RBT Program Earns National Recognition

Yavapai College’s Residential Building Technology program (RBT) was nationally recognized by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) with the Excellence in Green Building Curriculum Recognition Award. The award is a component of USGBC’s commitment to identify and disseminate innovative green build curricula to educators across the country.

“USGBC launched this initiative to highlight the central role education plays in furthering the green build movement,” said Peter Templeton, Senior Vice President, USGBC.

Yavapai College’s progressive Residential Building Technology program teaches students to design, build and manage the construction of safe, durable, affordable, energy-efficient, and environmentally responsive houses. Through this unique classroom and jobsite-based training program, students learn how to incorporate appropriate climate-specific building materials, specify systems and technologies based on current applied building science principles, and to implement sustainable design and green building practices.

“We knew excellent green building education programs existed in a wide variety of settings, but we had no method to capture these programs and share them with other educators,” said Margot McDonald, chair of USGBC’s Formal Education Committee and Professor of Architecture at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. “We were extremely pleased with the large number of high-quality submissions received in the program’s inaugural year. We are eager to develop ways to share curricula and promote the interdisciplinary approach so crucial in making green build principles a reality.”

USGBC will establish a repository of the newly identified curricula and will develop a teaching resource database, which will serve to disseminate programs nationally and facilitate contact among educators from a wide variety of disciplines.

“The RBT program at Yavapai College is unique when compared to other educational programs – we offer classroom instruction in the building sciences, and each year students build (hands-on) a house that meets or exceeds nationally established high-performance guidelines. Three recently constructed houses in the RBT program have earned five national awards and the reputation as being “one of the nation’s elite energy-efficient home builders,” according to Tony Grahame, the RBT program director. “We are honored to receive the USGBC’s excellence award.”

Yavapai College’s Residential Building Technology program offers an applied science degree that can be earned in two years as well as three certificates that can be earned in one-year, all emphasize building science principles and sustainable/green building strategies.