The E3 Center for Innovation at Pine Point School

cultivating dynamic partnerships for education, the energy use, and a sustainable environment

 A New Way to Build a New Building

Education is an investment in the future of a society, and innovation is embedded within the American spirit of our society. The E3 Center for Innovation captures both ideals.  Pine Point School proposes to employ a conceptual model to build a facility where learning and construction innovation coexist.  As a living laboratory, an E3 building will feature alternative energies as well as innovations and related sustainability products which can be monitored within a functioning building. The Center will be a teaching tool for educators in addition to a research and demonstration space for those businesses commited to education, innovation, and environmental stewardship. Businesses can showcase their products while school children will learn about the science, math, history, English, and arts aspects of these innovations.  This replicable model will be a dynamic partnership between the businesses committed to innovation and those educational institutions preparing the next generation to lead them.

 The Facility

The E3 Concept will be adaptable to exisiting school structures while the Center will be a showcase for replicable model.  Based within a new facility with a 5,600 square foot footprint, it will use and renovate the School's Campbell Building to house administrative offices, conference rooms and research classrooms. Currently, the Campbell Building's south roof features a photovoltaic system [in total, the School has 330 solar panels].  Monitoring hardware allows the community to track energy generation and carbon footprint reductions.  Further, the School's 66 acre campus is situated just off Interstate 95 near the Connecticut/Rhode Island border, and it has been identified as one of the best locations in the state to explore wind energy resources.  The E3 Center for Innovation will be an ideal research space and educational arena to test, monitor, and educate those interested in energy efficiencies, in environmental stewardship, and education.  It will make more deliberate that forward thinking spirit of innovation within a school setting.

 Designed for the Future

Once constructed and completed, the E3 Center will have administrative offices, a student research center, and a conference center.  To assure that the term ‘innovation’ is sustainable, the work spaces will be highly flexible while the infrastructure can be modified a s new technologies emerge.  The science center will be available to Pine Point children as well as community school children. Math, science, hands-on research, writing, field studies, and discussions on environmental issues will be part of the curricular program.  The conference center will be available to outside groups focused on innovation and sustainability. The E3 concept itself will be fully adaptable to any exisitng school building; the goal will be to have all school building adopt the E3 concept of being built with innovative products that are fully sensored to colelct real time data.