High gas prices cool off classrooms

By Kevin Coffey
Editor in Chief

The rooms and buildings of Creighton University will be a little colder this winter.

Facilities Management will set temperatures about 3 degrees cooler than normal university guidelines suggest in order to save money from energy costs. According to university guidelines, temperatures are usually set at 70 degrees for office space and living quarters and 68 degrees for classrooms and laboratories during winter months.

Temperatures may be even lower during the evening when buildings are not occupied. Unoccupied buildings could be 10 to 12 degrees colder than they are during the day.

Students, faculty and staff are urged to dress warmly in order to avoid discomfort.

Facilities Management is also urging everyone across the university to conserve energy. The university spends about $110,000 every month on electricity, according to Lennis Pederson, associate vice president for Administration and director of Facilities Management. Use of natural gas fluctuates according to outside temperatures, but the price of gas has been rising steadily.

Creighton’s Energy Awareness Committee, headed by George Tangeman from mechanical engineering, has toured some of the university’s buildings to find problems and will periodically send out energy saving tips.

“We need more people on the committee,” said Mary Duda, chemical coordinator for Creighton’s Environmental Health and Safety department and member of the committee. Anyone interested in the Energy Awareness Committee can contact Duda at mjduda@creighton.edu.

One of the problems the committee found during its tour was that people were not calling Facilities Management to fix rooms that were too hot or cold.

“We can’t be everywhere all the time,” Duda said. “We need people to call and say ‘help us.’”

One woman’s office was too hot, so she opened a window to let cool air in, Pederson said. As cold outside air came in, more and more hot air came out of the vents and made the room even hotter than it had been before.

“The thermostat is a smart boy,” Pederson said. “If the thermostat senses cold air, it will warm up the room. And it will do a good job.”

To help conserve energy, Facilities Management is using computers and new metering equipment to keep tabs on the energy use of individual buildings.

“Energy conservation is not being miserable,” Pederson said. “Energy conservation is really turning things off when you’re not using them. We need people to close blinds, turn off lights, reduce the temperature of hot water — a little bit beyond, if not totally, common sense. It’s not magic here.”