A Greener Way to Grow
Students help make national parks energy efficient
JMU students are opting out of vacation days spent at thrill-riding amusement parks to help make America's parks "more green" or energy efficient.
But don't call these students "tree huggers." They're pioneers in a program that does more than raise social awareness. These students are saving tax dollars and America's natural resources.
"Energy consumption at our national parks is a growing public concern," says James Winebrake, integrated science and technology professor and director of JMU's National Park Service program. "Parks are faced with tighter budgets, and they need to address methods of reducing energy consumption. And it's not an easy task. Most park energy managers are occupied with day-to-day crises and have few resources available to analyze energy concerns."
JMU students have provided the resources and the analysis. They have led the way for their counterparts at eight other campuses to help national parks in nine states become more energy efficient.
Today, JMU administers the University-National Park Energy Partnership Program that it helped create in 1997 through a pilot project aimed at reducing energy costs in Virginia's Shenandoah Na-tional Park. The partnership program, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Park Service, pairs national parks and near-by universities to seek ways to make parks "greener" by using renewable and energy-efficient technologies.
"Students and faculty members at nearby universities are an invaluable and under-used resource," Winebrake says. "Besides giving students real-world problems to solve, this program saves tax dollars and helps conserve energy."
In the university-park collaborations, students help identify a park system's energy consumption, make recommendations for conservation and create computer databases to help parks monitor and evaluate real energy costs. Students receive paid internships and each partnership costs about $15,000 to operate, but partnerships are paying for themselves. "An energy assessment performed by Georgia Tech students will save $11,000 annually for Kings Mountain National Military Park," says Winebrake. "In another project, University of Washington students found $18,000 in annual savings for Crater Lake National Park. These are savings that continue to accrue year after year for the parks even after the students have finished their work."
Students and faculty members examine every area of a site where savings can be realized -- from the efficiency of lighting, heating, cooling, insulation and windows to the type of temperature controls in park system structures.
"There are more than 350 national parks in the United States," says Winebrake, "and some of them can have as many as 200 buildings. That's a lot of opportunities to conserve energy."
Students also help to identify, design and monitor the performance of conservation projects that use renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, water and fuels derived from organic matter. For ex-ample, students at the University of Colorado evaluated and designed the use of solar energy to provide power for a ranger station at Rocky Mountain National Park, thus eliminating the need for a noisy and dirty diesel generator.
"UNPEPP has given me real-world experiences that I can't get from normal course work. The ability to work with real clients on pressing energy issues has given me valuable preparation for life after graduation," says, Lonnie Grafman a student at Humboldt State University.
Regan Warren, an ISAT major from Woodbridge says, "I have learned a lot of ways to conserve energy that I can easily incorporate in my home."
The partnership program is supported by the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of Energy, which gave $170,000 in joint funding to JMU in 2000 to administer the program. Due to the program's success, the funding was increased to $290,000 in 2001.
Learn more about JMU's partnership to save America's resources <http://www.isat.jmu.edu/ UNPEPP>.
Michelle Hite ('88)