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Tracking The Use Of Leed® In Facilities For Higher Education, Shannon M. Chance

Shannon M. Chance

America’s 4391 institutions of higher learning own roughly 240,000 buildings according to The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (2009) and the United States Green Building Council [USGBC] (n.d.). Most of these buildings’ designs reflect a time when energy was cheap and material abundant. Throughout the past century, building designs frequently ignored their surroundings, usurped energy at appalling rates, and did little to teach inhabitants respect for the environment (Fox, 2007; McDonough & Braungart 2002; Orr, 2007). As our colleges renovate and expand their facilities today, however, their activities reflect a decided shift in values. Over the past few …