It's been 15 years in the making -- a vision of the 10th University of California campus, a revolutionary design plan where students will learn not only in classrooms, but also from them.
School officials say the future UC-Merced campus will incorporate environmentally sensitive buildings and the latest in sustainable architecture and technology -- windows will open automatically as the climate changes and the winds shift; trees will create a cooling canopy, and natural light filtered through tinted windows will illuminate laboratories.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates a typical American college lab uses five times as much energy and water per square-foot as an office building and consumes the equivalent of 15,000, 100-watt light bulbs daily.
"We believe we will cut that consumption by 20-30 percent," says Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey. "And students will learn from that.
"Just think how many billions of dollars are being spent on building college campuses and all the students that will attend them ... . If we can show students what sustainable buildings are and how they work and have them leave college understanding that, then they'll have the knowledge to make the right decisions in life," Tomlinson-Keasey adds.
The site will be the first new UC campus since Santa Cruz opened in 1967, and will serve the San Joaquin Valley, where some 40,000 kids graduate from high school every year.
Officials say only about 1,300 of those graduates attend UC schools, half the attendance rate of the rest of the state. The San Joaquin Valley is home to 3.5 million residents between Stockton and Bakersfield and is California's fastest growing region.
But that growth has a price.
Nationwide, only Los Angeles has dirtier air than the San Joaquin Valley. And Californians two years ago faced rolling blackouts and dwindling power supplies.
Tomlinson-Keasey says that's why the school, "a living laboratory," will be a perfect fit for the Valley.
Environmental studies will be a main focus of the campus that also will be home to the Sierra Nevada Research Institute in partnership with the National Park Service.
"We build green at our universities," says UC system spokesman Charles McFadden.
McFadden says many colleges have chosen to construct sustainable buildings, but not many have built entirely sustainable campuses.
Construction is under way on about 200 acres and officials hope the school will open with its first 1,000 students in 2004 and grow to 25,000 by 2030. The campus will eventually consume 900-plus acres of rural foothills land just outside the city of Merced -- population 60,000 -- and is expected to spur housing and commercial development for another 30,000 people in addition to those housed on campus.
He says the UC-Merced campus will be built much like UC-Santa Barbara's Donald Bren Hall, where the office wing facing the ocean has no air conditioning and instead relies on natural ventilation.
With much of the nation's growth focused in arid regions surrounding cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas and Reno, Nev., sustainable building in dry climates will be the wave of the future as energy consumption concerns grow.
Vivian Loftness, head of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Architecture, says UC-Merced could set the standard for construction of future colleges.
"The intention is that the buildings themselves will be learning laboratories," Loftness says. "In conventional universities, you go inside the buildings to find the laboratory. In this case, the buildings themselves will allow for exploration of the next generation of energy and environmental technologies."
"What this campus is trying to achieve is a destination for students who want to study the environment," Loftness says. "The hope is that students will gravitate to this campus because it is so unique ... and it will allow the state of California to address the issue of real sustainable architecture in this type of climate.
"This campus should become a model for how to build sustainably in dry climates."
UC regents picked the site in 1995 over competing proposals from Fresno and Madera County. The idea has been in the works since 1988.
But the project is not without critics.
Further construction depends on a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. The agency is considering whether to allow the campus onto wetlands where vernal pools are home to endangered fairy shrimp and serve as feeding grounds for migratory birds.
Environmental groups have sued to stop construction, claiming university officials did not adequately evaluate the campus' impact on air pollution, water quality and growth.
The case has been in the courts several times, but construction has been allowed to continue on a portion of the site that was once a golf course. Further arguments in the case are set for May 30.
Another potential snag is that the federal Fish and Wildlife Service said it would study the fairy shrimp for potential protection under the Endangered Species Act.
UC-Merced spokesman Grant says 25,000 acres surrounding the site have already been protected from future development, saving about a third of the vernal pool habitat.
Attorney Patience Milrod, who represents the San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center and two other environmental groups seeking to stop construction, says the school's conservation efforts are not enough to save vital habitat.
"There will in fact be horrible negative environmental effects on the fairy shrimp and the vernal pools," Milrod says. "If the court does decide in our favor, which of course we think is likely, then the construction expenditures to date will be unforgivable."