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Home to over 4,200 students on a scenic 176-acre campus nestled in Fredericksburg, VA, the University of Mary Washington boasts a colorful and high-profile history. Founded in 1908 as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women, the college was eventually renamed after Mary Ball Washington, mother of the nation's first president, and was subsequently affiliated with the University of Virginia. The beautiful neo-classical, Georgian, and Jeffersonian architecture throughout the campus is one of the reasons why the Princeton Review has consistently ranked Mary Washington as one of the top 20 most beautiful campuses in the nation.

In a continuous effort to keep its vintage architectural spaces as modern and functional as possible, Mary Washington recently pursued a lighting upgrade within its majestic Dodd Auditorium. The university's location for a broad spectrum of concerts, lectures, and public events throughout the year, the 1,400-seat Dodd Auditorium is the official site of the Fredericksburg Forum, a bi-annual event that has brought such famous authors, historians, and political luminaries to UMW as Elie Wiesel, Ken Burns, James Carville, Dave Barry, and Frank McCourt.

Originally built in the 1920s, the Dodd Auditorium housed an inefficient dimmable incandescent lighting system, which delivered extremely low light levels and created on-going maintenance issues. Said UMW Senior Director of Conference Management Susan Knick of the upgrade, "Our objectives for the Dodd Auditorium were to increase energy efficiency, reduce maintenance requirements, and obtain greater dimming abilities while offering a lighting system that was more aesthetically-pleasing and flexible."

The solution came in the form of a cutting-edge dimmable lighting system involving 55W compact fluorescent Philips PL-L 950 High Light Output lamps from Philips Lighting driven by Mark 10 Powerline 2-lamp electronic dimming ballasts from Advance. With a 20,000-hour rated average life, a color rendering index (CRI) of 91, and a 5,000 Kelvin temperature rating, these lamps combine all of the long life and energy efficiency benefits of fluorescent technology with the pleasing appearance typically associated with incandescent lighting. Versatile and energy efficient, the ballasts are flexible and easy to install because they require no additional wiring.

And with the ability to dim from 100 percent down to 5 percent, the ballasts provide the Dodd Auditorium with the ability to adjust light levels for all manner of events and activities.

Says Bill Jennings, electrical engineering consultant on the project and president of William R. Jennings, Jr., PE—Consulting Engineering in Forest, VA, "The new lamps and ballasts were fully compatible with the existing dimming system in the Dodd Auditorium such that we were able to re-use the facility's dimmer banks and controls with only minor modifications and all of its branch circuit wiring without any changes. In addition to saving a great deal of time and cost, this made for an extremely easy installation process and resulted in outstanding lighting performance that exceeded our expectations."

Revolving around the installation of new cove lighting and custom-designed 5-foot diameter pendants by project architect and designer Lora Katz, AIA and her team from Roanoke, VA-based Katz, McConnel + Associates, the results of the upgrade were impressive. The new compact fluorescent system has reduced energy consumption in the Dodd Auditorium by up to 40 percent, while footcandle levels increased from the 5 to 10 range to nearly 30. Other design treatments, including a repainting and redecorating of the interior, have supported the new lighting strategy while helping to further enhance the look and feel of this vintage space.