Kirkwood 'village' builds on innovation

Gazette Editorial Board

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Kirkwood Community College's proposed Sustainability Village looks like an exciting project that could yield many benefits for Kirkwood students, our region and the state.

And it's a good example of affordable, cutting-edge technical education projects that Kirkwood and other higher-education institutions should continue to develop.

Preparing recent high school graduates and older workers for careers in high-paying technical fields does more than help those individuals - it helps the state attract employers looking for a ready and willing labor pool. It's an efficient use of funds to promote energy independence, educational innovation and economic development.

The village concept is a smart way to build on the early success of Kirkwood's new $5.2 million, 2.5-megawatt wind turbine, which went into operation last month - another example of the multiple benefits such innovative projects can yield.

In addition to generating about one-third of the college's electricity needs (saving the school hundreds of thousands of dollars each year), the turbine serves as a hands-on learning tool for students in the school's energy production and distribution technologies program.

The proposed Sustainability Village will bring together students from Kirkwood's construction management, plumbing, environmental geology and social sciences in the environment programs. It will give members of the school's student chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council critical facilities for learning, testing and demonstrating the application of cutting-edge, green methods of building and producing energy.

It also could become a hub for collaboration with nearby universities in Iowa City and Cedar Falls, as well as K-12 students and teachers throughout Kirkwood's service area.

Over the next few years, Kirkwood educators plan to build three types of buildings on the three-acre Sustainability Village site.

Students will design and build a series of small, “green” 500- to 1,000-square-foot residential cabins that eventually could be moved off site and occupied. Professional builders will construct an industrial production facility and educational center for commercial applications.

An outdoor laboratory with residential-sized wind turbine, solar collectors, geothermal devices and other sustainable technologies will allow students and faculty to study the effectiveness of different systems over time, and collect a mountain of data for research.

The entire project is expected to cost around $2.5 million. Kirkwood is hoping for $2 million in National Science Foundation funding to carry the bulk of the financial burden.

We think that would be money well invested.

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