Art department paints itself green

Ashley Green / Roundup

The art department continues to be renovated as teachers and students hope to return to their art classrooms up on the hill soon.

This weekend has been used to finish up connecting the solar panels that will serve as the energy source for the new art department buildings. Currently, art classes normally taught in the art buildings are spread throughout the campus, especially in the Village trailers.

Professor Constance Moffatt, who has been teaching art and architectural history at Pierce since 1991, hopes to return to her classroom as soon as possible.

“The trailer, where I teach now, is long and thin, making it difficult to connect with students since I can only see half of the class at any time,” Moffatt said.

“I teach art history and typically we use a projector to show images,” she continued. “The projector bisects the room, as well as creates two groups of students instead of one unified group.”

The recently installed solar panels double as the shade for the Performing Arts parking lot. Pipes have been run underground, where the energy travels to an inverter pad.

The inverter pad, which was cemented into the ground this weekend, changes the power from DC to AC.

“(The whole project) was supposed to be done already, but we ran into problems with the Department of Water and Power,” said Eric Sanford, foreman of the construction being done by Rosendin Electric.

The solar panels will turn out more than 700 kilowatts to power the new buildings, but it is more than what will actually be used and that creates a problem with the Department of Water and Power.

The excess energy needs to be used, or it will be wasted.

When asked when the project is foreseen to be complete, Sanford laughs.

“We’ll probably run into some more problems. It just happens,” he said.

According to Sanford, the projected completion time for the project is five weeks from this past Monday.

“I hope they do a good job on the remainder of the project, since this will be the last time I think I’ll see any improvement projects in my career here,” said Moffatt, who is enthused that the department is going ‘green.”

“I’m totally on board with solar power. My husband and I have a house in Hawaii powered by solar panels,” she said. “He is a green architect.”