sustainability

News type

Featured

Feature image

Story Type

Student story

Person

John Zimmerman

��Ƶ Partners with Consumers Energy to Commit to 100% Clean Energy

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 14:00:23 +0000

��Ƶ Partners with Consumers Energy to Commit to 100% Clean Energy msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 01/15/2025 - 09:00

��Ƶ has announced a groundbreaking 20-year partnership with Consumers Energy to meet 100% of the university’s annual energy needs with renewable energy sources, including wind and solar power. This agreement demonstrates Calvin’s steadfast commitment to environmental sustainability and the transition to a cleaner, greener future for Michigan.

Consumers Energy has pledged to match 100% of ��Ƶ’s annual electric energy consumption—21 million kWh—with carbon-free energy. By committing to this initiative, ��Ƶ is accelerating the development of new clean energy projects in Michigan and eliminating greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 8,124 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimations. This reduction is comparable to removing 1,895 gasoline-powered vehicles from the road each year or offsetting the energy use of 1,091 homes for a year, according to the EPA.

“This partnership reflects ��Ƶ’s deep dedication to creation care and sustainable flourishing for all,” said Greg Elzinga, president of ��Ƶ. “As a Christian liberal arts institution, we see this as a joyful response to God’s call to steward the Earth responsibly. Through our collaboration with Consumers Energy, we are not only reducing our environmental footprint but also serving as a model for how institutions can lead in the fight against climate change.”

Lauren Snyder, vice president of customer experience for Consumers Energy, highlighted the partnership’s importance in advancing Michigan’s clean energy goals. “��Ƶ’s leadership in choosing 100% renewable energy under our program underscores the critical role institutions play in shaping a sustainable future alongside us. This partnership will have a lasting impact, driving the growth of clean energy infrastructure and reducing carbon emissions across our state,” Snyder said.

Why It Matters

This agreement has profound environmental and social implications. By transitioning to 100% renewable energy, the EPA estimates ��Ƶ: Reduces greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 914,179 gallons of gasoline consumed or 9,024,608 pounds of coal burned annually;
Supports the carbon sequestration efforts of 134,336 tree seedlings grown for 10 years or the preservation of 48.5 acres of forest annually;
And avoids waste emissions comparable to recycling 2,871 tons of waste, the equivalent of 690,619 trash bags of waste kept out of landfills annually.

Calvin’s Sustainability Legacy

��Ƶ integrates environmental sustainability into every aspect of campus life, from academics to operations. Through initiatives like the Plaster Creek Stewards program, a nature preserve education center, and a sustainability-focused curriculum, the university is equipping students to lead in addressing global environmental challenges. This new partnership with Consumers Energy represents a significant milestone in Calvin’s ongoing mission to foster a more just, equitable, and ecologically healthy world.

About ��Ƶ

Founded in 1876, ��Ƶ is a top-ranked, liberal arts institution that equips its 3,600 students from 48 U.S. states, 66 countries, and five Canadian provinces to think deeply, to act justly, and to live wholeheartedly as Christ’s agents of renewal in the world. Calvin offers 100+ majors and programs, including a growing portfolio of graduate-level offerings. Calvin students engage in intensive internships, community-based service learning, and significant research that results in publishing and presenting alongside world-class faculty. The university’s 400-acre campus is in the vibrant city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Discover more at www.calvin.edu. 

Wed, 01/15/2025 - 12:00

Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Email Print this

Tags

News type

Featured

Feature image

Story Type

Staff story

Person

John Zimmerman

Students Design Calvin Solar Farm and Develop Soft Skills

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 14:02:51 +0000

Students Design Calvin Solar Farm and Develop Soft Skills msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 12/11/2024 - 09:02

This semester, students in four different classes (three engineering, one physics) were confronted with a big assignment: design a solar farm for ��Ƶ.

On Tuesday, December 10, 2024, the team presented a summary of their findings and their recommendation to their client, Calvin’s CFO Dirk Pruis, during a public event in the Covenant Fine Arts Center’s Recital Hall.

The recommendation, which will cost less than $4 million in upfront investment, includes
adding solar panels to roofs of Van Noord Arena, Venema Aquatic Center, DeVos Communications Center, Prince Conference Center, Hekman Library, and Hiemenga Hall. It also includes ground installations at the Lake Drive entrance and near the Seminary. The solar farm would eliminate about 10% of Calvin’s CO2 emissions from electricity consumption (and about 5% of the university’s total CO2 emissions). The internal rate of return for the investment would be approximately seven percent per year.

“I think this is very compelling, to say I can take less than $4 million of the endowment and lock in a seven-percent return for the life of the solar panels,” said Pruis. “Most investors, given today’s elevated equity market valuations and lower expected returns in the medium term as a result, would say, ‘yeah, I’d lock in seven percent in a heartbeat.’”

Valuing both the financial and environmental impact

While Pruis is clearly interested in the numbers, what impressed students most was his equal concern for Calvin’s other commitments, and that came through throughout the semester as Pruis listened to progress reports and offered feedback.

“I’m really impressed by Calvin’s commitment to sustainability,” said Nick Heuker, a senior engineering major (mechanical concentration). “I presented on the financial side of things and that’s really where I was thinking, but Dirk came back with questions like ‘what’s our carbon offset look like? How can we reach our sustainability goals regardless of what makes the most financial sense?’”

Learning along the way

While the students gained a deeper appreciation for the professors and administrators who entrusted them with such a large project and they now know far more about solar panels and everything that goes along with installing them, they say their greatest takeaway from the project was learning soft skills that will translate to any job, any career, and all of life.

“When we first started this project, it was hectic,” said Heuker. “We didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t have any structure.”

“We definitely began without a full understanding or grasp of what the project would look like at the end of it,” said Rory Marco, a senior engineering major (mechanical concentration).

The classes would be divided into smaller teams, and each began digging into various aspects of the project. But while they thought this would move them to a solution faster, it also presented its own challenges.

“During our first in-class progress report presentation time, everyone had different templates, everyone spoke on different pieces of information. There was a lot of duplicate work being done,” said Marco.

Discovering a sustainable path forward

“We had to establish lines of communication, and it was a struggle,” said Heuker.

So, prior to the second in-class presentation, a small group of students stepped up and led efforts to get communication lines better established. “I think that really helped our project,” said Heuker. “It gave us a lot more guidance and made us work much more effectively together.”

In the process, the classes learned how to work smarter and not harder, not trying to reinvent the wheel, but instead seeking out existing expertise and data.

“It was all about talking to the right people to make sure we got the right information,” said Aiden Ehmann, a senior engineering major (mechanical concentration). “It’s really easy to be sat learning in a class where you are taking notes, but here we had to actively seek to learn what we needed to learn.”

Intentionally designed project

According to Matt Heun, who has been architecting these kinds of projects for 20-plus years, all of this is part of the pedagogical design. And this year he says having four different classes across multiple disciplines work together on a project of this magnitude only enhanced the learning opportunities for students.

“The beauty of this kind of project is that neither students nor professors know where it will lead! That can be scary, but it can also be invigorating,” said Heun. “I wish you could see our students transform as I do from September to December. In September, they are filled with uncertainty and insecurity. However, throughout the semester, they work together toward the common goal of building a sustainable future. By December, they see that their work can make our campus more sustainable. By December, they fill me with hope for the future!”

The attendees on December 10 witnessed a rich and polished presentation. But to get to that point, students needed to develop skills that will serve them into their careers and for the rest of their life.

“I think a lot of unknowns and chaos earlier in the semester has come to harmony at the end of the semester,” said Ehmann.

Wed, 12/11/2024 - 12:00

Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Email Print this

Tags

News type

Featured

Feature image

Story Type

Student story

Person

Departments

Engineering

Students Tasked with Designing Calvin’s Solar Farm

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 14:48:26 +0000

Students Tasked with Designing Calvin’s Solar Farm msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 09/18/2024 - 10:48

It’s the first day of class, students had just taken their seats, and literally within 30 seconds, Professor Matt Heun spoke these words to his Engineering 333 class.

“The project this semester is we are going to design Calvin’s solar farm.”

After a few-second pause, one student said, “sweet.”

A few seconds later, another student started to clap, which spread slowly throughout the room. The room seemed filled with nervous excitement, something acknowledged multiple times over the course of the next hour.

An Intentionally Designed Daunting Task

“From where you sit right now it probably seems quite daunting,” said Heun.

Heun knows it’s daunting, because that’s the point. His teaching pedagogy is to use creative problem-based and team-based strategies to assist student learning. It’s something he brought to Calvin 20-plus years ago. “I teach that way because I have a background in aerospace where we are always doing something new, always challenging ourselves to take a step that’s never been taken before,” said Heun. “That’s what we want with education, young people full of enthusiasm and energy, paired with older and wiser practitioners who provide guidance. That’s a cool combination.”

An Invested and Supportive Community

Heun is one of those advisers, but he spent a portion of his first class introducing students to a number of other guides, from director of facilities Jennifer Ambrose to electronic shop technician Chuck Holwerda to the client for this project: Dirk Pruis, the university’s chief financial officer. Interim president Greg Elzinga was in attendance to emphasize the importance of this work.

“There are all these journals that talk about the future of higher education, and one of the biggest challenges you’ll see in some of those are campus infrastructure and energy for the future,” said Elzinga. “So not only is this project important from a learning aspect for all of you, it’s also important to the future of Calvin for some very practical reasons, but also for our creation care commitment as a university community.”

“This is who we are at Calvin, how we think about creation care as Christians. We have a responsibility to the environment, and that’s who we are at our core. We signed onto that at Greg’s level a couple of presidents back,” said Pruis, referring to the 2017 signing of the President’s Climate commitment.

Lots of Questions and A New Twist

As Heun continued to outline the project, students asked questions about the weekly rhythm, the scope, and the details needed in project deliverables.

What was also revealed to the students in Heun’s class is that one of those deliverables would be needed by mid-semester. For the first time in the 20-plus years Heun has been creating novel projects for his students, the two sections of his ENGR 333 classes are partnering with both a structural design class in the engineering department and a physics class, to help answer the question.

“At the middle of the semester, we have a deliverable for the physics class and the structural class to provide information so we can all work together,” said Heun.

So, there was no time to waste. Heun’s first assignment due the evening of the first class was for the students to apply to be part of one of four teams who would each be digging deep into a particular type of mounting option for the solar panels. They were expected to present their initial findings two weeks later.

Diving In

“I think it’s a big project and I’m very excited about the prospect of working with other students from across departments and across concentrations,” said Rory Marco, a senior engineering major (mechanical concentration) from Sacramento, California.

“I’m honestly really excited because it can be easy in school for projects to just feel like it’s busywork or just examples, but this feels like it’s actually helping people and our university, which is amazing,” said Aiden Ehmann, a senior engineering major (mechanical concentration) from Durham, North Carolina. “I think I’m just excited for working with the administration for deliverables and all the aspects of creatively approaching this project.”

While the students are presenting their work and receiving feedback from the client throughout the semester, their final presentation with their recommendation for Calvin’s solar farm will take place in early December.

Wed, 09/18/2024 - 12:00

Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Email Print this

Tags

News type

Featured

Feature image

Feature image caption

On September 17, students in ENGR 333 were already presenting their initial findings to their client, CFO Dirk Pruis. The students were introduced to the project two weeks prior.

Story Type

Student story

Person

Committed to excellence on, off, and under the fields

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 05:24:40 +0000

Committed to excellence on, off, and under the fields Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 01:24

Over the next couple of years, Calvin’s outdoor athletic fields are getting major upgrades. On the northwest side of campus, the men’s and women’s soccer teams both won their initial contests on the new turf Zuidema soccer field. On the east side of campus a new track will be completed within weeks. And this is just the beginning.

But perhaps of equal importance to future stadiums, locker rooms, and training facilities is what’s not in plain sight, what’s hidden underground. The fields below the fields.

A deeply rooted commitment

“If this project is successful, I think it will allow us to move our carbon neutrality delivery date earlier, which aligns with President Boer’s desires,” said Matt Heun, professor of engineering at Calvin.

The project Heun references is the installation of two small geothermal fields—one to the northwest of the future soccer stadium and one just east of the future football building, “which ironically is slated to be underneath the future football field,” said Dirk Pruis, the CFO at Calvin.

Faculty and student advisors

“I didn’t dream this up,” said Pruis referring to the possibility of adding geothermal to Calvin’s campus, “others have been thinking about this for a while.”

Thinking about caring for creation and sustainability? Yes. ��Ƶ faculty and staff have produced scholarship and pushed the university to lean into this commitment for nearly half a century.

Thinking about geothermal solutions? “The student project for my Engineering 333 class last fall was focused on how to decarbonize campus heating,” said Heun. “They looked at lots of options. The one they landed on was geothermal.”

The client for that class project was President Boer. Pruis, who serves on the president’s cabinet, acknowledged the students’ work “helped inform our thinking around this.”

And it’s not the first time that student work helped inform sustainability initiatives on campus. Look no further than the Bunker Interpretive Center, where a group of senior engineers’ design project involved fitting that building with solar panels. That building is LEED-certified.

Piloting geothermal

While every building on campus outside the Bunker Interpretive Center is heated and cooled with a loop of hot and cold water, the university is “not putting these new athletic buildings on that loop,” according to Pruis.

The administration’s decision is encouraging to Calvin faculty, like Heun, who share in a deep commitment to caring for creation.

“I’m thrilled that the decision was made to go geothermal for the new buildings. They will be a great test case for us,” said Heun. “As the electricity supply gets decarbonized, they will emit less and less CO2 as we heat and cool them. That’s such a good, forward-thinking step for the university.”

While the plans are to install the two new geothermal fields, university leaders are still awaiting results from a 500-foot deep test bore that was done a couple of weeks ago before moving forward. Pruis says he “anticipates those results will determine that we can move forward with these plans.”

Tue, 09/12/2023 - 12:00

Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Email Print this

Tags

News type

Featured

Feature image

Person

Identifier

d47ebfe4ef3f46e14c5fd3e3608d886c

Migrated Author field

Matt Kucinski

Professor's research impacts coffee roasting on six continents

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 05:24:40 +0000

Professor's research impacts coffee roasting on six continents Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 01:24

On a late September afternoon, you’ll find Ren Tubergen in the doghouse.

But make no mistake, the engineering professor at Calvin put himself there.

“It’s called the doghouse, because it’s her place,” said Tubergen as he pets Ronin, his 3-year-old German Shepherd.

The doghouse is a 600-square-foot outbuilding on Tubergen’s residential property in Cascade Township. While Ronin likes to accompany him there, it’s where Tubergen’s doing some of his scholarship these days.

An unexpected research lab

In one corner, there are a handful of 125-lb. bags of coffee beans, on the other side of the space, a pair of coffee roasters. “This one is capable of roasting 100 pounds of coffee per hour,” said Tubergen, pointing to the newest addition to his setup.

bodyimage1

But Tubergen isn’t in the coffee distribution business.

“I’m in research and development,” said Tubergen.

Tubergen is “the RND center” for an organization called VortX, which is based in California. What Tubergen’s been doing for years is helping the company solve a problem—reducing the detrimental effect conventional coffee roasting is having on the environment.

“If you’ve driven by a coffee roaster that doesn’t treat their exhaust, you can smell it, and it can hurt your eyes because of the pollutants, the oils in the coffee that get boiled off during the roasting process,” said Tubergen. “An afterburner, while it’s a great cleaning process, is very energy intensive and produces CO2. It was a great solution in the 1970’s.”

Not settling, aiming higher

But Tubergen and his colleagues at VortX knew settling for a solution that worked 50 years ago wasn’t good enough. So, they got to work, and came up with an idea and a prototype: a device that removes a lot of the smoke from the coffee roasting process—about 85-percent—and puts that smoke into water instead of the air, keeping the environment cleaner in the process.

Their idea entered the patent process and after a few years of peer review, it achieved patent status. Over the past five years, the company has installed the patented product, a VortX EcoFilter, in about 200 locations on six continents.

Tubergen isn’t surprised by the success of the product given that the customers they’re selling to share their values.

“Coffee roasters are generally very environmentally conscious. They are selling a part of the Earth, that’s the way they truly think about it,” said Tubergen. “And at the core they are providing coffee and that makes them extremely hospitable people. For small roaster’s there’s no obligation for those people to be treating their exhaust, but they want to be good neighbors. They are doing that out of love for creation, and a love for the neighbor next door.”

Benefitting students

Tubergen has also seen this research process as a great opportunity to involve students.

“One area I’ve been teaching since I started at Calvin is machine design. In some sense, that’s a machine,” said Tubergen, pointing at the 25-lb. roaster in his outbuilding. “It encompasses a ton of great things about mechanical engineering, the thermodynamic process, the cooling of the exhaust, the water recycling, the water flow and the plumbing, they all tie into the thermodynamics side, but there are a lot of machine design issues too.”

He also sees this scholarship as keeping him in the process of learning, making him a better teacher of the concepts.

“I can write about it, but you won’t find your mistakes when you write about it,” said Tubergen. “I mean peer review is supposed to check if your work is valid, but really, reality is how you figure out if it’s valid, peer review doesn’t tell you that.”

And while Tubergen spends a fair amount of time in the doghouse, he’s also excited to share the space and his experiences with his students.

“I think that’s important in living that out with students, having them see your values, having them see how you are spending your time, and where you’ve chosen to be a resource to the community.”

Sat, 09/30/2023 - 12:00

Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Email Print this

Tags

News type

Featured

Feature image

Person

Departments

Engineering

Identifier

1ce22081f3179265afaa457d6b644630

Migrated Author field

Matt Kucinski

Removing Parking and Discovering Place

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 05:24:40 +0000

Removing Parking and Discovering Place Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 01:24

A couple dozen parking spaces on the ��Ƶ campus are out and a large bioswale has now moved in.

“It’s kind of like a bowl full of plants,” said Haley Weesies, a 2022 ��Ƶ graduate who is in her first year as program coordinator for Plaster Creek Stewards, a collaboration of ��Ƶ faculty, staff, and students working with local schools, churches, and community partners to restore the health and beauty of the watershed.

The construction and planting work on campus creates a beautiful space alongside the parking lot for the Prince Conference Center and features a diversity of native plants and pollinators.

“It’s an extension of the natural spaces we already have on campus,” said Julie Wildschut, assistant professor of engineering.

A natural filter for stormwater

The construction work on the new bioswale kicked off in late spring and is supported by a 319 grant from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy's Non Point Source Division.

bodyimage1

“This used to be just parking lot, which obviously doesn’t soak up water,” said Weesies, “and now it’s like a sponge, a sink for that dirty runoff that’s coming off of what’s in the parking lot (when it rains) and then the plants are soaking it up so that instead of it going down the drain, it’s being naturally filtered through the ground and absorbed by the plants.”

Without bioswales like these, the stormwater runoff would head down the drain, then into Plaster Creek, the Grand River, and eventually into Lake Michigan. Weesies says understanding these ripple effects is crucial and why education is one of the three pillars of the Plaster Creek Stewards’ work.

“All of the dirty water that would have been flowing off this parking lot would have been carried to our neighbors downstream and that’s impacting their health, their homes, and it’s making the place they live and play in dirty and gross,” said Weesies.

From awareness to appreciation

Sophia Ferenczi is a high school senior and a member of the Green Team, a group of high school students who work with the Plaster Creek Stewards each summer.

“We know the plants are important, but this is the on-the-ground restoration piece of our work. We also focus a lot on research and education, so learning and doing is what we like to pair together,” said Weesies. “And the high school Green Team Program is a great example of that, where students learn about our watershed, tour it, they see different places in it, they learn about things like environmental justice, about hydrology and ecology, and how water moves and how plants grow and what are good plants and what are invasive plants. So, they are learning about their place. Because these students all either live or go to school or both in our watershed.”

All that Ferenczi has learned being a part of the Green Team over the past two years has her taking greater responsibility and action.

“I think when you know about the space you are inhabiting you feel more like it’s a place you need to care about it,” said Ferenczi. “We are a part of the ecology of this land and of this place and we’ve had such a massive impact on it, and I think knowing that and understanding that, especially in a group of people, you feel like ‘oh, it’s my responsibility to start changing this and being better for this land that I’m a part of.’”

From appreciation to action

Cherith Pickett, now a sophomore, chose ��Ƶ because it was “the only small Christian liberal arts school with a strong environmental science program that was affordable for me.” She’s deepened her appreciation for and commitment to caring for creation through her time at Calvin and working with Plaster Creek Stewards this summer.

bodyimage2

“God has given us this beautiful planet and we are called to be stewards of it in Genesis,” said Pickett, “and when we’re not stewarding it, it’s just sad to see the effects of our human impact on creation. And when we can do our part, it’s so rewarding to see the life we can help propagate and generate.”

From student to steward

For Weesies working on this project is a bit of a full circle moment. “I worked on the Plaster Creek Stewards summer team after my sophomore year, so I worked on the curb cut rain garden team and got to do exactly what these guys are doing, installing green infrastructure projects, learning about native plants, being out in the community,” said Weesies.

bodyimage3

A living lab

Wildschut is excited about the additional research and experiential learning possibilities this newest project will open up for current and future learners.

“From an engineering perspective you design the bioswale to do certain things, and since it’s right here on our campus, it gives us the opportunity to say, does it do those things?” said Wildschut. “And there’s a widespread adoption of green infrastructure, but there’s not always a willingness to push the boundaries, engineers like to play it safe sometimes. So, when we are doing this work on Calvin’s campus, we can push those boundaries, try new things, and then monitor to see what happens and works well. If something doesn’t work well, we maybe adjust it, figure out what needs to be different. If something does work well, then we use it as a demonstration so hopefully we can spread these techniques elsewhere.”

Because the work happening on Calvin’s campus has ripple effects.

“One of the things that Calvin wants to do is demonstrate the commitment we have to sustainability and the research and the knowledge we’ve been accruing over these years. We really have an extensive research connection to sustainability efforts, from energy to stormwater to land use, so many different areas,” said Wildschut. “We’ll put signs up about this project and just point to what we are doing and why, so everybody who comes here will be able to see it. They’ll be able to benefit from the beauty of it and the increase in biodiversity and pollinators, but they’ll also be able to see and make that connection of what Calvin is doing for sustainability, and then be able to use Calvin as a resource. We want to take that place in our community, that we are a resource, and we can help other people with their sustainability efforts.”

Tue, 08/01/2023 - 12:00

Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Email Print this

Tags

News type

Featured

Feature image

Person

Identifier

02edd01df93c592cf1e8bf68d4dd74b7

Migrated Author field

Matt Kucinski

Students create viable path for ��Ƶ to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 05:24:40 +0000

Students create viable path for ��Ƶ to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 01:24

Standing on stage in the CFAC Recital Hall at ��Ƶ, senior Stuart Johnston set the stage.

“In 2015, the Paris Agreement set the goal of limiting global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius. So why is 1.5 degrees Celsius significant?” Johnston asked. “Because this is the point where irreversible climate change will occur.”

While curbing this trajectory is not something any one organization can do on its own, each institution is responsible for doing its part. In 2017, then-president of ��Ƶ Michael Le Roy signed the President’s Climate Commitment, which pledged Calvin to becoming carbon neutral by 2057.

“This was a groundbreaking commitment and a great step in the right direction,” said Johnston. “But scientists right now are predicting that if the world continues with business as usual, we can expect to hit that 1.5-degree Celsius mark by 2030.”

Aiming higher

bodyimage1

It's within this context that current Calvin president Wiebe Boer posed the question: “What earlier year should ��Ƶ choose for its carbon neutrality date?”

And Boer turned to an internal consulting firm to discover the answer: Professor Matt Heun’s Engineering 333 classes.

Getting to work

This fall, students in each of his sections of ENGR 333 formed into four teams.

An electricity team, led by senior David Harris, was considering all of Calvin’s electricity needs and how it could become carbon neutral.

A heating team, led by senior Stuart Johnston, was figuring out how to heat all of Calvin’s campus with zero net carbon emissions.

An efficiency team, led by senior Panashe Makuvaro, was looking for ways to use electricity and heating more efficiently and at reducing the amount of waste both on the energy and the money side.

A funding team, led by senior Michael Lanning, was tasked with figuring out how much the path to carbon neutrality will cost and at finding creative ways to fund it.

bodyimage2

Turning ideas into solutions

The teams came up with lots of ideas throughout the semester, and, in December, Harris, Johnston, Makuvaro, and Lanning presented the team’s final recommendations.

“Initially, we were optimizing for energy and focusing on what’s going to reduce our carbon emissions by the most amount,” said Makuvaro, “but the final step was the funding, because that’s the biggest thing. It could be a good idea, but if you can’t fund it, then there’s no point in including it.”

At a public seminar, the team leads presented, one-by-one, tangible solutions to making Calvin carbon neutral, everything from installing geothermal ground source heat pumps and smart thermostats, to adding a solar farm to campus and buying carbon offsets.

bodyimage3

“After researching all of our projects and how we would implement them, it was remarkable to see how feasible they can be. They are not only carbon neutral, but they are also cash positive throughout the entire process,” said Harris.

Proposing a significant move

In the end, the team proposed moving Calvin’s carbon neutrality date up 27 years to 2030.

“We didn’t just pick that date because of the Paris Agreement” said Makuvaro. “We were fortunate enough with all our hard work and calculations. 2030 is what we saw as feasible.”

While there is a significant financial investment needed for projects that will move the university toward carbon neutrality, there is also a significant source of financial relief. When the team calculated in energy cost savings from now until 2030, considered tax credits and grants available and rebates allowable through the Inflation Reduction Act, the total cost to Calvin over the next six years would be around $7 million, most of which administrators think could be covered by donors.

“This project confirmed that students can actually do it,” said Makuvaro. “A lot of the time you think you are restricted to what’s in the textbook, what’s coming on the test, but getting the opportunity to look at real-life stuff makes you feel like an engineer before you get that certificate at graduation.”

Unparalleled experience

bodyimage4
“Our students continue to impress me with their ability to come up with creative solutions to some of the most complex problems,” said Wiebe Boer, president of ��Ƶ. “Their public presentation was both clear and comprehensive, and their critical thinking skills were on full display as we interacted throughout this semester.”

This fall, the class had more than a few touchpoints with President Boer, Vice President Dirk Pruis, Vice President for Advancement Greg Elzinga, and engineers from GMB. Every few weeks, the students would invite the client group into their class where they’d present their findings, allow for questions, and ask for feedback along the way.

“That’s the feedback they’ll get on the job when they present to potential funders or clients,” said Heun. “So, to have that opportunity in the classroom before they graduate is quite a unique and interesting experience for them.”

“Having all of those individuals in the room while we are giving our presentation gives us a sense of realism and a sense of importance of this project, that it is being valued by the administration,” said Harris.

Dreaming bigger

And the students also see how projects like these give them a glimpse of what’s possible.
bodyimage5

“I think a project like this certainly helps us acknowledge where things are going badly,” said Makuvaro, “but it also motivates us. I can wake up feeling like my work is contributing to something bigger than I am. I may not be a priest, and I may not be a pastor, but I’m still involved in making God’s world a better place.”

“Calvin has an opportunity to lead other universities and colleges by moving our date forward,” said Lanning. “We can improve our shared future, but it is imperative that we act soon.”

Tue, 12/12/2023 - 12:00

Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Email Print this

Tags

News type

Featured

Feature image

Person

Identifier

4b25531ea6274d1194b27cf4432f6077

Migrated Author field

Matt Kucinski

Plaster Creek Stewards awarded $675K grant as part of Sustain Our Great Lakes Project

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 05:24:40 +0000

Plaster Creek Stewards awarded $675K grant as part of Sustain Our Great Lakes Project Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 01:24

��Ƶ recently received a $674,817 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The grant is one of 43 new or continuing habitat restoration grants that were awarded as part of the Sustain Our Great Lakes project.

“This latest grant will allow us to further reduce the daily load of pollutants entering Plaster Creek,” said Andrea Lubberts, program manager for PCS.

Defending the creek

The project will add native trees, shrubs, and plants to various strategic locations within the Plaster Creek watershed. These natural additions will serve as sponges soaking up stormwater that runs off paved surfaces throughout one of west Michigan’s most contaminated watersheds. Lubberts says that over the course of a year, this project will enable the capturing of three-and-a-half Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of water.

“A mature tree can hold 50-100 gallons of water just on their leaves. That’s a lot of rain and that’s not even considering the work the roots are doing,” said Lubberts. “There’s a lot of water movement that trees are intercepting.”

Lubberts says this absorption is crucial to the health of Plaster Creek and its residents. She says the stakes are too high to not take action.

Promoting a healthy creek for ALL

“If we don’t add trees or rain gardens or green features as sponges, then we will continue to have surges of stormwater that overwhelm the creek with polluted water,” said Lubberts. “The paved surfaces contain heat in the summer, salt in the winter, a lot of e-coli from animals and other pollutants which all runoff into the creek if not absorbed. Even the surge is very damaging, these spikes end up eroding the creek banks, creating an unhealthy environment for the creatures that live there.”

It also creates an unhealthy environment for residents—and not all residents are affected the same. Downstream communities tend to receive the brunt of the unhealthy creek issues in neighborhoods already facing environmental justice issues. It’s a key reason why PCS leaders see this work needing to be a more holistic venture than just showing up and planting trees and creating curb cut rain gardens.

“At the heart of the work we are doing with Plaster Creek Stewards is helping neighbors reconnect with the creek and with one another,” said Dave Warners, director of PCS and professor of biology at ��Ƶ. “We want to cultivate relationships between upstream and downstream neighbors, to help them see they are all part of the same watershed and show them ways their actions can contribute to the flourishing of their neighbors.”

A shared resource

The neighbors include residents, schools, houses of worship, and various other businesses and organizations. This month, the PCS team will bring together representatives from the various locations they’ll be working on through this grant.

“As soon as you start conceptualizing this upstream downstream situation, what people do in their place influences people elsewhere, it can be applied in so many different areas,” said Warners. “They see they are not nearly as isolated as they thought they were. We all depend on one another, and my actions are going to impact other people. So upstream/downstream thinking opens up all kinds of new awareness I think, it helps us live more thoughtfully and intentionally. We all are one human race, we need each other, and our actions influence one another.”

Committed to renewal

While this current grant provides significant funding and will lead to improvements throughout the watershed, PCS is playing the long game. Since 2009, they’ve received 40 awards totaling more than $5.2 million in funding from 15 different federal, state, and local agencies and foundations. The group has used these funds to transform many more acres of land into natural habitat, install 130 curb-cut rain gardens, and restore floodplains to mitigate flooding and erosion downstream. The work has also involved many partners and brought many communities together to work on solutions to a shared problem.

“What excites us most about this latest grant is that it allows us to invite several new partners into the work of Plaster Creek Stewards,” said Warners. “Water is one of the most unifying features in our landscape, but we oftentimes don’t fully realize it, because we live on roads instead.”

Note: The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U.S. Government or the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and its funding sources. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U.S. Government, or the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation or its funding sources.

Tue, 01/09/2024 - 12:00

Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Email Print this

Tags

Plaster Creek Stewards

News type

Featured

Feature image

Person

Identifier

8b46d58972aaaf6e6b2fb798de587d66

Migrated Author field

Matt Kucinski

A Well-Balanced Education Leads to Flourishing Life

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 05:24:40 +0000

A Well-Balanced Education Leads to Flourishing Life Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 01:24

At 4 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2, 2024, Noah Praamsma ‘17 will give a public lecture titled: “Plant-Based Diets: Recipe for Disaster or Vitality?” in ��Ƶ’s Meeter Center Lecture Hall. Praamsma is a Nutrition Education Coordinator for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, D.C.

“I think it’s pretty amazing that he’s working for one of the oldest, most influential nonprofits in the sector,” said Matt Halteman, professor of philosophy at ��Ƶ.

Since joining the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in January of 2023, Praamsma has supported clinical diabetes research, spearheaded the development of a plant-based dietitian network, spoken and written for a variety of sources, and contributed to policy initiatives at a variety of governmental levels in and outside of Washington, DC, among other things. Prior to the public lecture, Praamsma will visit and speak to Halteman’s Peaceable Kingdom class.

bodyimage1

Where it all started

“When Matt reached out to me to speak to his class, it was a special moment,” said Praamsma, who less than a decade ago also sat in Halteman’s class as a sophomore at Calvin and heard from a dietitian guest speaker. “Sitting as a student and hearing from a plant-based dietician was a formative moment for me—it exposed me to the profession. I’m very grateful God put me in that seat.”

Up until his sophomore year, Praamsma was on a pre-med track. But as he was finishing up his prerequisite courses, he was finding that his passions weren’t aligning with the traditional medical school route. Instead, he saw his path moving toward preventative healthcare, specifically through nutrition.

In his animal ethics philosophy course, Peaceable Kingdom interim, and in a biology course on global health, environment, and sustainability, Praamsma said “food kept popping up.”

“It feels like a well-orchestrated series of events that led me to where I am,” said Praamsma.

All coming together

Praamsma appreciated the clarity these classes were providing, but was also developing convictions that would encompass his professional and personal life. Like a well-balanced diet, the layered and complimentary approach of his liberal arts education to nutrition as a career path promised fulfillment and longevity.

“Eating is something of a spiritual discipline. It’s possible to honor God at every meal by stewarding my body, the environment, and other created beings that we share the planet with,” said Praamsma. “Several formative classes at Calvin that presented these three rationales for a plant-based diet all coincided in a single semester.”

Now, nearly a decade into pursuing this passion, Praamsma admits that if his “why” behind doing this work was not so multi-faceted, “I might have burnt out pretty quickly.”

“What most impresses me about Noah is how he puts the full range of his Calvin liberal arts university training to work: he’s a scientist, but his motivation to educate the world on the benefits of plant-based nutrition is driven by philosophical and spiritual concerns about the urgent need to care better for creation on every level, from our bodies, to our fellow creatures, to our food and public health systems, to our common earthly home,” said Halteman. “He cares fervently about the individual people he serves, but he also knows that doing better for everyone will require systems-focused policy reform.”

bodyimage2

Inspiring future leaders

And now Praamsma has a platform to take his depth and breadth of knowledge and share it with the world.

“I feel like I’ve been given this privilege of representing some of the leading voices in the plant-based nutrition movement,” said Praamsma. “Anywhere that I’m able to speak or write is an opportunity to present really important health information. In those moments, I always strive to carry myself in a way that lives out my conviction as a Christian and as an image bearer of Christ.”

While he’s looking forward to the public lecture on campus and to when he gets to speak to larger crowds of people, perhaps the moment he’s relishing most is what he calls a “full circle moment” for him—being able to speak to a small group of students at ��Ƶ, sitting where he did just a decade ago.

“It’s exciting for me to think now it’s my turn to be a representative and share a little bit about what the dietetics profession looks like and the good a person can do for others through it,” said Praamsma.

Tue, 03/26/2024 - 12:00

Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Email Print this

Tags

News type

Featured

Feature image

Person