Home Stretch at the University

Back in February and March when I was teaching my renewable energy course, I was working 55 or 60 hours a week to keep up with lecture prep, field trip logistics, grading and so on. When the class ended I managed to get down to working about 40 hours a week, having time to make weekend trips with Basilia, watch movies in the evening, and get decent exercise and sleep.

Now as I'm in my final days at Universidad Don Bosco, I've found myself ramping up the hours again to tie up loose ends on all these different projects. Basilia is visiting her family in Honduras, so I don't have much else to do but work anyway. As has been the case all along, every week at UDB brings surprises. This week it's a construction project. A couple months ago the head of the university, Federico Huguet, asked me if I could provide some input on energy-related design issues for a new four-story building planned for the graduate campus. I attended a couple meetings, talked with the architects and directed them to some reading material and thought that was the end of it.

This week the rector pulled me back into the project. I had another meeting with the architects today, just me and this brother-sister team. It's fun working with them because they know very little about energy but are sincerely interested in learning and like to get into the details about materials and performance. I put together a four-page document with recommendations for siting and orientation, building envelope, daylighting, building envelope, and renewable energy. We talked about light shelves and similar devices for controlling entry of light and heat from the sun. This led to me nerding out for a couple hours with Google SketchUp drawing software, exploring how you can use it to visualize sun and shadow effects in buildings with windows and skylights. See the Build It Solar website for some short and simple instructions on how to do this with SketchUp models.

Tomorrow is a big day -- the U.S. embassy and UDB will sign a memorandum of understanding that sets the terms for the Science Corner grant that UDB is being awarded. Dr. Tim DeVoogd, who came to UDB a couple months ago to assess the university's capacity to manage the Science Corner, is coming back down from Washington for the ceremony. We also invited lots of people who work in the energy sector in El Salvador. There's been a lot of scrambling around as people's availability changes. At one point the vice minister of education was going to sign the MOU as a witness of honor alongside Dr. DeVoogd. I was scheduled to give a brief talk about the Science Corner project. But a couple days ago we were informed that the vice minister will not be available. So now Reina Durán de Alvarado, UDB's vice rector of science and technology, is going to give the talk instead, and I'm now a witness of honor. Rule one in Central America: be flexible and roll with the changes. In any case, I'm very honored!