Green Building Certificate Program


"Green Building" is most often understood as Environmental Building, or the weaving together of strategies that result in reduced greenhouse gas emissions, reduced fresh water demand, reduced wastewater and solid waste, and a range of other environmental benefits.  The rapid growth of Green Building, however, is largely due to its embrace by corporate and government leaders as High Performance Building, offering immediate cost savings (for electricity, natural gas, water, sewer, etc.) and other direct financial benefits (human health and productivity gains, increased sales, increased rents, etc.)

This Certificate Program is designed with the working professional in mind. It is a yearlong program focused on developing the understanding necessary to enable sustainable building decision making within a corporate, institutional, non-profit, municipal, or individual setting. Graduates of this program will be able to work with the owners, project managers, architects, engineers, builders, and subcontractors for a project to facilitate Green Building decision making.

The program is now available to students via the web. Take a look at the Green Building homepage.


Learning Green Building From the Green Zone, Iraq


Art Buxo and his wife Mical Kupke purchased four acres with the intent to turn it into a living classroom along with a nursery for native plants to help reforest an area in Latin America.

Stationed in a small, barely air conditioned trailer in a Green Zone in Baghdad, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Arturo Buxo could barely hear the constant "chop chop" of the helicopters overhead on their way to the hospital next door bringing the wounded. It was the middle of the night, it was sweltering, and it had been a long, difficult day but Buxo remained awake. At 3:30 in the morning, he was just finishing up his online college course in green building from Sonoma State University thousands of miles away.

Just a few days away from his next assignment at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia, Moody Air Force Base, this 20-year veteran was looking at his future after the Air Force and wants to continue to make a difference. Combining his love for construction and humanitarianism, Buxo enrolled in SSU's online version of the certificate program in order to fulfill one of his greatest goals in life: improving the quality of life of others while developing a sustainable system that improves the community surroundings.

"Green Building is a big part of my vision in life as most people spend lots of time at home," said Buxo. "It makes sense to me that a healthy house equals a healthy family and a healthy society."

Buxo has been involved in construction for the past 14 years, working with Habitat for Humanity in the mid nineties, traveling with them to Central America twice. For the past couple of years he has worked on environmentally friendly and sustainable technologies, specifically renewable energy sources and looking at the "reduce, reuse, recycle" idea.

Last spring, Buxo and his wife started an education, training and environmental protection company (organization) called Verde Ambiente (Green Environment) with the intent to correct the environmental damage humans have caused by years of neglect and be part of the solution to socio-economic and environmental issues in Latin America. The organization purchased four acres with the intent to turn it into a living classroom along with a nursery for native plants to help reforest the area, building a bohio using local materials and use it as a classroom to train others on ways to improve and maintain the environment.

Also in the military, his wife Mical Kupke served in Afghanistan with the flight medicine program with the flight medicine program with Afghanistan Air Force. "There are three things I live by. The first one is my vision in life of 'building communities and developing societies' and the second one is 'it's not what you do in life that matters but how you do it that makes you happy in the long term. The other one is "the right thing to do is never the easiest thing to do."

Buxo is just one of many service members taking online courses. The Air Force has set up bases where students can log on to a computer designed for taking classes over the Internet. He found Sonoma State's online program through Google, where he searched for classes that taught certain skills and were flexible enough to allow him to work full time and get started right away.

Of the Green Building Program, Buxo said it "provides the systems integration approach to designing for the long term benefit of a person, a family, and a society." The class reinforces his skills at building environmentally friendly homes and provided Buxo the perfect opportunity to expand his talents in this field.

He is currently completing his student project to gain his certificate.