EVOLVE Business and Professional Magazine November 2017 | Page 18

HIGHER
EDUCATION
AT F OREFRONT OF SUSTAINABILIT Y MOVEMENT
SHAPING A NEW MINDFULNESS FOR
21 ST CENTURY LIVING
AND BUSINESS
A
by Harry Russo
week after Hurricane Irma ripped through the Sunshine
State, a group of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
engineering and Daytona State College interior design
students scrambled to prepare a 1,000-square-foot house they
built for shipment to Denver, CO., in time to compete in the U.S.
Department of Energy’s prestigious Solar Decathlon 2017 held
Oct. 5 – 15.
The scholars comprising Team Daytona Beach were among
11 collegiate squads from around the world vying for a share
of over $2 million in DOE prize money. They spent almost two
years designing and building their energy-efficient BEACH
House, blending design excellence and smart energy balance with
innovative engineering, market potential and affordability.
“The BEACH House (BEACH stands for Building Efficient,
Affordable and Comfortable Homes) is designed to allow a small
family to live sustainably without sacrificing comfort,” said DSC
interior design professor Deborah Kincaid. “It features an open
floor plan that provides the energy-saving ability of a high-
technology house at an affordable price, and is engineered to
perform in Central Florida’s hot and humid climate.”
Despite difficulties stemming from transporting the BEACH
house to Colorado in the wake of nearly two weeks of construction
delays courtesy of Irma, Team Daytona still managed to secure
1,000-square-foot house built by Team Daytona Beach
| 18 | EVOLVE BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE
third-place honors in the contest’s
Market Potential category. The
Swiss team outshined the entire
field. Just by participating in the
DOE Solar Decathlon, however,
Team Daytona Beach became part of
national movement to create awareness
of the value and imperativeness of
sustainable living, and the epicenter of
that movement is in the nation’s institutions
of higher education. Nearly 1,000 American
colleges and universities have pledged to
“green” their operations and motivate students
to seek sustainable solutions to environmental,
societal and economic challenges, according to the
Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in
Higher Education. They are enhancing their courses,
developing new academic programs, creating new
graduation requirements and training faculty on how to
integrate sustainability across the curriculum in order to