Our inaugural Semester in Sustainable Design/Build is underway! Twelve undergraduates arrived in Montpelier on August 21st and immediately launched into an intense schedule of orientation, design exercises, and skill building.

Here's just a snapshot of what's happened already over the past two weeks:

Week 1: Students backpacked for three days on the Long Trail from Middlebury Gap to Lincoln Gap as part of a team building orientation, attended a lecture at Yestermorrow by Tedd Benson on "Reinventing the House", and learned basic tool safety and construction skills by building sawhorses.

Week 2: Students completed a series of drafting exercises armed with pencils and trace, discussed the program for the semester's tiny house design/build project, toured Yestermorrow's campus and architectural highlights of the Mad River Valley, and spent a morning volunteering in Moretown to help families whose homes were flooded with demolition and clean-up.

The students in the program range from age 19 to 40, and come from eleven different schools, including Skidmore College, University of Vermont, Clemson University, Hampshire College, University of Massachussetts-Amherst, Sarah Lawrence College, Norwich University, College of the Atlantic, The New School, University of Washington, and Pomona College. Their majors range from architecture to environmental studies, human ecology to construction management and fine arts.

Stay up-to-date on the program throughout the semester.

We're posting pictures and weekly updates to a special Facebook page and will have a blog coming soon, with more on our tiny house design/build project and student profiles. And mark your calendars for our Semester Program Open House scheduled for Saturday, October 29th at our semester program campus in Montpelier at Vermont College of Fine Arts.