Previously, I had posted about a brief on-campus experience I had with Sustainability House at the College of St. Rose. Following that, I just read an oldish story in a back issue of Green@Work about how some college campuses are actively renovating their campus buildings to be more sustainable as a means of enhancing the school’s appear to prospective students.

Colleges and universities have discovered that environmentally friendly architectural design can help recruit top undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty, researchers, and administrators. Strategies include recycling campus buildings, building with regional materials, employing rapidly renewable resources whenever possible, and devising user-controlled lighting and HVAC systems.

But that’s only half the initiative:

Sustainable designs offer their own reward in terms of cost-saving economics. Given a bit of publicity, they can also help recruit students, faculty, and administrative talent. People are well aware of sustainable issues. They know that sustainable buildings are more comfortable and enjoyable places to work. A number of studies show that sustainable buildings with properly balanced lighting and HVAC controls lead to higher productivity on the part of occupants. Some studies have shown that sustainable designs boost the performance of students. To promote the benefits, sustainable buildings plus supporting studies can be used as learning tools in classes about sustainable design.

I would be curious to see those studies... Given the age of some campus buildings, a major renovation is needed just to make them usable at all, let alone sustainable. When I was at Syracuse University back in the late 1980s, there were a few ~100-year-old buildings that were beautiful to look at, but utter misery to have classes in if the weather outside wasn’t too hot or too cold. Too hot was rarely an issue, but too cold...well...