Next academic speaker: Les Johnson, Oct. 23

“The Living Light house uses less than half the energy of a typical construction, and we have developed a one-touch control for all systems,” he said.

The house uses three primary integrated systems: a roof-mounted solar array and sun shading; a south-facing passive solar facade and heat pump; and daylighting (glass) combined with LED lighting in the floor.

Rose said a graduate student team at Knoxville is continually monitoring the house for the purpose of long-term data acquisition on energy use and other issues.

For more information on the “Living Light” house and the Solar Decathlon, go to

http://livinglightutk.com.

The UTM celebration also included an outdoor display that featured agricultural equipment in 50-year increments, demonstrating how far agricultural methods and research have come in the past 150 years. The display was set up outside the Paul Meek Library.

Dr. Jerry Gresham, interim dean of the UTM College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, said the exhibit showed “where we’ve been in the last 150 years and where we could go in the next 150 years.” He stressed the influence of agricultural research on daily life and emphasized that “new research is not always directly related to the farm.”

The UTM Office of University Relations contributed to this report.