ITHACA, N.Y. -- Education is more effective when students feel their efforts make a difference in the real world, says Jack Elliott, who teaches a Cornell University course on environmental issues in design. That's why his students are helping a new National Park Service (NPS) building in the Grand Canyon get its "green" certification.

His Ecological Literacy and Design class, the first such full-semester course in the nation, is teaching students how to implement the new environmental building standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a sustainable building-industry advocacy group. Pennsylvania State University has now followed with a similar course.

Normally, buildings that want to earn the prestigious certification must hire consultants to document the building's environmental features in terms of design, materials, energy use, indoor environmental quality, building site, solid waste management and water conservation.

By undertaking much of that research, the 35 Cornell undergraduate and graduate students of design and environmental analysis (DEA) and architecture not only are facilitating the certification of the NPS building, but, more important, says Elliott, they are learning how to apply their ecological knowledge to a real-world project in green design while earning college credits at the same time.

"The students are developing a new worldview that is founded on a broader sensitivity for things living, a meaningful set of environmental ethics and a deeper knowledge of environmental issues," says Elliott, an architect and assistant professor of DEA in the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell.

Elliott was the first academic in New York state to be sanctioned by the USGBC as a professional accreditor for the group's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. LEED-accredited professionals can help building contractors and owners who want their buildings to be LEED certified as green. This is accomplished by demonstrating that they have included at least 26 of 69 possible environmentally sensitive features in a building's design, construction or operation.The building council to date has certified about four dozen buildings in the United States. The U.S. General Services Administration, the U.S. Navy and the city of Seattle now require that all their new buildings meet LEED standards. USGBC hopes that the LEED certification will promote green competition and raise consumer awareness about the importance of environmental building standards. "Already, many architecture and interior design firms are hiring or training people to be LEED-accredited in order to be able to compete for federal contracts. This puts Cornell students in a good position, having firsthand experiences with specific LEED tasks," Elliott says.

One team of students, for example, is documenting that the surface runoff from the NPS building is not greater than it was before the building was constructed by researching the soil and soil mechanics of the building site and calculating the runoff of the new surface materials, such as gravel and concrete, says Elliott. Another team is helping the NPS facility earn credits toward certification by researching how much of the building's energy needs could be met from green power sources, such as photovoltaic cells, low-impact hydroelectric plants or wind turbines, and what kinds of energy contracts are available to the facility from utilities. Another team is researching how much biomass, mainly wood, was produced when the building site was cleared and how much was diverted from landfills through transplanting, chipping and sawmilling.

Annie Lee, a junior from San Diego majoring in facilities management, works on the team that is investigating the facility's energy consumption and savings and documenting by what means the energy code was followed throughout the building's construction. "This project shows me how people in the facilities-design field are actively applying their environmental concerns to their projects and how designers have a lot to do with how many resources the rest of society consumes," she says.

If Elliott's students have done their homework, the Grand Canyon's new South Rim facility might be one of the next buildings to earn green certification. "The students ascertained that the building not only will easily meet the minimum certification requirements, but that it could achieve a silver certification level if the NPS implements a few policies to complement the design and operation of their new facility," Elliott says.

Related World Wide Web sites: The following sites provide additional information on this news release. Some might not be part of the Cornell University community, and Cornell has no control over their content or availability.

o U.S. Green Building Council: http://www.usgbc.org/

o South Rim Maintenance and Warehouse Facility, LEED status:

o Jack Elliott: http://www.human.cornell.edu/faculty/facultybio.cfm?netid=jre15&facs=1