Shop Talk: More Room for Kansas Athletes and Oklahoma Students, Less Greenhouse Gas at Harvard

Pride of the Jayhawks: A new $31-million, 80,000-square-foot facility for the University of Kansas football team opens this month, with a nearly 20,000-square-foot weight room for players, new offices for coaches, and a green roof that fans can use for tailgating on game days, according to The University Daily Kansan. The structure, called the Anderson Family Football Complex, also houses a recruiting center, medical facilities for players, a team-meeting room, and other big-time-football amenities. (The Kansas City Star adds that “coach Mark Mangino’s corner office overlooking the field … would be the envy of any corporate CEO.”) The facility was designed by HNTB Architecture Inc.

Expansion in Oklahoma City: Two new buildings are under construction at Oklahoma City Community College, one for the health professions and the other for arts education, according to the college’s newspaper, the Pioneer. The health-professions building is expected to open in time for the fall semester, and will house—among other things—an emergency-medical-services simulator. Completion of the arts building, however, is running a couple of months behind schedule. When it opens, later in the year, it will offer a 5,000-square-foot film studio, as well as a 100-seat choir classroom.

Greenhouse-gas cut at Harvard: A committee appointed by Drew Faust, president of Harvard University, has recommended that the university adopt a tougher standard for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, seeking a 30-percent cut from 2006 levels by 2016. According to a Harvard news release, the focus on greenhouse gases is among a number of steps the university has taken recently to improve sustainability. Others include serving more locally grown produce in university dining halls, installing low-flow water fixtures in graduate housing, testing solar hot-water systems, and purchasing a new steam turbine for the university’s Blackstone plant “that will produce electricity at more than double the efficiency of a conventional power plant.”