Campus
The Chronicle
November 29, 2011
3
Students learning efficiently
Cameron McDonald The Chronicle
What better way to learn home maintenance than working on a real home? That’s exactly what Durham College has provided for its students. The school of skilled trades and apprenticeship is planning to unveil its mock homes on campus starting in January of this year. One of the homes is a “newbuild” house, which is currently being built by Durham Custom Homes and their affiliate suppliers, is set to be ready for use by the 2012 fall semester. Ralph Aprile, the vice president of Facilities and Ancillary Services, has been overseeing the new-build project and is confident in Durham Custom Homes’ ability to deliver a topnotch building. “They build all of these cutting-edge energy features into all of their homes, so they are perfect for this job, because we want the most energy-efficient
Cameron McDonald
HOME BUILDING: Energy-efficient construction site awaiting Whitby students. home possible for students to learn in.” The other home was already fully constructed and was moved onto campus earlier last year. The house is a 1970s mod-
el and is built up to standards at that time. “We actually had quite a hard time getting the permits to move this house here. It was hard to pass this as a learning
facility rather than a standard home,” said Darrin Caron, the dean of Whitby campus. The older home, although already fully built, has had to be overhauled to be deemed safe
for students to learn in. This has included the installation of extra supports and additional fire alarms to make the building safer. The newer home will act as a contrast and comparison to the older home, which is directly beside it, so that students can see the difference in energy efficiency techniques. Allan Martin, the program co-ordinator of Apprenticeship and Renewable Technology, is confident the contrast between the two homes will be useful for many skilled trades programs. “The old home would be best used for energy audits to see where improvements can be made, and the new home can be used to compare the standards and learn how to maintain the current ones. Electricians, carpenters, auditors and plumbers can work on these homes, just to name a few.” The goal is for both homes to be ready for full use in time for the start of the 2012 fall semester.
Graduate students offer Whitby campus free conflict resolution growing greener Continued from Page 1
Nicole Patton The Chronicle
“Life can be full of conflict – we can help.” That is the pledge of the Campus Conflict Resolution Service. The service is run by the Mediation – Alternative Dispute Resolution (MADR) graduate program students and provides free, confidential conflict resolution services for both Durham College and UOIT. “We provide an outreach service on campus where we will provide presentations to various classrooms across the campus to present on what is conflict, tips on dealing with conflict and also provide students with knowledge about our service,” said Virginia Harwood, MADR co-ordinator and supervisor of the CCRS. “We work with students to create group work contracts. We do some pre-conflict negotiations and we do mediations for students.” The service was built up in late 2010 to give MADR students some learning experiences and to help the campus community with certain situations. The CCRS started operating at the beginning of this year. “It provides the students, our mediation students, with real world learning,” said Harwood. “They really run a business and provide the service. They do all the marketing, the track-
Nicole Patton
RESOLUTION: Valerie Lepik, Virginia Harwood, Bettina Marly, Melissa Hauke, Deena Misale, and Tim Dailley. ing of documentation and we also support our campus community. So it’s really a win-win that our students are getting experience and the campus community can benefit from the services that we offer.” Conflicts the service can help resolve can be between friends, groups, classmates, relationships and teams. Sessions can take anywhere between half an hour to two hours and mediators work with students to schedule a meeting at a mutually convenient time and place. “The participants want a very quiet location, a very confidential location,” said Har-
wood. Places such as boardrooms on campus or places in the student’s residence building can be used for the sessions. Speaking with the students involved, these third party mediators can help devise an acceptable solution to the conflict that everyone is happy with. “It’s popular and it’s becoming very popular,” said Harwood. “The mediations that we do certainly have a very high rate of success in terms of resolving, in helping students resolve, their conflict.” If you need help with a conflict on campus appointments can be booked with a mediator at CCRS@durhamcollege.ca.
This energy neutral zone is due to the over 350 solar panels scattered around campus, the 35 wells that are 350 feet deep, and six wind turbines which all combine to make up the majority of the energy output for the new areas of campus. Martin explained that the solar panels and geothermal wells are the biggest contributors to actual energy output on campus, with the panels generating an average of 78 kilowatts per hour and the wells producing enough heat and cooling for the entire main building. The solar panels also heat the water for the majority of the facilities around campus. On top of these heavy lifters, there are still the small additions, that also contribute such as skylights, which use a mirror system to provide natural light for most of the day, and waterless urinals, reducing the amount of water needed to be pumped through the building. Aprile is adamant about the fact that the environmental additions have been just as useful to the students as they have been to the building’s costs and maintenance. “We have created a living lab environment for students to work on every day.” Allan Martin, the program
coordinator for the Renewable Energy Programs at Durham College Whitby campus elaborated on Aprile’s observations, by adding that the students actually get to work on the panels, turbines, and wells to see first hand how they operate and how they can be maintained. There are maintenance rooms for the wind turbines and the geothermal wells, where students of the Energy Auditing program can study and regulate energy outputs, and the solar panels have a website devoted to past and real-time statistics for similar student purposes. “This gives students real-time feedback on the equipment they are learning about. Instead of reading about altering energy levels, for example, they actually get to alter them.” With Phase 3 of the construction plan set to break ground in a couple weeks, and all of the positive results of the first two phases, the future seems bright for the Whitby campus, with more environmental additions slated for the new facility which will house an additional 900 students. As vice president Aprile aptly said, “We need to focus on green sustainability, now and, more importantly, into the future.”