For the economic sphere, I took a course called green building. This class focused on the issues and practices used in contemporary green buildings, with a focus on the United States Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system. This class was very interesting because although we focused on LEED design, I was able to use my knowledge and connections with other sustainability certificate courses and see the connection to other sustainable building rating systems such as B-Corp, WELL, and EDGE. The knowledge that I gathered from this course was expansive and may lend me the opportunity to utilize the specific skill set in my future career.
This course also allowed me to see the amount of preparation that goes into processing and building. Furthermore, it expanded my understanding of the process of implementing green building strategies to real projects.
My favorite part of this course was the campus tours that we went on at the end of semester. The tours of two separate buildings on UGA’s campus, the Jackson Street Building and the Hugh Hudson School of Music Building, and pointed out features that would fall under the LEED requirements and/or what could be changed to make them better. It was nice to apply what I had learned in the classroom in terms of LEED certification to onsite places.
Overall, I really enjoyed this class because of my interest in environmental policy. Understanding what goes into implementing new policy or regulations is a very large range of topics, and this class gave me a snapshot into all of it.