April is historic preservation month at the University, and the School of Environmental Design and Historic Preservation is seeking to raise awareness in the community – and hopefully create some historic preservation advocates along the way.

“While we would love everyone to be a student of historic preservation, they don’t have to be in our major or even in the school to be an advocate,” director of graduate studies in historic preservation John Waters said.

“You could be an effective preservationist no matter what you are doing in your career if you recognize the opportunities available in order to help preserve any aspect of the place that you live.”

In fact, according to Waters, preserving the buildings and downtown areas that give a city its character is what historic preservation is traditionally thought to be centered on.

“I mean, how would your feelings about Athens and downtown change if the half of the Starbucks block of College Station was bulldozed and replaced with a huge parking garage,” said Kim Kooles, an historic preservation graduate student and president of the Student Historic Preservation Organization.

“The historic buildings are a big part of the vibe of Athens.”

But, according to Kooles, there is also the more cutting edge, “green” aspect of historic preservation. It’s a “relatively untouched market” that is becoming more and more important as people attempt to live more sustainably.

“There’s nothing more sustainable than a historic property because what you are essentially doing by not rebuilding is sustaining the energy that was used to create, transport and place all of the building materials,” Waters said.

“Anything built has a certain amount of contained energy, whether it be carbon or human effort, and to just haul it off is a total waste of that energy and the exact opposite of sustainability.”

In Waters’ opinion, historic preservation has become more than a movement. It has become a small part of environmental ethics, which is meant to reduce humans’ negative effects on the planet.

“Although we are slowly moving away from this, in the ’50s and ’60s, America became known for being a throw-away society, and we would view everything as one-time-use, and they would throw away a building as if it were a Kleenex,” Waters said.

“Now that people are becoming more concerned with their carbon footprint and the environment, that view is changing, and sustaining what makes our community unique and being earth friendly is now more important.”