Founded in 1978 and one of the first national leaders in green living and green technologies before they became popular, CCAT is now quartered in a newly relocated and refurbished house that typifies Humboldt State’s intensive collaboration among undergraduate students, staff and faculty, Richmond told an audience of about 40 at Saturday’s ribbon cutting.
That collaboration, he underscored, integrates progressive ideas and practical applications into an ever-evolving curriculum that benefits students with direct, experiential learning and equips them with the skills to flourish in the global economy.
“There are not very many universities in this country where students really play a significant role in changing the curriculum, but they do at Humboldt State,” he said.
The “Net” generation—youngsters whose lifelong companions are advanced information technologies and the Internet—are interested primarily in experiential learning, and universities have been slow to catch up with that trend, Richmond added. “CCAT has been doing it for 29 years and has been ahead of the curve for a long time.”
Peter Lehman, Director of the world-renowned Schatz Energy Research Center and faculty advisor to CCAT from 1979 to 2000, reminded the audience that CCAT was conceived in a spirit of “living lightly on the Earth.”
The facility is a combined live-in demonstration house—three student co-directors live there year-round—and education center for “appropriate technology” (AT). It proposes to meet human needs with the least impact on the Earth’s finite resources.
In deploying a given technology, CCAT activists and members consider whether it is locally-produced, uses local materials, can be maintained with a minimum of specialized training and can be sustained for many generations. Examples include solar power, natural paints, composting toilets, and highly energy efficient appliances like the Sun Refrigerators made in Arcata. AT is not itself a technology, but rather a methodology to evaluate technologies.
Professor John Meyer, CCAT’s faculty advisor, said that although the center is of course about bringing new green technology systems online, it is foremost two other things: “It’s a conversation and it’s an experiment.” The conversation centers on a paramount consideration of the human estate: “How might we live responsibly?” in a sustainable manner—that is, without compromising the future well-being of countless generations?
“CCAT is a conversation in the sense that there is no settled conclusion about what constitutes appropriate technologies or sustainability,” Meyer said. “It’s a constant discussion, a constant grappling with new ideas and new ways of approaching things.”
As for the CCAT experiment, largely successful in his view, it is an undertaking in student-driven education. What distinguishes CCAT from other green initiatives of the past 30 years, Meyer asserted, is that rather than a static demonstration, it is “a sometimes messy, always vital expression of the practical idealism of several generations of students . . . whose energies, skill, intensity and enthusiasm have made this place a reality.”
Oct. 1-5 is CCAT Week, a program of varied activities that include presentations and seminars on ecological design and pest management in organic gardens. A CCAT potluck is scheduled on Friday, Oct. 6, at 6:00 p.m. featuring both food and music. Details are at the CCAT website.