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Redesigned "LACCD Builds Green" website launched

TALKING TRASH: LACCD launches ambitious new recycling program at its nine colleges

GETTING GREEN: District receives about $2 million to help young people secure employment

LACCD adopts public art program for its nine community colleges

Van de Kamp site designated for job training and as charter high school

Update on the Renewable Energy Plan

LACCD Board of Trustees appoints Dr. Wieder as Interim Chancellor

PHOTO OF THE MONTH: Steel Going

ARTICLES

Redesigned "LACCD Builds Green" website launched

The website for the Los Angeles Community College District's environmentally responsible building program, www.laccdbuildsgreen.org, has undergone a dramatic redesign. The site's new look will better showcase the $6 billion in modernization projects taking place at the District's nine colleges.  

The website now gives more emphasis to photos and videos, and is easier to search.  It features the latest information on projects at the nine colleges, including an extensive photo and video gallery, and a news section.  

“This site sets a new standard for the LACCD and its online presence,” said Georgia L. Mercer, vice president of the LACCD Board of Trustees.  “We have moved beyond merely providing necessary information and, instead, are giving people the chance to truly experience the excitement happening on our campuses.”  

In addition to providing information about the modernization effort -- which also is known as the LACCD's Sustainable Building Program -- the site has these new tools and elements:

• Web-exclusive feature stories and profiles on signature programs and people at the District;

• Access to presentations and reference materials;

• An extensive gallery with photos of campus events, new buildings and the latest construction – all searchable by keywords;

• A video gallery that includes documentary-style pieces as well as exclusive video features – all searchable by keywords;

• A comprehensive news area with searchable news releases and project fact sheets;

• Information on intern and training programs, as well as green courses offered by the colleges;

• Opportunities for visitors to sign up for a building program newsletter or for news releases, as well as for information about the LACCD speakers' bureau. 

The real beauty of the new site is its ability to expand and evolve in collaboration with our sustainable construction efforts,” said Larry Eisenberg, executive director of LACCD Facilities Planning and Development. “That is something we have not been able to do online in the past and it marks a significant step forward in our efforts to tell the community about our program."

TALKING TRASH: LACCD launches ambitious new recycling program at its nine colleges

This fall, the Los Angeles Community College District will kick off its extensive district-wide recycling campaign with a simple message:  Make a deposit and save your planet… save your campus… save funds that can be used for other needs by the colleges.

Click here to check out a new video about the recycling program.

“We want to spread the knowledge about the importance of recycling to all of our campuses,” said Russel Monroe, college operations manager and recycling coordinator at West Los Angeles College. “These days, it starts with 3-year-olds being taught that recyclable materials have to be separated. But for those who are already college students, it’s a constant educational process. It’s not quite there yet for them because it requires a change in habits.”

The program includes the distribution of 150 new BigBellys throughout the District’s nine colleges. These state-of-the-art receptacles have a recycling side and a waste side. The recycling side accepts glass and aluminum cans and the waste side comes equipped with a trash compactor – powered by a solar-charged 12-volt battery – which allows the bins to compress and store up to 150 gallons of waste. The unit also includes a safety device that prevents anyone’s hands from getting trapped by the compactor and some come equipped with wireless monitors to indicate when they are full.  

By making a deposit in these bins, students will not only keep their campus clean, but will also protect their environment and save precious natural resources. A receptacle with a compacter can hold five times as much trash.  That means fewer truck trips are needed to collect the material and transport it from the campus, which could reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.  

The recycling operation will also help the colleges financially, thanks to money earned from the recycling centers.    

The District-wide recycling program is part of the LACCD’s extensive sustainability program.  For more information on the District’s Sustainable Building Program vist here.

GETTING GREEN: District receives about $2 million to help young people secure employment

The Los Angeles Community College District announced it received $937,890 in Recovery Act funds to help young people ages 16-24 acquire permanent employment through the state’s Green Job Corps Pilot Program.  It is also receiving more than $1 million in matching support from state and local sources, including the California Conservation Corps.

“One of the LACCD’s key goals is to work with businesses and employers to help at-risk, low-income students get permanent jobs,” said Marvin Martinez, vice chancellor of Economic and Workforce Development. “This grant will give us the ability to make that happen.”

The grant and matching funds will allow the LACCD the ability to provide training, internships or subsidized employment to approximately 300 students.

The LACCD serves about 250,000 students a year and is among 11 regional pilot programs in the state to receive Green Job Corp funds from the Federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  The plan will provide job training and community service opportunities in California’s emerging green economy for at-risk youth.

The program will focus on energy efficiency and weatherization as well as water conservation, and it will work with local companies to help students get jobs after completing the training. Statewide, the 11 regional pilot programs will provide green career training for 1,500 at-risk youth.

For more information on the District’s various internship opportunities, visit here.

LACCD adopts public art program for its nine community colleges

In June, the Los Angeles Community College District’s Board of Trustees adopted a resolution to fund a public art program at the nine colleges by using some savings from the LACCD’s $6 billion Sustainable Building Program.  The funds will be restricted to one-half of one percent of each college’s total allocation from the three bond measures adopted by Los Angeles voters in 2001, 2003 and 2008.

“Art is an integral part of the college experience, and we are pleased that our well-managed building program has generated sufficient savings to start a public art program,” said Georgia Mercer, member of the District’s Board of Trustees. “This program will contribute to the creation of a higher education environment at each of our colleges that promotes intellectual thought, challenges conventional thinking, and stimulates a lifetime interest in art.”

The purpose of the resolution is to bring significant commissioned art pieces to each of the nine colleges and the satellite facilities. 

Officials will look at the colleges’ master plans and will confer with its administrators and faculty to find an appropriate location.  In addition to these commissioned art pieces, colleges are being encouraged to incorporate art features such as mosaics, window art, murals, and similar works into their ongoing building designs.

Because of the region's struggling economy, the District's Sustainable Building Program has attracted multiple competitive bids for its projects, keeping some major costs under budget. The resolution taps these savings to pay for the art program. Colleges may also seek private funding to supplement the funds provided by the District.

The resolution also provides a process through which the art projects will be conceived and selected. Artists that work in the communities surrounding the District’s colleges and satellite facilities will be particularly encouraged to participate.

For more information on how to do business with the District’s Sustainable Building Program, visit here.

Van de Kamp site designated for job training and as charter high school

Last month, two measures aimed at launching the Los Angeles Community College District’s Van de Kamp Innovation Center as an educational and job-training campus were approved unanimously by the Board of Trustees.

In one action, the Board authorized the use of the property, located at the corner of Fletcher Drive and San Fernando Road in northeast Los Angeles, for the innovation center. In a second step, the Board authorized a lease for a charter high school, the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, to use classroom and other facilities on the site for five years. The school is expected to open with a class of 100 or more 9th graders in time for the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year.

The LACCD is working with city officials to provide job-training and job-placement services at the innovation center, which is on the site of a historic Van de Kamp bakery. District officials also plan to offer a mix of credit and non-credit college courses on the campus.

The Van de Kamp site originally was intended to open as a satellite campus of Los Angeles City College, but those plans had to be scaled back due to severe state funding cuts. District officials remain committed to establishing a satellite community college at the location and will develop new plans for the long-term future within five years.

Construction is nearly complete on the two-story New Education Building at the Van de Kamp site. The charter high school initially will be housed on the first floor. Also under way is the “adaptive reuse” of the old Van de Kamp building, a widely praised project.

Among other improvements at the site are a parking area that will include an array of solar panels to produce carbon-free electricity and road-widening to improve local traffic.

For more information on this project visit here.

Update on the Renewable Energy Plan

As part of its $6 billion Sustainable Building Program, the Los Angeles Community College District has been pursuing its goal to generate its own renewable energy. Recently, District officials have been reviewing its plans and would like to provide its stakeholders with an update. Below is interview with Larry H. Eisenberg, executive director of facilities planning and development for the District, who oversees its Sustainable Building Program.

Why has the LACCD gotten into the business of generating energy for its campuses?

Our goals are straightforward: We want to protect the environment and inspire students to pursue careers in green industries, while also reducing our utility bills. What’s more, we want to set a good example that will spur other institutions and individuals to tap the vast potential of renewable energy. What we're doing squares perfectly with the Obama administration's efforts to fight climate change and with the landmark climate-change bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in late June. We're proud to be ahead of the curve on this issue.

You have talked for years about generating enough carbon-free renewable power to fulfill all of the energy needs of the nine LACCD colleges. Yet many people, even within your own program, doubt that such a goal is achievable. Why do you keep pushing energy independence?

Unless you set an ambitious goal, you don’t make progress. I believe that if we push to do our best, we can achieve energy independence. But I acknowledge that many people I talk to, both inside and outside of our program, doubt that we can get all of the way there in the foreseeable future. We have honest differences of opinion. But that’s no reason to stop trying. Even if we wind up generating only, say, one-third or one-half of our energy needs, that still will reduce our utility bills, and point the way to a more environmentally sustainable future.

Over the years, you have talked about “going off the grid” – actually cutting your links to local power utilities. Where does that idea stand now?

That’s no longer in our plans. I now describe our aim as energy independence. Going off the grid was a tantalizing idea, in part because it could have yielded extra savings for our District’s colleges. We could have essentially said goodbye to the power companies and eliminated our electricity utility bills entirely. But if we stay connected, we will have to pay for access to the utilities, even if we find a way to satisfy all of our power needs with renewable energy.

So are you staying on the power grid to fill in the electricity that you won’t be able to generate yourself?

Yes, but that’s not the only reason. I hope that we eventually will produce more electricity than we use during the sunny parts of the day when our solar energy systems are working at full capacity. By staying connected, we will be able to send our surplus electricity elsewhere over the grid. That will offset the power that that we draw from the utilities at night or at other times when the sun isn’t shining, reducing our utility bills. We’d even like to sell our extra power, either directly or through an intermediary.

But aren’t there rules against non-utilities producing electricity for sale?

Our six colleges in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s territory currently are restricted that way. The DWP has the exclusive right to generate power for sale in its territory. However, we are far along in negotiations with the DWP to create a pilot program that will permit us to move forward with our plans for expanded solar energy production. Meanwhile, our three colleges in Southern California Edison territory face no such restrictions.

What are the key obstacles to achieving energy independence?

For starters, much of the key technology is new. We already take good advantage of the Southern California sunshine to produce electricity with photovoltaic panels and to run solar thermal heating and cooling systems. And, no doubt, the bulk of our renewable energy will come that way. Still, some other key technologies for power storage and generation are in the early stages, and it’s not clear how far we can affordably go with them in the near future. Even if we don’t make extensive use of some of these technologies, we probably will set up demonstration projects highlighting other forms of renewable energy to teach and inspire our students. We could demonstrate wind technology, for example.

Why not put up lots of solar panels to cover all of your electricity needs?

For starters, that’s not my call. In the LACCD, each college ultimately has the authority to shape its building program, including its energy plan. And some of the colleges don’t have the wide-open space to set up lots of solar panels. In addition, some have a variety of reasons to proceed more slowly with their renewable energy efforts.

But haven’t you recently predicted that LACCD would achieve energy independence by next year?

I’m putting my crystal ball away, and I’m not going to predict the timing any longer. I’m disappointed that we’ve missed some of the targets I established. At this point what matters to me most is not the timing, but that we find an affordable and, I hope, money-saving way to produce lots of renewable energy on our campuses.

Experts often warn homeowners that it will take many years, if ever, for solar systems to yield enough savings to pay for themselves. Doesn’t the LACCD face the same challenge?

It certainly can take years for solar power or other forms of renewable energy to pay off the initial investment. What’s more, you can’t calculate your real savings unless you know what energy will cost in the future, so you have to rely to some extent on predictions. We’ve had two financial advisory firms come in to assess our plans and they made substantially different projections, although even the less optimistic assessment essentially said that our energy plan would break even. I believe, however, that we have come up with a financing approach that will produce a good payoff for our energy plan. It involves teaming with private sector concerns so that we can take advantage, indirectly, of federal investment tax credits and other government incentives. Essentially, a solar power service company comes in to install and maintain the system, and investors that want to capture the tax breaks participate in the financing. For at least five years, we would buy electricity at a fixed price from our partners in what is called a power purchase agreement. I believe that will yield immediate savings over what we would have paid our utility companies. What’s more, after five years, we would be able to buy back the systems and wouldn’t have to pay any outside entity for that power any longer.

Isn’t that an extremely complicated way to finance a project?

It isn’t easy, and there are risks, but more and more companies and public agencies are doing it, and the financing arrangements are getting better. Such communities as San Diego, Tucson and Boulder County, Colo., have moved ahead with plans for power purchase agreements. So have such educational institutions as Caltech, Fresno State and Colorado State University. Meanwhile, two federal agencies have issued reports to guide local agencies in their efforts to craft solar power purchase agreements.

But, fundamentally, why would the LACCD enter into an agreement with a private company to install some of its solar energy systems?

It’s all about stretching our dollars so that we can accomplish more with the funds that we have. The federal income tax credits alone can translate into millions of dollars in savings. That means we’ll have more money available for our building program and energy projects.

For more information District's Sustainable Building Program visit here.

LACCD Board of Trustees appoints Dr. Wieder as Interim Chancellor

Last week, Dr. Tyree Wieder was named Interim Chancellor by the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees. Previously, Dr. Wieder served as president of Los Angeles Valley College for 14 years until her retirement last summer. At that time, the District's Board bestowed her with the title President Emeritus for Valley College.

Her career in education is extensive including serving as a counselor at Moorpark College and dean of student services at Los Angeles Mission College, where she later was appointed dean of academic affairs. She also served as director of LACCD educational programs before joining Valley College as vice president of academic affairs in 1990, later becoming its president.

Dr. Wieder will not be a candidate for the permanent chancellor position. A search committee will be formed to select a new Chancellor by early 2010.

For a complete biography, click here.

Steel Going : Construction workers continue to working on the steel frame for Los Angeles Valley College's Student Services Center, which broke ground in April.

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