Yesterday the walls went up on MUM’s new Sustainable Living Center. This building will be completely off the grid with respect to electricity, heating and cooling, water, and waste.

MUM's new zero-energy, off-the-grid campus building

The Sustainable Living Center has been designed to meet the Living Building Challenge, the highest standard for sustainable design and green building in the world. It will be one of the first three to achieve this.

“There’s no other building like this going up in the nation, or in the world for that matter, that we know of,” said nationally known green building expert Mike Nicklas, who co-designed the building, and whose company Innovative Design has designed over 4,000 buildings that use renewable energy solutions.

Whole Tree Post and Beam Construction

Construction will proceed quickly because the structure uses whole tree post and beam techniques. The walls will be tilted up and roof trusses placed on them. The entire shell of the building should be completed within about a week, and the building is expected to be ready for occupation in late fall.

A Building That Teaches

The Sustainable Living Center will serve students in the university’s Sustainable Living major. It will have classrooms, workshop, meeting room, greenhouse, kitchen, research lab, recycling center, and offices, as well as east and west covered verandas and a porch on the north.

It has been designed as a building that teaches. In addition to embodying sustainability, it will allow students to monitor performance and energy efficiency and make adjustments.

“The Sustainable Living Center will be a living, evolving building,” said David Fisher, head of the MUM Sustainable Living Department, who helped plan the building. “The building itself is an educational tool, not just a passive one like most classroom buildings. It will provide participatory education where students will be continually adding to, or altering, the building and grounds as well as systematically checking its effectiveness.”

Off the Grid

The Sustainable Living Center will be completely off of the energy and utility grid. Every feature will exemplify healthy and sustainable green building and will be geared to teaching those principles.

Construction uses all non-toxic materials from local sources (as defined by the Living Building Challenge requirements). All energy will be provided from solar panels on the building and from an outside wind turbine. Rainwater catchment will be the complete source of the building’s water, with purification of drinking water via ultraviolet technology. Wastewater will be treated onsite using a constructed wetland. Natural daylighting will illuminate the entire interior. Geothermal technology will assist with heating and cooling.

An Embodiment of Sustainability That’s Feasible and Practical

This achievement is noteworthy because none of the systems in the building are new or experimental, according to construction manager Dal Loiselle. “The Sustainable Living Center is being constructed using ‘state-of-the-shelf’ technologies,” he said. “This building proves that we can meet our environmental goals for our built environment with the materials, technologies, and green building protocols we already possess.”

Sustainability has become a major focus at Maharishi University of Management. The University has filed a climate action plan to be 100% carbon neutral by 2020 as part of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.

MUM students take one full-time course per month, instead of juggling 4-5 classes at once

Spring break is upon us, which means college finals are just around the corner. For anyone who’s taken a full college course load, the term “finals week” probably conjures the same image: late nights, lots of cramming, and plenty of coffee.

This scenario is an accepted part of the college experience. But is taking 4-5 classes at once the only approach—can you really absorb and retain knowledge this way?

Maharishi University of Management is one of a handful of colleges that use a different schedule, called the block system. Instead of juggling multiple subjects at once, students are immersed in one full-time course per month. They focus on one subject with the same professor every weekday (plus Saturday morning). When the course is done, students take one final exam, then move on to the next block after a 3-day weekend.

For example, a business major might take a block on accounting, then a block on marketing, followed by a block on human resource management.

Students say the block system helps them learn more with less effort and remember what they’ve studied. The system also has advantages for students at both ends of the academic spectrum:

• High achievers can go deeper into the subject. Without the distraction of other courses, they might tackle extra projects and labs or add their own research and readings. Plus, they have the professor’s undivided attention throughout the block.
• Weaker students who might be overwhelmed by a typical college workload can succeed without the stress of multiple classes, even though a block covers the same amount of material as a traditional semester-long course.

Nearly all students enjoy the flexibility afforded by the block system. For instance, if someone needs a few weeks off to work, travel, or recover from an extended illness, they simply withdraw from the block. Rather than blowing an entire semester, they’ve only dropped one course, which they can make up another time.

MUM also has a study-abroad program called Rotating University, wherein students travel with their classmates & professor for one month. It’s simple to schedule because nobody is missing any other classes. Perhaps they’ll study travel writing in France, art history in Italy, leadership & adventure sport in New Zealand, or Indian culture and spirituality.

Of course, the block system isn’t without drawbacks. For some subjects, the intensity of studying them all day everyday is a challenge itself. There’s less time for students to “process” what they learn, which can make things like math and science tricky. Literature students may plough through an entire novel every other day.

Yet despite these issues, the block system remains very popular with MUM’s students.

“You don’t get distracted,” says recent graduate Agata Sidorkiewicz of Chicago. “There’s one thing you’re learning, and you kind of become the subject. You don’t have to learn it from the outside. It’s more like you enter the subject and learn it naturally. Everything becomes easy.”

In other words, hold the coffee.

MUM students & staff enjoy all-organic, vegetarian, fresh-cooked meals everyday

If you want a healthy fresh-cooked meal, a college cafeteria isn’t the first place that comes to mind.

Anyone who’s subsisted on college cuisine for extended periods of time probably doesn’t consider those days a culinary high point. Heck, coupled with late-night pizza runs, a standard university diet is partly to blame for the infamous “freshman fifteen” (i.e. those extra 15 pounds that seemingly appear out of nowhere during your first year on campus).

Yet at MUM, students and staff enjoy all-organic, vegetarian, fresh-cooked meals daily. While many campuses are starting to offer healthier menu options, MUM is the first U.S. college to serve exclusively organic, vegetarian food in its dining hall (officially, Annapurna Dining Commons). It’s part of the university’s commitment to inner and outer sustainability (for the record, many students aren’t vegetarian).

Local ingredients are used whenever possible, including produce grown right on campus at MUM’s greenhouses and nearby organic farms. It’s not uncommon for food to be picked and served the same day. Milk, yogurt, and ice cream come from Radiance Dairy right here in Fairfield. Everything is made from scratch, and the kitchens participate in a composting program. Meals are also prepared according to Ayurvedic principles, an ancient science of health and natural medicine. Thanks to these efforts, the MUM dining hall was a finalist in the “Best Local Food” category of Iowa Source magazine’s annual restaurant contest.

As student enrollment has increased—MUM now serves over 1,600 meals per day—the university brought in Aladdin Food Management Services to handle operations. Aladdin has been so inspired by MUM’s program that the company decided to make organic food service its niche, leveraging its experience with MUM to extend organic offerings at other accounts. Food Management magazine wrote a good article about the collaboration.

“I’m happy this worked out, and frankly, MUM was the catalyst to make it happen,” said Jim McKee, Aladdin’s regional VP of operations. “MUM’s 100% organic program is 10 years ahead of where the rest of the world needs to be. It is the right thing to do, and I’m glad to be a part of it.”

Anyone is welcome to eat at the dining hall, and you’ll find people of all ages—not just students. It’s located upstairs in the new Argiro Student Center (the big building on 4th street that looks like a cruise ship). The walk-in price is $8 flat, though it’s less if you buy a multi-meal punch card. Lunch is served everyday from 11:45-1:30, and dinner from 6:30-8:00. There’s a pretty big line at lunch by about 12:15, so I recommend getting there at noon or after 12:30 (though you’re almost certain to be standing next to a nice, interesting person in the queue). You can also check the menu online before you come. Happy dining!

In the summer of 1974, Fairfield was forever changed. A long line of yellow buses pulled into town from California, carrying scores of college students. Maharishi International University—now Maharishi University of Management (MUM)—had outgrown its Santa Barbara facility, purchased the former campus of Parson’s college, and relocated here to Iowa.

MUM has never been a conventional university, but in a 1970s small-town Midwest setting its differences were even more pronounced. Back then, a college where all students & faculty did Transcendental Meditation (TM) seemed downright radical.

Today, meditation and yoga have gone mainstream, and MUM has broad appeal among progressive-minded students of all ages from around the world. Enrollment has steadily climbed for the last 4 years, and new programs like Sustainable Living are flourishing. MUM has moved beyond its reputation as simply “Meditation U” and yet… people in Fairfield hear very little about what’s actually happening on campus, whether they meditate or not.

Hence, this new column called “On Campus.” As a graduate of MUM, I’m obviously biased—I had a great college experience, made friends from different countries, and believe in the value of the unique knowledge available here. But don’t worry, this isn’t a sales pitch or public relations ploy. As a lifelong Fairfield resident, my desire is simply to share the cool stuff going on at MUM with our community. Things have changed so much in recent years—even since I graduated in 2003—that it’s tough to keep up if you’re not around campus day-to-day.

Feel free to comment or ask questions on things you’d like to hear about. I’ll do my best to answer in a straightforward way, without hype or spin. Coming up in my next installment: MUM’s commitment to organic, vegetarian dining—a college cafeteria that non-students choose to eat at!