CES at the Waterfront Campus

Living Building Challenge

Semans-Griswold Environmental Hall was built to achieve Living Building Challenge Certification. Living Building Challenge is a sustainable development model that is a step above LEED certification. Not only does this certification require that we use sustainable building materials and thoughtful decision making around the natural environment, but it also requires that the building produces at least  105% of the energy that it will use. This will be achieved through a strand of solar panels that will be stationed on the roof of the building, along with geothermal wells that are installed underneath the building. Living Building Challenge also requires a focus on the health and happiness of the building tenants, along with a focus on art and accessibility to the community.

Three Innovative Lab Spaces

• Wet Lab and River Flow-Through System – The wet lab hosts a river flow-through system, which pumps water from the Chester River directly into and out of the lab. This allows our students to study different aspects of the Chester River in a controlled environment using water directly from the river.   
  
  
• Watershed Innovation Lab – The Watershed Innovation lab serves as the home to CES’s Chester River Watershed Observatory. Here, students have the opportunity to work on buoys that monitor the river’s water quality, side-scan sonar, build AquaBotz and more.   
  
  
• Environmental and Biology Lab – The third lab serves as a laboratory learning space for some Environmental and Biology courses at Washington College. 

Waterfront Classroom Space

The classroom at SGEH is used for multiple Environmental and Biology courses, along with serving as the on-campus classroom for CES’s Chesapeake Semester. 

The Center for Environment & Society's Headquarters

SGEH is the new home to the Center for Environment & Society at Washington College, one of three Signature Centers that focus on providing undergraduate students with graduate-level experiences outside of the classroom. 

Feather Friendly Windows

Creating habitat includes ensuring that nearby buildings are safe for the birds that CES hopes to help. At Semans-Griswold Environmental Hall, nearby native meadows and hedgerows provide excellent habitat for birds and pollinators. We are in the process of installing Feather Friendly window treatments to help prevent bird strikes to make this living building a sanctuary for all. Feather Friendly has developed a window deterrent system that both helps birds to identify the window as an obstacle and preserve the views.

Callinectes

At 46 feet long, Callinectes is fully equipped with an array of the latest electronics and environmental instrumentation including trawls, sonar, acoustic seabed classification systems, magnetometers and positioning systems used in mapping and evaluating geological features of the Bay and its tidewaters. On the Chester River, sampling gear is used to collect water and sediment samples that are analyzed to measure nutrients, dissolved oxygen, algal abundance, toxic contaminants and other factors that tell us about the ecological health of the region.

Lookdown

In April 2013 CES acquired Lookdown from NOAA with the intent to provide additional research opportunities for Washington College students. Lookdown, created for the Coast Guard, will be primarily used for mapping the river with sonar, but will also be available for special trips for water sampling and testing.

Lookdown is considerably smaller than Callinectes, which works to her advantage. She will be able to access shallower areas of the Chester and coastal areas that are inaccessible to Callinectes.