EPA awards Clemson University/Tri-County Technical College team $75,000

Published: April 28, 2010

CLEMSON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday awarded more than $1 million in grants to 14 U.S. college teams, including one representing Clemson University and Tri-County Technical College. The teams participated in the sixth annual National Sustainable Design Expo on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. 

The Clemson/Tri-County team has been working together on a project that explores the conversion of shipping containers into housing for Caribbean areas ravaged by hurricanes. The SEED Project (http://www.cusa-dds.net/seed/) employed the skills of students from Clemson’s School of Architecture, department of planning and landscape architecture and Tri-County’s welding department.

The expo was held at the EPA’s 40th anniversary celebration of Earth Day, April 23-26. Winners of the EPA’s People, Prosperity and the Planet Awards, also called P3 Awards, developed sustainable projects and ideas that protect the environment, encourage economic growth and use natural resources more efficiently.

“Sustainable innovations like the ones created by our P3 Award winners are the environmental and economic future of our nation. In fields from agriculture to architecture to energy production, sustainability is the true north on the path ahead," said Paul T. Anastas, assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Research and Development. “Innovations like these keep our country competitive and healthy. Congratulations to our winners, and to everyone who participated, for their efforts to create scientific and technological innovations that will lead us into a sustainable future.”

The national P3 Award competition encourages college students to create sustainable solutions to worldwide environmental problems through technological innovation. Each P3 award winner receives up to $75,000 to further develop a design, implement it in the field or move it to the marketplace.

Other winners of this year’s awards are Harvard University, Texas A&M University, Humboldt State University, Appalachian State University, Clarkson University (two teams), Cornell University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Roger Williams University, Virginia Tech, North Carolina A&T and Drexel University.

The Clemson/Tri-County team included landscape architecture students Jonathan Hanna, Jennifer Johnson, Arthur Johnson II, Kenneth Koschnitski, Owen McLaughlin, Nathan Miller, Scott Ogletree, John Piascik, Aaron Taylor and Ryan Yonce; architecture students Shannon Caloway, Kyle Miller, Mitchell Newbold and Carson Nolan; and recent graduates Adam Berry, Nicholas Christopher, Maria Davis, Sarah Moore, Ayaka Tanabe and Dustin White. Advisers are Pernille Christensen and Doris Gstach, landscape architecture, and Douglas Hecker and Martha Skinner, architecture.

Tri-County Technical College’s team members included Alex Boom, Sam Groen and Bryant Houston, who went to Washington; and Brantley Fowler, Travis Jenkins, John-Michael Quales, Matthew Wash, Christopher Bagwell, Tony Durham, Robert Falkner, David Homesley, Gantt Huiet, Zachary McCormick, Andrew Prothro, Kyle Scroggs, Mitchell Thompson and Michael Vinson. Paul Phelps, head of Tri-County’s welding department, served as their adviser.

Support for the competition includes more than 40 partners in the federal government, industry, and scientific and professional societies. Industry partners for the Clemson/Tri-County team were Container-It of Atlanta, the Intermodal Steel Building Units Association, Sargent Metals of
Anderson and Wonderworld TV of Charlotte. This year’s expo was co-sponsored by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

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Editor's note: The researchers may be contacted directly: Pernille Christensen, pchrist@clemson.edu, 864-656-4257; Doug Hecker, dhecker@clemson.edu, 864-650-8571, or Martha Skinner, marthas@clemson.edu, 864-650-8570.