finding a definition of sustainability can be a personal experience for some students at Lewis & Clark College.

Nathaniel Stoll, a junior in the environmental studies program, said he chose to focus on sustainability because he feels compassionate about the world he lives in.

So what’s his definition?

“It’s almost a lifestyle choice,” Stoll said. “It’s consciousness, awareness. Things we do have much more of an impact than we can fathom sometimes.”

As for the grading systems that rate schools‘ environmental efforts, he said he agreed with his professors about their limited use.

“As far as the college ones go, they seem to be too caught up in certain details,” Stoll said. “I think small, grassroots things like saving energy are important, but they don’t increase our impact in leaps and bounds. I think we need to look at the bigger picture more – and there’s really no good way to measure that.”

The post A student’s definition of sustainability appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Ten students in the Reynolds Learning Academy‘s designed, fabricated and installed several railings at the Pamplin Sports Center on the Lewis & Clark College campus in Southwest Portland. Mike Cosgrove and Drew Park from Columbia Wire & Iron Works Inc. helped the students at the company’s Swan Island facility. Trading Up provides students with hands-on learning opportunities outside of classrooms via unique and educational partnerships with individuals and businesses in the construction industry.

The post Teens design, install steel rails during program appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The 2011 race for the best energy efficiency and environmental consciousness at Oregon colleges and universities has ended in a dead heat between Ducks and Beavers.

by the Sustainable Endowments Institute gave B+ grades to both the University of Oregon and Oregon State University – and cited both as campus sustainability leaders.

The four-year-old Cambridge, Mass., institute ranked 322 schools nationally in several areas, including how schools invested their endowment money, the environmental consciousness of the administration, how they were planning for climate change and energy conservation, willingness to use green building and student involvement in green programs.

“Overall for Oregon we’ve seen pretty consistent grades for the past four years,” said Christina Billingsley, a senior research fellow. “There’s some general improvement in some areas, but mostly it’s very consistent. Compared to the rest of the country, Oregon is doing great.”

The six Oregon schools listed in the group’s Green Report Card did reasonably well. B+ honors also went to Southern Oregon University in Ashland and Willamette University in Salem.

That’s comparable or better than many schools of similar size around the country, Billingsley said.

“Compared with schools like Boston University or Bates College, smaller schools on the East Coast, those schools are also in the B range, in the high or low Bs,” Billingsly said.

In Portland, Reed College scored a C+ and Lewis & Clark College scored a C, but that’s not horribly bad, she said.

“It’s not a huge failure,” Billingsley said. “Our methods have become more finely tuned, and we’re getting more quantitative data now. That’s changed the rankings a bit.”

As an example of those changes, in last year’s rankings schools scored points for simply having a bicycle program. This year, points were doled out depending on how many bicyclists participated in the program, how large the program was and who was using it, she said.

That said, though, the size and resources available to a school were also considered as part of a school’s relative grade.

Portland State University was not included in the 2011 report, most likely because the institute focused on schools with the 300 largest endowments nationally.

Smaller schools can opt-in to the report card for a minimal fee, and there is some grant money available to them from the group, Billingsley said.

Breaking the bigger school’s grades down further, OSU got As in administration, climate change and energy, green building, student involvement, transportation, and investment priorities.

“We’ve seen a lot of growth especially in student involvement,” said Brandon Trelstad, OSU’s sustainability coordinator. “Students are increasingly interested in sustainability issues and we’ve been more responsive to them.”

In 2007 students voted to pay an extra $8.50 each to buy renewable energy for the campus. They’ve also voted to help pay for alternative transportation, Trelstad said.

The school got Bs for food and recycling, and endowment transparency, and one D for shareholder engagement, according to the report card.

“We did very well in all the categories on the business side, and two of the three investment areas,” he said.

The University of Oregon got As in administration, food and recycling, green building, transportation, and investment priorities.

“Over 25 percent of the university’s dining budget is spent on organic or local food items. Dining services purchases vegetarian-fed pork and beef, hormone- and antibiotic-free meat and dairy products, as well as sustainably harvested seafood. Pre- and postconsumer waste is composted at most meals. Excess food is donated to a food bank, and all dining halls are tray-less,” the study’s authors said of the school’s A for food and recycling.

UO got Bs for climate change and energy, and student involvement. And it got one D for endowment transparency, according to the report card.

“The University of Oregon Foundation makes a list of all holdings available to university trustees, and a list of external managers and mutual funds available to senior administrators. The foundation only makes a list of asset allocation available to the general public,” the study’s authors said of the D grade.

Lewis & Clark, which dropped from a C+ in last year’s grading to its current C grade, was the only Oregon school that dipped slightly in the rankings, mostly due to its policy of not disclosing endowment holdings or making public statements about its proxy voting policy, according to the report.

Tom Krattenmaker, a spokesman for Lewis & Clark, said the school’s grade is somewhat misleading. The school didn’t fill out the Institute’s survey and responded to the request with a letter that critiqued some of the grading methods used.

“They based the grade on what they could find, since we didn’t fill that out,” Krattenmaker said. “What we were concerned about is that they basically narrowed sustainability down to some specific operations. We think those are important, but we also think they’re woefully incomplete.”

The group doesn’t include sustainability educational programs, teaching, learning or training future leaders, Krattenmaker said.

“I think those are ultimately more important than green operations,” he said.

He added that Lewis & Clark is working on several sustainability areas and has hired its first sustainability manager, Amy Dvorak, who will start work this month.

Overall, officials at the Institute said the report card is the only independent evaluation of sustainability in campus operations and endowment practices in the United States. Since it was founded, the group has found dramatic increases in several indicators nationally.

“The green groundswell on campus is evident in a wide variety of energy-saving initiatives, such as sourcing food from campus farms and reducing hot water use through tray-less dining,” Mark Orlowski, executive director, said in a press statement.

Over the past four years there seems to have been a growing consciousness about sustainability and environmental issues, Billingsley said.

“We’re seeing a lot more investments in projects that save campuses money, in part because of the economy,” Billingsley said. “Energy and water conservation in particular have always been ways to save money, but schools are looking into them much more now because of tight budgets.”

This is the first year that any school was given an overall A grade. In prior years, the highest grade was an A-, she said.

Nationally the seven schools with the highest scores were: Brown University, Dickinson College, Oberlin College, Pomona College, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, University of Wisconsin – Madison, and Yale University.

The post Oregon schools score high marks for sustainability appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The octagonal shape of the Diane Gregg Memorial Pavilion on the campus of Lewis & Clark College in Southwest Portland matches the attached Agnes Flanagan Chapel designed by architect Paul Thiry. The open design and seating of the pavilion will accommodate campus activities and community gatherings for up to 150 people. General contractor Walsh Construction Co. is building the project designed by BOORA Architects. Completion is scheduled for spring 2011.

The post Pavilion to match iconic Lewis & Clark chapel appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.