Britta Sortland discusses the Freddy Court Energy Challenge with Program Coordinator Mary Beth Golemo and student representative Jennifer Hunt.
Part of the Green Energy Challenge competition is to find ways to involve the community in our project.
Since our focus is on sustainability in living and in construction, we decided to ask one of the on-campus living communities, Frederiksen Court, to participate in a competition. We challenged the students living in the apartment-style housing to reduce their energy consumption, using tips that we provided.
Kate Glowacki, Britta Sortland, and Andrea Dvorak were the team members who came up with the idea, created a pitch for the Frederiksen Court Council, and helped the community see the project through.
To monitor their success, members of Cyclone Energy took meter readings of the students’ electricity usage before and after the competition. The apartments that had the greatest reduction in energy use were awarded a gift card to a location of their choosing. The students got very involved, and there was a lot of participation – at least one apartment from each of the nearly 30 apartment buildings signed up!