The George D. Aiken Center opened in 1982. The building's name honors Vermont's distinguished late senator and governor. The Aiken Center is the main home to the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.

In January 2012, reconstruction was completed on a green renovated Aiken Center, a facility we confidently expect to achieve the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Platinum status—the Council's highest ranking. The Rubenstein School community realized a vision, begun many years ago by our students, staff, faculty, advisors, alumni, and friends. We envisioned a living building that minimizes, cleans, and re-uses wastewater, monitors energy use, and provides more natural lighting and ventilation.

The new Aiken Center allows us to have a smaller, healthier footprint and to demonstrate our collective commitment to a more sustainable world. It challenges and educates the RSENR and UVM communities and visitors about what it means to live within the limits of our natural world.

Each floor of the Aiken Center represents a component of our natural world, the Earth. The first floor, which houses our naturally lit and comfortably ventilated classrooms, including a 100-seat lecture hall, our student lounge, and a newly shaped, brick and wood-trimmed atrium, represents the red core of the Earth.

As you spiral up the central staircase, you emerge onto the second floor which symbolizes the Earth's surface with the lush green of forests and the deep blue of rivers running through the hallways' terrazzo flooring. The second floor is home to the Rubenstein School Dean's Office, individual faculty and staff offices, a laboratory style classroom, and the Spatial Analysis Laboratory.

A glass solarium on the south side of the building is a warm and welcoming entrance to the Aiken Center and provides casual meeting areas formed by stonewalls and tropical vegetation. At the eastern end of the solarium, large fiberglass tanks of the Eco-Machine^TM  hold communities of aquatic micro-organisms, invertebrates, and wetland plants that will work in concert to treat the building's wastewater and recycle it for flushing toilets.

On up to the third floor, trimmed in the blues of the Earth's atmosphere, you will find most of the faculty and staff offices and conference rooms. Throughout the building, beautifully finished wood trim made from trees harvested at our Forest Stewardship Council- (FSC-) certified Jericho Research Forest links us closely to the forest.

Learn more about the green renovated Aiken Center.