EUGENE, Ore. (KMTR) -- A unique honor for Lane Community College for its role in training the next generation of green building professionals, as the college recently certified the 1,000th sustainable building advisor in the nation.
The Sustainable Building Advisor program is a nine month program, that helps train planners, architects, developers and professional builders about sustainable building. The program is offered in college's nationwide, however, the 1,000th graduate is in Lane County.
Nora Cronin the 1,000th sustainable building advisor or “SBA” in the U.S.A. Cronin works for St. Vincent de Paul in Lane County, helping to design affordable housing.
Cronin says the program has got her to think more sustainably by considering various factors in building projects. Sustainability in building means using local building materials and contractors, opting for more energy efficient utility appliances, also considering the environmental impact of constructing a building.
All in all, the program is a way to challenge the traditional thought of building by challenging designers to think about the impact of a building from construction to long term maintenance and use of the building. Planners are looking for the least impact on the environment in the process.
“Looking at how people occupy the spaces that are developing, I feel like as someone that's partially responsible for the built environment in our community, that we owe it to the people that are going to be occupying our spaces to be more responsible with the choices that we make,” says Cronin.
A program coordinator of the SBA at Lane Community College in the Water & Energy Conservation Program, Roger Ebbage says the program is important to long term community growth, particularly as cost increase for building materials and construction work.
“Our population growth, our consumption rates, are all going at a heck of a lot faster pace than they have been and we just need to be concerned about all of those issues as a society,” says Ebbage.
To date, 39 of the 1,000 Sustainable Building Advisor Certification grads have come from LCC. The program begin in 1999 in the Seattle, Washington-area. The program continues to be offered at LCC, starting just a few years prior to 2012.
For more information on the program, click the following link: http://sbainstitute.org/.
