Second Annual Michael Horman Workshop

University of Pittsburgh's Sustainability and Green

Design group hosted the 2nd annual Michael Horman Workshop on April 13, 2011. The workshop brought together students from University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Tech, and Clemson University to discuss their ongoing research in the field of sustainability.

Students shared research ideas, objectives, challenges, and successes and, hopefully, also developed lasting bonds that will encourage continued collaborative relationships throughout the rest of their academic and professional careers. Students also toured Pitt SGD's lab spaces and engineering facility.

Last year's workshop was hosted by Virginia Tech.

Six Week Intro to Sustainability - Taught by SGD Students

Graduate students in Pitt's Sustainability and Green Design (SGD) group, along with members of the student organization Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW), organized and taught a 6-week introductory course on sustainability. The course, offered through the Junior Urban Leadership Institute (JuLI) at the Kingsley Association in Larimer, PA, offers high-school aged students an after-school, 2 hour-a-week exposure to sustainable practices and ideas.

JuLI students track the energy

efficiencies of various electricity-

generating sources.

Throughout the course, students were exposed to the triple bottom line approach to sustainability, and asked to incorporate economics, environment, and social equity thinking into problem solving for their communities.

JuLI students build spaghetti

towers as they learn about engineering design principles.

Students learned about healthy eating, material and energy flows, water and waste treatment, and engineering design principles.

SGD Lab Spring Cleaning & Construction

The SGD group spent Monday 'spring cleaning' the lab. Actually, we spend most of our time building stuff; and we had a blast! We built a mock wall section so that students can experiment with different types of insulation with different R-values. We'll use the IR camera to measure the heat transfer through the walls. Students can also experiment in designing different types of insulation.

Monica and Kristen built the wall section; it's three studs wide with drywall on the interior side and siding on the exterior side. In this pic they're cutting insulation samples for students to experiment with.

We built frames for experimenting with different types of aggregate for sustainable concrete (Scott and Aziz are putting the frames together at right). We also built mini-shake tables for students to compete in building the tallest jenga-structure possible. (Jacob and Alex are putting the shake tables together at left).

And of course, there was massive organization of all of our supplies in the lab. Xi, Kullapa, Xiaobo are working hard labeling, organizing, and building shelves, and cleaning (below)!

We have three grants that support the development of our educational activities; Pitt's Innovation in Educational Excellence Award, a grant from NCIIA for course innovation, and a course improvement grant from NSF.

New NSF Funding: Course Improvement Grant

Drs. Landis and Bilec in collaboration with Dr. Rizzo of Pitt's CEE Structures group were just awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to 'Integrate Sustainability into the Civil Engineering Curriculum Through Three Courses at the University of Pittsburgh.' We will be developing cross-course curriculum and laboratory activities for Design for the Environment (DfE), Introduction to Nondestructive Evaluation and Structural Health Monitoring (NDE), and Green Buildings: Design and Construction. (See our education page for more info on our classes.)

Some examples of these innovative educational activities include teaching students in all three courses to conduct energy audits of buildings using Infrared Thermography. Students will also be installing sensors in the new building housing the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation in order to monitor indoor air quality in buildings.

Students Maria Fer Padilla and Kullapa Soratana using the IR Camera.
Dr. Landis (PI), Dr. Bilec, and Dr. Rizzo (Co-PIs, L to R).