Farmingdale State has green lesson plan for businesses

The effort to make Long Island more green will be taken up this fall by Farmingdale State College, which will sign up companies to instruct the school in how to build and maintain energy-efficient buildings, the first such program on the Island by a higher-educational institution.

Farmingdale's Green Building Institute will start "small," said its director, Amit Bandyopadhyay, with 15 or 20 companies sending executives and employees to the campus on Route 110 to take courses that will meet Friday and Saturday, for eight hours each day. The fee for the two days of courses is $375 for members of the Long Island Builders Institute, a partner in the program, and $425 for others. The program will be expanded later in the year, Bandyopadhyay said.

The idea for a Green Building Institute began more than two years ago, when Bandyopadhyay and officials of the U.S. Green Business Council, a volunteer group on the Island, began talking about the need to educate companies about the importance of going green. Farmingdale State College president Hubert Keen gathered about 28 professors and administrators in his office, and the idea took hold. Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) earlier this year secured $375,000 in federal funding for the institute.

About 18 Farmingdale professors will teach courses at the institute when the program starts. "Many [business people] are very interested" in green technology, said Bandyopadhyay, chairman of the college's architecture and construction management department. "They're concerned. But to understand the whole concept, they need the help" of education.

The United States, Bandyopadhyay said, has fallen behind many in Europe and elsewhere in green technology. "This is a step" toward catching up, he said. "But it's going to take more than just this effort."