Hollister
– Former Haybaler Jennifer Tobias is thinking green at Stanford
University, where her involvement in the
”
Green Dorm
”
project has helped the team win $75,000 in funding to make a
sustainable campus living environment a reality in the near
future.
Hollister – Former Haybaler Jennifer Tobias is thinking green at Stanford University, where her involvement in the “Green Dorm” project has helped the team win $75,000 in funding to make a sustainable campus living environment a reality in the near future.
“I got involved because I thought this was the best way to make my major really come alive,” said Tobias. “It’s a way for me to go where everything hasn’t already been written down in textbooks.”
Tobias, who graduated from San Benito High School in 2004, has been involved in the Lotus Living Laboratory project since Fall 2005, an effort to design and construct an environmentally-friendly living space and laboratory that will serve between 45 and 55 students. Stanford has already completed a feasibility study and, if formally approved, the complex could become a reality as early as 2008.
“We want sustainable living to be the hip thing in the 21st century,” said Tobias. “The idea is that this will be a place where students will want to live because they won’t have to give up any modern conveniences.”
Due to her major in civil engineering, Tobias has taken on the responsibility of researching Life Cycle Assessment for the materials that will be used in constructing the Green Dorm, examining the impact the material has on the environment from its manufacturing to the end of its useful life.
“We’re part of an interdisciplinary team, we have engineers, a music major, people from construction management,” she said. “We get together once a week and bounce ideas off each other, trying to figure out what will really work.”
The project received funds last year from the Environmental Protection Agency, and this year the Lotus team was invited back to the EPA’s People, Prosperity and Planet (P3) Awards in Washington DC, which recognize outstanding achievement in sustainable development each year. Due to their dedication to the project and availability, Tobias and five other project leaders attended the event at the National Mall Tuesday and Wednesday.
“Traveling to Washington was a great experience,” she said. “It was a great forum to meet with people from other universities and see what everyone’s working on with sustainable development… It was interesting that a lot of projects were more specific than ours, most of them picked one topic like biodiesel and would do deep research on that. Our project was one of the few that called on a lot of disciplines.”
The Green Dorm project was one of six to receive a $75,000 “phase two” grant from the EPA to help further the project. Now that the students are all back at Stanford and beginning a new quarter, Tobias says the team will focus on sharing ideas with other universities, to help further their own project and inspire others.
“We’ve been documenting the process, and the hope is that our work will make it easier for others to build green,” she said. “If we can engage people and share, that’s the best way to do it.”
Danielle Smith covers education for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or [email protected]
