College of Fine and Applied Arts

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Team KISS placed first in the local level and second overall at the state level of the 2009 North Carolina Sustainable Building Design Competition. Team members are (front, left to right) Spencer Cameron, Caite O’Bryant, Belle Farish and (back) Andrew Woodruff and Andrew Wyndham.

An interdisciplinary team of students from the Department of Technology placed first overall at the local level and second overall at the state level of the 2009 North Carolina Sustainable Building Design Competition in April.

Team KISS (Keep it Simple and Sustainable) included students Spencer Cameron, Belle Farish and Andrew Woodruff, building science majors with concentrations in architectural technology and design; Caite O’Bryant, interior design major; and Andrew Wyndham, graduate student in industrial technology.

Instructor Don Woodruff, AIA, and assistant professor Chad Everhart, AIA, both faculty members in the Department of Technology’s building science program, served as faculty advisors for the competition.

This year’s competition asked students to design a two-story, multi-family, residential building to meet the needs of Community Alternatives for Supportive Abodes (CASA), a local organization created in 1992 that provides supportive housing for individuals with mental illness, developmental disabilities or substance abuse disorders. The approximately 6,000 square foot building design had to include nine individual apartments and an indoor community space for meetings and gatherings. The building was required to be designed to high energy efficiency standards (approximately equivalent to LEED Platinum) and include sustainable design elements in the categories of indoor environmental quality, water efficiency, material selection, hazard mitigation, community preservation and affordability. Also, the project required designs to be universally accessible and within Housing and Urban Development (HUD) design standards.

Advanced Energy’s North Carolina Sustainable Building Design Competition [NCSBDC] is a program to engage students in the state’s universities and community colleges to learn and apply the lessons of sustainable design and construction. Each year statewide winners see their design built as part of the grand prize. The competition is being held in conjunction with the Triangle Emerging Green Builder Natural Talent Design Competition.

For more information about the competition, please visit: http://www.advancedenergy.org/sbdc/index.html. For more information about the Department of Technology at Appalachian State University, visit www.tec.appstate.edu.

TJ Walker, a communications expert who oft analyzes politics for amNewYork, and co-author Jess Todtfeld broke a Guinness World Record by talking for nine solid hours and completing 112 interviews in 24 hours in promotion of their new book, “TJ Walker’s Secret to Foolproof Presentations.”

Appalachian State University’s student-run radio station, WASU, was number 81 of the 112 interviews, helping the duo break the record. Jon Wood, WASU station manager, conducted the interview.

The pair started at 6 a.m. June 1 and completed their interviews at 6 a.m. June 2. All the interviews were at least five minutes in length. The entire event was broadcast on FoxNews.com, who streamed the LIVE video feed from their Strategy Room studios in New York.

To listen to the interview on WASU, click here. For more information about the breaking of the world record, visit www.tjwalker.com. To listen to WASU, visit www.wasurocks.com.