A $25,000 grant from the Dominion Foundation will provide support establishing Chatham University’s weather and microclimate monitoring station at Eden Hall Campus, the futurehome of the School of Sustainability and the Environment.

Providing hands-on learning to develop expertise in environmental science and sustainability, SSE graduate students will be involved in the installation and monitoring process. Data will be incorporated into both undergraduate and graduate courses.

The grant is part of the Dominion Foundation’s Higher Education Partnership Program, which has awarded a total of $1 million in grants to 32 college and post-secondary schools across 10 states to help projects in renewable energy, environmental studies, engineering and workforce development.

Eden Hall Campus will be a demonstration site, modeling a variety of different building standards and ways to live. The buildings will incorporate high-performance, integrated design and will provide a laboratory for researching and testing best practices. Each building will be monitored to determine energy consumption and to see what methods work best.

During the 2012-13 school year, Chatham students will design and initiate environmental assessment and monitoring of meteorological, soil, and water conditions to establish baseline measures, to observe temporal and spatial patterns, and to inform sustainable development and environmental management decisions. Students will be actively involved in assessing and recommending best management practices.

The datasets created by the system will be shared beyond Chatham to the benefit of teaching and design professionals in fields ranging from storm water engineering, to architecture, meteorology, and ecology.

Chatham is deeply committed to the regeneration of the landscape at Eden Hall, one of the largest undeveloped tracts of land in Allegheny County. The grant from the Dominion Higher Educational Partnership will allow Chatham students to be intimately involved in the site's construction and development process through experiential, challenge-based courses and projects.

They will determine the baseline environmental conditions of the site and monitor these conditions so as to inform the sustainable development and management of the site. In doing so, Chatham will educate students about the value of environmental monitoring and rigorous data analysis, and support research projects and food production conducted by faculty and students.

In the fall of 2012, the school will welcome its first cohort of students into the Masters of Sustainability program. This cohort will be composed of highly motivated, pioneer-minded individuals eager to take part in the Eden Hall Campus development process.

As part of their first year experience, the students will begin research on the current conditions of the Eden Hall Campus landscape and will be continually involved in the evaluation of the development and management plans for the campus buildings and habitat.

9/17/2012