Campus Tours

You may register for tours using the online registration tool. 

Duke University  

Living and Learning Sustainability at Duke

This tour will visit the Duke Forest - a teaching and research laboratory.   In May, 2007, after three years of restoration, Duke University officials dedicated the 14-acre Stream and Wetland Assessment Management Park (SWAMP).  Tests now show that SWAMP promotes biodiversity and reduces nitrate pollution in water downstream.  The site was designed to help protect the Triangle’s drinking water supply by controlling contaminant-laden storm runoff from Duke’s campus and 1.20 surrounding acres of Durham.  It also functions as an outdoor teaching and research laboratory for undergraduate and graduate students in environmental studies and engineering.  There is a half mile walk from the bus to the site; however, people with mobility issues can be accommodated. 

Lunch will be catered by the Refectory Cafe which uses locally grown or certified organic ingredients whenever possible.  Tabletop signs promote healthy eating, living wages, and environmental sustainability.    Duke has a strong reputation for green campus dining services which has been driven largely by the systematic implementation of best practices across campus through the Performance Assessment for Culinary Excellence (PACE) rating system developed by Dining Services Director Jim Wulforst.  Jim will talk to tour participants, during lunch, about the innovative work he is doing. During the tour of Breeden Hall, the sustainable strategies utilized and challenges encountered in seeking LEED Silver certification will be discussed.  

In 2003, at the request of students in the Duke University Greening Initiative, Duke adopted the policy that all new construction and renovations on campus would be LEED-certified.  Tour participants will visit Duke’s new Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering and Breeden Hall, boyth of which earned the LEED silver certification. 

The Duke Home Depot Smart Home Program creates a dynamic “living laboratory” environment that contributes to the innovation of future residential building technology.    There, students explore smart home technology design and prototyping, and a growing core of faculty conduct research.  This up close and personal approach to technology development will have a profound impact on Duke’s students and on industry as students graduate and launch their own careers.  The long term goal is to influence the national market for residential technology integration, and to help educate homeowners about the latest technologies. 

University of North Carolina

Water Conservation, Stormwater Management and Combined Heat and Power

This tour of the UNC Chapel Hill campus will visit an award winning 32-megawatt combined heat and power plant, and view a range of water conservation and stormwater management practices. The combined heat and power, or cogeneration facility, relies on circulating fluidized bed technology to produce all the steam and one-fourth of the electricity used at this 16 million square foot campus. Twice as much energy is put to beneficial use from a pound of coal burned at this facility as from a standard electric generating plant. Forty miles of steam pipes and 15 miles of chilled water pipes heat and cool campus buildings.                       

Stormwater management practices adopted at UNC include porous pavement parking lots, green roofs, underground cisterns, infiltration beds, and revised planting strategies. At the FedEx Global Education Center, participants will see the first building on campus to use rainwater to flush toilets and view two extensive green roofs.  At the Rams Head Center, participants will see an intensive green roof located on top of a three-level parking deck. Adjacent to a dining hall and recreation facility, the green roof at Rams Head Plaza will someday boast 60 foot trees. Both buidling were built on former surface parking lots that were removed as part of the campus master plan.

Participants will also learn about the soon-to-be completed water reclamation system at UNC. Treated wastewater from the local water utility will be pumped back to campus for use in the cooling towers at the campus chilled water plants. Annual savings of over 200 million gallons of potable water will reduce the potable water demand on the local utility by 15 percent. A variety of water conserving fixtures, including waterfree urinals and dual flush toilets, will be viewable throughout the tour.

North Carolina State University

The NCSU tour will stop at three different locations on the campus to
showcase a wide variety of sustainability projects. The Lonnie Poole
Golf Course  at NCSU is an Arnold Palmer Signature Course with an 18-hole, 6,915-yard, par 71 public course, with practice range and green. It will also include a research center and clubhouse. In cooperation with the NCSU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Crop Science Department, the Center for Turfgrass Environmental Research and Education has provided the resources to help the course earn Audubon Silver status, a designation
from Audubon International that the course operates in an environmentally friendly manner. There are only four other
Audubon-signature courses among the nearly 650 existing public, private and resort courses in North Carolina and fewer than 150 nationally.

NC State’s Solar House was dedicated and opened to the public in 1981.  Part of the NC Solar Center, it is one of the most visible and visited solar buildings in the United States, drawing more than 250,000 people from around the world in the past two decades.  A living laboratory for solar research, it combines passive solar design, solar thermal and solar electric technologies to achieve dramatic energy savings – demonstrated by its annual $70 heating bill.  The Solar House grounds also include demonstrations of other green building materials and techniques, a wind turbine, a fuel cell, biodiesel production equipment an Alternative Fuels Vehicle (AFV) garage, research area, and many other technologies. 

The Rocky Branch Stream Restoration and Greenway Project will create a safe and accessible outdoor teaching laboratory.  Rocky Branch is an urban creek running more than a mile through the heart of the university’s campus.  In addition to restoring the creek, 6,000 feet of greenway path will be built and connected to Pullen Park and the City of Raleigh Greenway System.