The Sustainability Center is designed for you to witness some real world examples of sustainable practices going on "in our neighborhood." The Sustainability Center is a working environment that sustains landscaping throughout the campus as well as providing necessary irrigation for our plant life through its storm water reclamation and harvesting ponds. The center is also home to the Biology Department's research on coastal erosion, the horticulture center, the student-body run community garden, and a thriving recycling program. At the heart of the center is the Southeastern Energy and Environmental Development (SEED) Classroom, where visitors are literally surrounded by the inner workings of renewable energy systems. The walls inside the classroom display labyrinths of wires and pipes, valves and gauges, and are all labelled to explain their contributing part to and within each system. Overhead, roof-top solar photo-voltaic panels silently convert the sun’s energy into electrical form, while the wind turbine busily whirs the passing breezes into electrical energy. A fully-functional solar thermal system is also at work converting and saving energy. Labelled components tell the story of how the sun’s heat is collected to heat water for processes in our campus buildings such as the Kinesiology and Nursing Buildings, our Biology Building, and Cardinal Newman Hall. Also, a pond-loop geothermal system heats and cools the classroom space using heat-pump technology--more efficient than the air-cooling heat pump behind your house!