This story was originally published in the May 2008 issue of Harker News. “Going Green” was the theme of the third annual Harker Research Symposium held in March 2008 on the Saratoga campus. Over 300 attended and 50 students from the middle and upper schools gave presentations. Poster sessions covered diverse topics from new and innovative approaches for generating and saving energy, to reporting on the effects of cell phone conversations on drivers’ reaction times. Paper presentations also covered a wide range of topics including research for new cancer therapies and the effects of farming on river water quality. The sessions featured presentations by our Intel and Siemens semifinalists, the J8 team, three Harker alumni and students from Lynbrook High School in San Jose and Galt High School from Sacramento.” Sponsors were Applied Materials, Google and Hewlett-Packard. Students from San Jose State University demonstrated Phantastic Physics, and Santa Clara University sent their solar decathlon team. Of special interest was a comprehensive exhibit describing the eco-friendly building techniques used in the new science and technology building. Symposium keynote speaker Geoff Green, founder of Students on Ice, a nonprofit organization that takes groups of students from around the world on unique educational trips to the Poles, took the audience on an inspiring and unforgettable voyage to Antarctica and the Arctic, recounting his adventures with orcas and penguins, polar bears and Inuit elders. Anita Chetty, science department chair and event organizer, said the symposium exceeded her wildest hopes. She was thrilled by the sense of energy, excitement and enthusiasm that was palpably present throughout the day. “The kids were so marvelous,” she said. “They came here and do this for the sheer joy of sharing their experiences and learning from each other.”
This story was originally published in the May 2008 issue of Harker News. “Going Green” was the theme of the third annual Harker Research Symposium held in March 2008 on the Saratoga campus. Over 300 attended and 50 students from the middle and upper schools gave presentations. Poster sessions covered diverse topics from new and innovative approaches for generating and saving energy, to reporting on the effects of cell phone conversations on drivers’ reaction times. Paper presentations also covered a wide range of topics including research for new cancer therapies and the effects of farming on river water quality. The sessions featured presentations by our Intel and Siemens semifinalists, the J8 team, three Harker alumni and students from Lynbrook High School in San Jose and Galt High School from Sacramento.” Sponsors were Applied Materials, Google and Hewlett-Packard. Students from San Jose State University demonstrated Phantastic Physics, and Santa Clara University sent their solar decathlon team. Of special interest was a comprehensive exhibit describing the eco-friendly building techniques used in the new science and technology building. Symposium keynote speaker Geoff Green, founder of Students on Ice, a nonprofit organization that takes groups of students from around the world on unique educational trips to the Poles, took the audience on an inspiring and unforgettable voyage to Antarctica and the Arctic, recounting his adventures with orcas and penguins, polar bears and Inuit elders. Anita Chetty, science department chair and event organizer, said the symposium exceeded her wildest hopes. She was thrilled by the sense of energy, excitement and enthusiasm that was palpably present throughout the day. “The kids were so marvelous,” she said. “They came here and do this for the sheer joy of sharing their experiences and learning from each other.”
Harker’s long-held commitment to environmental issues informed every decision in the current capital expansion project, and environmentally focused features have been incorporated into the design of the new science and technology center, Nichols Hall, which is designed to be LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).
According to the U.S. Green Building Council’s website, “LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.” LEED certification is based on a point system recognizing performance in the aforementioned five areas. XL Construction Corporation and DES Architects + Engineers, Inc. have designed the building so that it is on target to become LEED silver certified, which ranges from 37 to 43 points.
During production, 95 percent of the construction debris generated by demolition and construction were sent to recycling facilities instead of landfills. Additionally, more than 10 percent of the materials – steel, concrete, carpet, casework – used for construction are manufactured from post-consumer and pre-consumer recycled content. Eighty percent of the steel content itself is recycled. All of the paint, adhesives, sealants, carpet and other products used are low VOC and the wood products used have low urea-formaldehyde, earning the building four points for improving the indoor environmental quality. Air quality was also monitored during construction and before occupancy. All the air handlers were cleaned and capped after each day of work to prevent dust collection and no combustion vehicles were allowed on site during construction. Once the construction was done, there was a flush-out period to ensure good air quality.
Since the area where Nichols Hall stands was originally a field and no buildings were demolished for the construction of the new science center, the location selected earns the building one point under sustainable site development. Nichols Hall also earns another point for community development, because the school has pedestrian access to residential neighborhoods and shopping centers. The proximity to bus stops, availability of bike racks and locker rooms, limited parking capacity and preferred parking for carpools and low-emitting and fuel efficient vehicles encourage the community to use alternative transportation, giving the building an additional four LEED points.
The building also has bioswales, turf cell paving and a green roof that provide a storm water management system. The bioswales, located around the building and alongside the parking lot, act as a natural earthen filter for the rainwater before it goes to San Tomas Aquinos Creek on its way to the bay. The turf cell paving effectively absorbs rainwater into the ground and minimizes storm water runoff and also preserves the soil from human activity. The green roof has a two-fold purpose: while the vegetation filters rainwater particulates and reduces storm water runoff, the green roof also acts as a natural insulator, keeping the heat in the building during the winter and out during the summer. The green modules as well as the surrounding reflective white coating on the roof help minimize the heat island effect caused by solar absorption of traditional black rooftops.
Nichols Hall also uses targeted exterior lighting and low-contrast yellow lighting to reduce undesirable light and night sky pollution. The interior lighting is designed to maximize brightness throughout the building while minimizing excessive energy use. For example, the recessed lighting used in the atrium decreases glare and also lights up large areas without taking up a lot of space. XL Construction has also installed occupancy sensors in all the rooms to minimize power consumption, improving the indoor environmental quality.
The use of water-efficient features allow the building to use 40 percent less water than a typical building of the same size. These features include low-flow sinks, also included in the labs, as well as dual-flush toilets and ultra-low flush urinals, which use only 0.125 gallons per flush.
Additionally, the building operates 27-33 percent more energy efficiently than a baseline building of the same size due to features like the improved air handling system, heating, lighting, photovoltaic cells and building envelope.
The building envelope includes the low-emissivity glass windows used for the atrium and rotunda and the green roof. The polycrystalline solar panels will generate more than 2.5 percent of the energy used, offsetting a significant amount of greenhouse gases. The efficient HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) system will help the building consume $30,000 less in electricity annually with the help of features like the directive/indirect evaporative cooling air handlers that use one-tenth the amount of electricity generated by regular air conditioners that use compressors. Instead of using Freons, the air conditioning system uses enhanced refrigerant made entirely of water, so no ozone-depleting chemicals are used within the building. Also, the HVAC system uses air circulated from outside and has more air changes than required by code, ensuring good air quality indoors. To increase thermal comfort, each room has individual temperature controls to maximize energy efficiency and comfort for building occupants.
Additional points will also be considered for educating the community and going above and beyond the requirements in energy efficiency. With a rolling display of the solar panel energy production as well as displays explaining all the LEED-certified features of the building, students can learn just how “green” the building is.
April 29, 2011 Update: Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer, has written an extensive blog about his visit with Daniela Lapidous and Shreya Indukuri, both grade 11. Read the blog here. April 20, 2011 Two Harker students attending Power Shift ’11 in Washington, D.C., earlier this month had the ear of 8,000 attendees, then had a private meeting with Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer in the Obama administration. Shreya Indukuri and Daniela Lapidous, both grade 11, addressed the crowd of 8,000-plus at the conference then went on to meet with Chopra for about 30 minutes. The two students have been very active in advocating for reducing energy use through technology and other methods. A list of Harker News Online articles on their activities is at the end of this article. “The meeting [with Chopra] went really well,” said Indukuri. “He was very impressed with the opportunities for energy efficiency in schools and he wants to have Lisa Jackson, administrator of the EPA, and Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, write a letter to schools to launch a campaign for energy benchmarking. “He loved Harker’s new energy efficiency with the smart energy system and was very supportive of our efforts to take this to other schools; we already helped students implement this project successfully in the Los Gatos – Saratoga High School District,” she added. “We also met with staff members and the director of ARPA-E, (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy),” added Lapidous. “Their director is Arun Majumdar, and they basically invest in breakthrough clean energy technologies in hopes of finding the next big thing. “We made two presentations,” said Lapidous. “The first was more of an informal conversation while the second was a formal presentation including a segment of the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) presentation. The audience was a varying number of ARPA-E staff, who are all rather young and very nice.” Following the presentations, “Majumdar came to talk to us personally for about 30 minutes,” said Lapidous. “The post-doctoral fellow who organized the meeting for us, Karma Sawyer, said she couldn’t remember the last time she scheduled a 30-minute meeting for him – usually they are 10 minutes. He lives in the Bay Area when not working in D.C., and he knew exactly where Harker was. “Both he and Mr. Chopra said that this smart energy project was essentially a no-brainer with an obvious positive impact for schools. They both acknowledged the environmental importance but were understandably more interested in the 250 percent ROI our project turned over in about a year,” Lapidous said. “PowerShift, the meeting with Mr. Chopra, and the meeting with Mr. Majumdar were all very exciting and we are extremely inspired to work 10 times harder on SmartPowerEd and expand it to more schools in the Bay Area before the fall comes around,” she finished. http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/green-projects-featured-on-49ers-kids-program/http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/energy-dashboard-goes-live/http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/unicef-video-includes-activist-students-in-video/http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/students-filmed-for-video-on-ace-grant-recipients/http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/student-presents-at-tech-titans-conference/http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/harker-trio-gangs-up-on-global-warming/http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/winged-post-reports-on-teen-tech-conference/http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/sophomores-report-on-l-a-climate-conference/http://skylark.harker.org/hno/backups/students-invited-to-climate-summit/
In December, upper school students Daniela Lapidous and Shreya Indukuri, both grade 11, were featured in a segment on the Comcast Sports Net Bay Area program “49ers Total Access for Kids,” which is hosted by kids and geared toward young San Francisco 49ers fans.
Lapidous and Indukuri appeared on the show to talk about the green initiatives they were instrumental in enacting after receiving a grant from the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) in 2009. The green projects featured included the organic garden and the smart meters that were installed at the Saratoga campus to monitor energy usage. The show also briefly touched on the green roof at Nichols Hall.
The entire episode can be viewed at the 49ers Total Access for Kids website. The segment featuring the girls begins 11 minutes into the program.
This article first appeared in the March 2010 Harker Quarterly. Green is busting out all over Harker, and not just because it is spring. On the upper school campus, the greenhouse is filled with flora cultivated by the Biology Club. The club has a crop-style garden planned with an herb section and is scouting the art department for a collaborator to help landscape the site.
The upper school HEART Club (Harker Environmental and Animal Rights Team) continues their ongoing effort of collecting recyclable paper from classrooms and offices around campus. The weekly collection visits are reminders to the whole campus both to recycle and to take individual action to help the environment.
In January, middle school students and teachers collected spare paper generated from routine printing runs, extra copies of homework, staff directives, etc., “so we could get a clear idea of what our monthly ‘waste’ is,” said Cindy Ellis, middle school head. The effort is part of a three-campus push to curb excess printing and paper use. The effort ran Jan. 4-29 and resulted in a 2.5 foot pile of paper that was then recycled as scratch paper at the Harker Math Invitational in mid-March.
Chris Nikoloff, head of school, initiated the overall paper-saving awareness effort and Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs, took on the role of educating faculty on the effort at schoolwide faculty meetings. “Teachers have been heeding recommendations – requesting fewer color copies, asking the print shop to send digital files and returning the colored pages separating print jobs to the print shop for reuse,” said Gargano. “Our next step is to recruit students in the middle and upper schools to the effort.”
In mid-December, Harker was featured on “Eco Company,” a national TV program covering teens who are taking an active role in creating greener communities. The segment, aired on KTVU Channel 2, featured the upper school campus’ greenhouse and organic garden, the LEED gold-certified Nichols Hall, the lower school’s energy monitoring systems and more. Those who were unable to tune in can watch the segment on Eco Company’s Web site, www.eco-company.tv.
The upper school Biology Club, Key Club, Global Empowerment and Outreach Club (GEO ) and Harker Environmental and Animal Rights Team (HEART) have:
• placed stickers on towel dispensers in bathrooms at all three campuses asking users to use sparingly;
• grown an organic garden on campus which has already been served up for lunch by the upper school kitchen staff;
• invited a speaker from Alliance for Climate Education, which specializes in engaging high school students to become active in stopping climate change, to address the campus;
• checked tire pressures on campus and corrected them to suggested PSIs, offsetting an estimated 3,232.83 kg of carbon entering the atmosphere – equivalent to having planted 147 trees. This action earned HEART a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition on May 18, 2009, as winners of Rep. Mike Honda’s Go Green Contest. The same group won the award for technological innovation for their presentation at Santa Clara University’s Sustainability Decathlon on May 9, 2009.
• named charity: water GEO’s partner organization for the year, inviting speakers to address the campus on the need for clean drinking water throughout the world.
The middle school is decreasing its carbon footprint by: • recycling used cell phones to send to troops abroad;
• printing assignments only when necessary and opting for online copies;
• giving each student a water bottle and phasing out paper cups on campus;
• using grant money from the National Science Foundation. Pairs of students are choosing, researching and growing one edible annual in a 4×4 organic plot and harvesting the resulting plants for a San Jose soup kitchen. Additional compost comes from Harker lunch waste;
• collecting all unclaimed papers from faculty printers for one month, drawing attention to the amount of paper used and immediately recycled.
The lower school: • planted 200 daffodil bulbs to support Keep San Jose Beautiful Day;
• installed smart meters, with the initiative of two upper school students.
This article was originally published in the December 2009 issue of Harker Quarterly
Sustainable site development? Check. Water savings? Check. Energy efficiency and materials selection? Check and check. How about indoor environmental quality? Also check. With attention paid to these criteria established by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) guidelines, plus an extra push by Harker students, Nichols Hall earned its gold LEED certification in July 2009.
Originally designed for silver certification, the building was put over the top by the initiative of students in Jeff Sutton’s AP Environmental Science classes. Eight groups of students designed displays for each of the eight LEED categories, and the two additional LEED points for displays and the education of visitors put the building in the gold category.
Not only is Harker the first school in Santa Clara County to earn gold LEED certification, but the building was named a runner-up at the 2009 Structures Awards held by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, making it one of only two finalists in the Green Project of the Year – Private category.
“[Sustainability on campus] instills a sense of stewardship in the students who are going to inherit this planet,” said Mike Bassoni, facility manager, when asked about Harker’s green commitment. “We’re hoping to instill a sense of preservation in our students, so we practice what we preach and teach these kids firsthand what it means to be sustainable, and hopefully that will carry … throughout their lives ….”
Nichols Hall is only the latest in a long history of greening efforts at Harker. In the late 1980s, Howard and Diana Nichols (former president and head of school, respectively) had an electric car built, which Diana Nichols’ environmental science classes studied and rode in. “We were told that we wouldn’t get enough charge from the sun to use it for mileage….They were wrong. We drove it to school every day for about three or four years,” said Nichols.
She said they got about 12 miles a day on sunshine, the car went 65- 70 mph, was silent and required no maintenance except battery water. Nichols, who directed Harker’s efforts at the City of San Jose’s Earth Day Celebration in the early 1990s, displayed the car at several functions and was eager to disseminate the idea of solar energy for cars.
Diana Nichols’ green efforts also led to the initiation of the Our Trees Project, the goal of which “was to have students from different parts of the world work on the same problems,” said Nichols. Nichols wrote the program with then-technology director Sharon Meyers and brought in five public schools and the Tamagawa Gakuen school in Japan, Harker’s sister school to this day.
In time the project involved just Harker and Tamagawa until 2002, when the Neerja Modi School in Jaipur, India, joined in. “We wanted to model a new kind of education using the Internet to connect people in different locations and socioeconomic brackets …. We wanted to … increase our students’ understanding of environmental problems and empower them to face those problems,” Nichols said of the initiative. Today the Our Trees Project is going strong, taught as part of the Gr. 6 environmental science and computer science curricula.
Bassoni was well aware of Harker’s green history when Nichols Hall was begun. “Harker has had a strong support of environmental awareness and green thinking, so from day one … it was always our intent to design a building that supported our philosophy and had the potential to be LEED-certified,” he said.
Current students have joined the movement as well, and the school has accomplished phenomenal feats with its young activists leading the way. Inspired by a visit from photographer/environmentalist Rick Smolan, middle school students formed Blue Planet Group to raise money for clean drinking water awareness.
Population Studies and computer science classes have woven the cause into their curricula. The students’ efforts reached the ears of the nonprofit organization charity: water, whose founder, Scott Harrison, came to Harker to thank the students personally. In November of this year the upper school raised $10,000 for charity: water to build two wells in African villages with no clean water source.
Olivia Zhu, Gr. 11, was one of four students selected by UNICEF USA to participate in the first-ever Children’s Climate Forum, held together with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark, in early December. Zhu’s application emphasized incentivizing investment in sustainable energies such as solar, wind and geothermal power, and modernizing electricity grids worldwide. “It’s important to get as much information about climate change policy out there as possible, as it has a major impact now and will have an even bigger one on future generations,” said Zhu.
Priya Bhikha, Gr. 12, and a team of upper school students are preparing a segment for Harker’s 2010 fashion show, with clothes made out of recycled materials. Bhikha has put out a call to all three campuses to help supply her with plastic bags, soda can tabs, paper clips, coffee filters, CDs, drinking straws and more to make her recycled fashions.
Shreya Indukuri and Daniela Lapidous, both Gr.10, took it upon themselves to apply for a grant to improve Harker’s energy efficiency. The girls, with the help of Valence Energy, successfully earned a $5,500 environmental grant, allowing Valance to install smart meters, devices for monitoring energy use, at the lower school campus. They also hope to apply some of the grant money towards an organic garden and window-insulating film at the upper school, and plans are underway to install smart meters at that campus, as well.
This fall the pair attended the Governors’ Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles as two of 25 climate youth leaders; they presented their findings to the assembly and enjoyed an audience with Gov. Schwarzenegger. UNICEF picked up on the girls’ story from there, and sent a camera crew from New York in October to interview them for a documentary on youth activism.
“If we don’t do anything about [global warming] now, we’ll really regret it in the future and history will label us as the generation who sat back and watched the world go up in flames. People will either be part of the problem or part of the solution, and it will take an extremely grueling period of effort by a lot of people to come up with even a fraction of a solution, but every contribution counts. We know the work is hard, and it does seem rather intimidating, but we’re just taking it one baby step at a time,” said Lapidous.
A gold, green building? Students ready to effect change? A strong history of environmental awareness that will continue long into the future? Check.
This article was originally published in the December 2009 issue of Harker Quarterly
Senior Priya Bhikha is putting a green spin on Harker’s fashion show. She is working on a line of recycled fashions made of items like duct tape, lollipop wrappers and water bottle labels for wear in the show.
Under construction are a total of nine outfits, six for females and three for males, all designed by Bhikha. She has been interested in design for [quote]some time and took a design course at Santa Clara University to add to her skills. It is particularly challenging to fit the garments to models – selected by Bhikha last fall in order to begin making the custom outfits – due to the non-uniform nature of the materials.
Bhikha also created a logo for her line, Rinnovo: Renewal for the Runways. Her goal with the project is to “let people know that there’s more to fashion and that with a little ingenuity and creativity, you can use your passion (fashion) and spin it a ‘green’ way.” Watch the runway at this year’s fashion show, “Outside the Box,” Fri., Feb. 19, for these unique designs. Tickets are on sale now!
On Aug. 25 over 350 students, parents, alumni and faculty gathered for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony of the science and technology building, Nichols Hall.
Preceding the ribbon-cutting, science teachers shared their favorite aspects of the building including the new collaborative space, robotics room, special projects room and, in the atrium, a large-screen monitor displaying energy savings from the solar array on the green roof.
Anita Chetty, US science department chair, noted, “As Harker teachers, we get to play everyday. We get to think. We get to create. And now in this incredible facility, we get to do it as anyone would dream of doing.”
Lon Allan, chairman of Harker’s Board of Trustees, recognized the contributions of lifetime trustees Howard and Diana Nichols for their “extraordinary vision, dedication and leadership at The Harker School for more than four decades,” by announcing the Board’s unanimous decision to name the new building Nichols Hall.
MS history teacher Patricia White admired the building, pointing out the beautiful aesthetics. “I think we really needed the space for students and this brings us up to being a world-class prep school,” White said. She thinks that the LEED certification will “put us on the map as a very progressive school. We’re known for our science. We’re known for our math…We are putting our priorities in the right order and we are actually fulfilling what we preach.”
After the Nichols’ cut the ribbon, attendees poured into the new building, exploring the new classrooms and teaching space. “I wish I was a high school student right now,” Anshu Das ’05 said, shaking his head in disbelief as he looked at the Foucault pendulum in the rotunda. “I think it is starting to set a standard. Any building made from here on out only has to be better than the last.” Neil Shah ’08 added, “I have never seen anything of such caliber. It certainly changes the way you look not only at this campus, but of course at science and technology.”
Howard Nichols addressed the guests and discussed the 20-year planning process and the hard work of all who were involved in the project. “Our vision has always been to build the best school in the world,” he said. “I don’t know if anyone can claim that distinction but we certainly know we are one of the best, and we are only going to get better.” Diana Nichols added, “It pleases me to think that, in this building, the next generation of scientists will start forming ideas that will fuel the future.