Annual SBSE Retreats

	Once per year, at different venues, SBSE members meet to discuss teaching methods, to share their teaching experiences and to discuss ways of furthering their skills.

SBSE Annual Retreats

	2010: Water: Down to the Last Drop The Springs Preserve, Las Vegas, NV May 14-16, 2010 This Retreat focused on the tensions occurring among all parties who use water and make demands on that finite resource as well as how we educators can best sensitize our students to these issues. Through our desert experience, in a city where designing water solutions at every level is so crucial, we hoped to devise new strategies to address this important aspect of building science/design education.

	2009: The Leap to Carbon Zero Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec June 24-27, 2009 This Retreat built on the agenda set forth in New Forest and delve into issues surrounding Carbon Neutral Design. What is it? How is it defined? How do we take our current sustainable and passive design teaching and make the big LEAP into teaching students how to design to that more particular ZERO target? We're looking for your ideas, best lectures, discrete projects, and larger studio initiatives.

	2008: Resetting the Agenda WIT, Ashurst Lodge, The New Forest, England July 23–26, 2008 In the spirit of "Resetting the Agenda," the SBSE New Forest Retreat focused on new directions in building science research and architectural education, organized around two objectives: to share new and emerging best practices and to chart a course for SBSE’s engagement in global discussion on the future of both research and education.

	2007: Out of the Box IslandWood, Bainbridge Island, Washington June 27–30, 2007 The 2007 Retreat focused on successful environmental design activities and innovations SBSEers are working on with practitioners, the community, K-12 students, and/or have developed as part of their research. The "Box" may be loosely defined as what architecture faculty traditionally do "in-house;" within classes at their own universities.

	2006: Integral Sustainable Design Colorado State University Pingree Park Mountain Campus July 15–18, 2006 The 2006 Retreat was designed to provide opportunities to step outside our daily lives, slow down, unplug, and reflect on how we might, as design educators, look beyond our current environmental technology and ecological design teaching to establish more integral and holistic approaches to teaching and learning, taking what might be the next step in our collective evolution.

	2005: Greener Foundations: Environmental Technology and the Beginning Design Student Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia June 9–12, 2005 The 2005 summer retreat was held in Savannah and focused on the question: Should environmental technology be a component of beginning design courses, and, if so, how?

	2004: Twenty Years Later: Reflections & Projections on Research & Teaching Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Cascade Head, Oregon July 7–11, 2004 At this session, we took stock of what we have learned over the past twenty years, and what the opportunities and challenges are for the next twenty. A record number of conference participants discussed new research, new gadgets, and new problems on the idyllic coast of Oregon.

	2003: Architecture as Pedagogy Waycross Conference Center, Morgantown, Indiana August 11–15, 2003 The focus of this session was on the relationships between the messages we deliver about buildings and the buildings from which we deliver those messages. Our conversation revolved around the manifestations of architectural and environmental wisdom in buildings where the lessons are explicit and demonstrable.

	2002: Ecological Literacy: Greening the Architectural Curriculum Sorensen's Resort, Hope Valley, California June 11–14, 2002 We explored the role of ecological literacy in architectural education. What is ecological literacy? What does an architect need to know to create environmentally appropriate designs? How should ecological literacy be taught in schools of architecture?

	2001: Cultivating Teaching Building Technology Redfish Lake Lodge, Stanley, Idaho June 9–12, 2001 This retreat focused on sharing teaching materials, learning exercises, course designs, and design projects that link ECS topics with design intent. We discussed the future of environmental technology teaching—Who are we hiring; how are they trained? Over 20 architecture schools are seeking architectural technology teachers. How will we meet this need? Faculty, students, and invited guests talked about current research projects and on-going scholarly work.


©SBSE: Society of Building Science Educators, 2008 Comments about this page can be sent to Martha Bohm