Indiana University Bloomington
IN-1: Innovation 1

Greening of the Indiana Memorial Union The IU Office of Sustainability, in collaboration with the University Architects Office and the Indiana Memorial Union, launched a national pilot project for the greening of student unions as a way to draw attention to the greening of existing campus buildings. Indiana University's Indiana Memorial Union, one of the largest in the nation at over 500,000 square feet, was chosen for the fact that it is at the heart of campus, physically, culturally, socially and sentimentally. It is also a historic structure built in the 30's as were many other existing buildings on campus and it has 14,000 daily visitors. A Duke Energy Foundation grant of $50,000 was secured to conduct a two-day eco-charrette with national experts, local experts, students, faculty and IMU staff. Bloomington happens to be the international headquarters for the Association of College Unions International and we also had a national representative for the US Green Building Council's Campus Initiative participate. The charrette used LEED for Existing Buildings Operations and Maintenance as a benchmark. In order to make it possible to more easily benchmark student unions for LEED, an effort to benchmark unions across the country grew out of the charrette and that research in ongoing. After completion of an energy upgrade, we hope to certify this pilot project under LEED and publish the process and results for student unions everywhere to use as an implementation roadmap.