A Lesson in Saving the Environment : Science: Cal Poly Pomona project will put students and educators to work researching conservation issues. They will live in a newly built self-sufficient community on campus.

Imagine going into your bathroom for your morning shower only to have a computer monitor inform you that all your hot water credits have been used.

Desperate, you dash next door and offer to work your neighbor’s shift in the community garden in exchange for a couple of hot water credits. Rushing home with the credits, you punch a code into the computer and are rewarded with that long-awaited blast of warmth.

This is not just a starry-eyed view of the future. It could happen to any of the 90 students and scholars who will inhabit the Institute for Regenerative Studies, a $10-million experimental residential and academic complex that will soon be rising on the Cal Poly Pomona campus.

The institute, which will be built with private donations on 16 acres on the south side of the campus, is conceived as an interdisciplinary project that will bring together students and professors with an interest in environmental issues.

Residents will conduct research in such fields as alternative energy sources, new techniques for energy conservation and methods for rehabilitating damaged land.

But the residents are the subjects of the institute’s biggest experiment--a self-sufficient, environmentally correct community that will serve as a showcase for the technologies and methods being developed there.

More than $4 million has been raised for the project from contributors that include the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Ahmanson Foundation, Bank of America and Simpson Paper Co.

An inaugural ceremony for the institute was held Thursday for the first phase of the community, scheduled to be finished next summer. It will include a seminar facility, restroom-shower building, and separate dormitories for 16 students and professors. The residents will be chosen from various academic backgrounds to ensure that the community will have a diverse pool of expertise.

“There is a need for communication between different specialties,” said Prof. Victor Wegrzyn, acting director of the institute. “Working with persons of differing academic and personal backgrounds will help people to look beyond the fences that separate them.”

He said the experimental community will not be isolated from campus life and will function as an alternative to living in a regular dormitory. Residents will attend classes, but they will also be responsible for cooking and growing their own food, maintaining the institute’s fisheries and power plants, and adhering to strict energy conservation guidelines.

In exchange for their work, residents will receive additional academic credits and possible rebates on their rent.

The community, which is expected to grow to 90 people when it is finished in 1996, will eventually include an academic building with classrooms and research facilities, additional dormitories and a waste reclamation plant.

Nothing in the community will go unused, Wegrzyn said, noting that in the fisheries, residents will be responsible for collecting the fish manure that will serve as a natural fertilizer for the gardens.

In addition to full-time residents, a number of students who live off campus will participate in the running of the institute. All participants will share responsibility for deciding how the community’s energy resources will be allocated.

The first group of residents will be allowed to use whatever amount of energy is necessary, Wegrzyn said, but it will be up to residents to discover ways to balance the needs of the community with conservation of the environment.