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In an effort to help raise the next generation’s consciousness about sustainability, two MIT students doing MIT Portugal-funded work with the Sustainable Energy Systems (SES) focus area, Carrie Brown and Steve Ray, recently shared their research with students at the Prospect Hill Academy (PHA), a charter high school located not far from MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“The aim,” said Ray, “was to inspire a class of seniors to learn more about sustainability—and how to incorporate it into their own lives.”
Green Roof Technologies: Sorting Out the Benefits
Brown and Ray, who are working with MIT Professor of Architecture and Mechanical Engineering Leon Glicksman, jumped at the chance to reach out to PHA’s innovative class on “Green Roofs for the 21st Century,” in which students collaborate with a non-profit organization to help design a green roof for a nearby building.
According to Ray, a master’s degree student in Mechanical Engineering whose work is focused on predicting the energy savings of various roof technologies, including green roofs, “There is a lot of interest in ‘green technologies’ for buildings. I think it’s great that PHA is offering this class to its seniors. Too often it seems such technologies, and their benefits, are poorly understood.”
 Prospect Hill Academy seniors with SES-funded MIT graduate students Carrie Brown and Steve Ray (upper right). Ray talked to the students about the technical heat transfer behind green roof’s energy savings. By sharing his SES/MIT Portugal work, he said, he hoped to help students understand how green roofs can help save energy. At the same time, he said, it was important to let the students know that there can be other benefits of a given technology besides those that are advertised; in the case of green roofs, these include storm-water run-off mitigation, reduced roof temperature, increased roof life and aesthetics.
Making Intelligent Choices
Carrie Brown, a Ph.D. student in Building Technology whose work focuses on using optimization techniques to quantitatively assess technology choices in the built environment, was equally excited about having a chance to talk to high school students. She told the class that a green roof is one of many options for a sustainable building, including a variety of demand-side efficiency measures and supply-side renewable options.
“I’m really interested in helping people to make intelligent choices between supply and demand measures in the built environment in order to come to the most sustainable and cost effective solution,” she said. “It was wonderful to have the chance to share my work with such an interested, inquisitive group.”
Encouraging Student Participation
Brown and Ray set out to make the afternoon more than a typical research presentation. In a humorous moment, Ray showed the students a photo of himself taken when he was in high school, on the weight-lifting team—the idea being to demonstrate “what a high-energy consumer might look like.”
“We really wanted the students to not only learn about our research, but also to walk away thinking about sustainability,” Ray said. “If we succeeded, they’ll see how they can play a role in addressing the same sustainable energy problem on which our work is focused.” |
