Educators From Across the U.S. Tour COD's HVACR Lab
Dozens of educators, energy managers and facility directors from across the U.S. recently visited the HVACR lab at College of DuPage for a tour of the College's state-of-the-art HVACR training labs.
Click here for photos from this event.
During the visit, cohosted by COD, the Building Efficiency for a Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST) Center and the Building Technologies division of Siemens Industry, Inc., attendees toured the College's HVACR lab, and watched demonstrations of the lab's cutting-edge training equipment including a chill water plant, a water care treatment area and a hydronic boiler trainer, a one-of-a-kind trainer built solely by COD students and HVACR faculty. BEST is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE), National Center and during the tour, representatives from BEST filmed COD's lab with the intent to share the video with schools and businesses throughout the U.S. as a first-rate example of how to set up a commercial HVACR lab.
According to HVACR Instructor Bob Clark, the event provided a great opportunity to share the ground-breaking work the College's HVACR program is doing.
"College of DuPage is the only school in the U.S. that is building training equipment on such a large level," he said. "We are creating a path that schools across the nation can follow."
He said that in addition to saving incredible amounts of money by building their own trainers, the program has the added benefit of providing students with unparalleled hands-on experience.
"Not only do we now have state-of-the-art trainers, this equipment has been built, worked on, maintained and most importantly, understood, by our students," Clark said.
The visit to COD's campus was part of the "Building Automation Systems Workshop: Controls and Lab Development," a three-day workshop which included a tour of the Siemens Executive Briefing Center and presentations on building automation systems, the system's components and network architecture, as well as potential classroom applications.
Click here to learn more about the HVACR program at College of DuPage.