Spotlight on Green Schools
Schools are focusing more and more heavily on cutting back on the energy they use and trying to reduce their impact on the environment. The articles on these pages spotlight individual campus energy conservation programs, energy initiatives, solar installations, energy-related technology, HVAC, research, grants, policy, and other topics related to green campuses.
Dartmouth College's recently completed McLaughlin Cluster residence halls have been recognized by the United States Green Building Council for its environmental sustainability, winning Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ( LEED ) gold certifications. The recognition makes the fifth LEED certification for Dartmouth buildings in four months. LEED certifications were recently awarded to two other residence halls as well as two academic facilities.
Although IT budgets are expected to grow in 2008 overall, about a fourth of CIOs in the United States reported decreases in their budgets in the first quarter of 2008, according to a survey released by Gartner this month and highlighted at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo: Emerging Trends event this week in Las Vegas.
GenevaLogic this week released an update to Print-Limit Pro, the company's system for managing the use of printers in K-12 schools and higher education. The new version 8.0 adds native support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and includes expanded management and administrative functionality.
In the mixed computing environments common on university campuses, supporting multiple operating systems and myriad hardware configurations can be a nightmare for IT. In the past, one solution has been to go with a single platform. Great for IT. Not so great for users. But at Bemidji State University in Minnesota, they've come up with another solution....
Today’s Auxiliary Services department has morphed
into a solution source for mobile transactions,
mountains of junk mail, and a whole lot more.
Here are some interesting facts you may not know: U.S. colleges and universities spend nearly $2 billion each year on energy, according to the federal government. And the Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that the average PC wastes up to 400 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year simply by running at full power when no user is present.
When the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) began touting its LEED system of ratings for greener, better designed buildings less than a decade ago, almost no one had heard of global warming. The thought of building a large, functional, office-type building or residence hall that was environmentally friendly wasn’t in a lot of heads. The USGBC aimed at “market transformation.” And it has achieved that goal.
IT people and sustainability coordinators work across the boundaries between departments and disciplines a lot!