Let’s get local here and talk about something close to home (well, at least for Furman students like Lydia and me). The Cliffs Cottage is an awesome building on Furman’s campus that started its life as one of the famous Southern Living Showcase Homes. A huge collaboration led by five principle partners (Furman, Bank of America, The Cliffs Communities, Duke Energy, and Southern Living), the cottage was the first Showcase Home built to LEED (or Leadership in Energy Efficiency and Design) certification standards. Special features of the home include a geothermal ground source heat pump, photovoltaic and solar thermal systems, rainwater collection for irrigation, native species landscaping, local and sustainably-made furnishings, Energy Star rated appliances, and a quarter-acre organic vegetable garden.
After fourteen months of being shown off to over 25,000 visitors, the building has been transformed to the new home of the David E. Shi Center for Sustainability at Furman. The purpose of the center is to coordinate all of Furman’s academic, co-curricular, research and community outreach activities related to sustainability. According to its website, the Shi Center’s core mission is to coordinate the university’s efforts to enrich the present and enhance the future for Furman and the upstate of South Carolina, and to provide a rich array of opportunities for students and the community to engage in sustainability through coursework, applied research, leadership experiences, and community service.
Hopefully next year the Advocacy class will take a "field trip" over there.
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