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.
Perceptive Software has released a new version of its document management system, ImageNow 6.5.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is teaming up with a utility company in its home state to reduce its electricity use by 15 percent over three years.
American University in Washington, DC just became the seventh largest higher ed buyer of green power in the United States, after signing an agreement to purchase energy credits equivalent to the institution's annual electricity usage.
For many years now, college campuses have been providing public-access printers, a practice that has unquestionably been a boon to students. But there’s a financial and environmental cost to this campus convenience: Anytime/anywhere printing can lead to major paper waste.
Luther College, an undergraduate institution in Decorah, IA, has launched a comprehensive new program aimed at reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent, as well as reducing overall energy consumption.
Antioch University New England, a small, private, mostly graduate-level college, said it expects to go carbon-neutral by the year 2020.
A new college is opening up in Aurora, CO focused entirely on renewable energy and sustainable design. Education Corp., which runs for-profit colleges, is opening Ecotech Institute.
Twenty college and university teams from around the world will be heading to the country's capital to show off their solar housing design and building expertise.
A $17,000 project at Trevecca Nazarene University is expected to reduce energy usage by about 15 percent in one building on the Nashville, TN campus.
Pano Logic has updated its desktop virtualization system to provide support for Microsoft Windows 7, tighter integration with VMware View VDI management tools, and additional end user controls.
The University of Toledo has just installed solar and wind power at its Scott Park Campus of Energy and Innovation in Toledo, OH. This particular campus serves as an alternative energy laboratory for teaching, research, and demonstration, as well as to generate energy and reduce the university's carbon footprint.
Until the ‘Star Trek’ transporter is broadly available, higher ed will have to settle for telepresence, a combination of real-time video, audio, and interactive technologies that gives people in distributed locations a collaborative experience that’s as close to being in the same room as current technology allows.
That great sucking sound you hear may be the immense flow of energy required to support 21st century campuses: students, equipped with laptops and assorted handheld devices, expecting ubiquitous connectivity; lecture halls wired with projectors, electronic whiteboards, plasma video walls, and videoconferencing systems; energy-gobbling data centers that perform calculations 24/7 for research projects.
Congratulations! The data cener consolidation project is a wild success. The refresh of the main computer lab is complete. Your work is done—or is it? What will happen to the equipment that’s no longer needed?
Fujitsu has introduced a new line of "Zero Client" devices that need only LAN and power connections to provide computing services to users.
