In Engineering 333 at Calvin University, students spend the entire semester answering a single question. For this semester’s class, that question is, “What should be the design of a Calvin Solar Farm?”
Professor Matt Heun teaches Engineering 333 alongside physics professor Larry Molnar, structural engineering professor Len De Rooy, and Calvin’s chief financial officer, Dirk Pruis. Heun said it can be intimidating for students to try to answer such questions, but it is inspiring, too. It’s exactly the sort of work Calvin encourages its students to tackle. Heun and the other professors have high hopes—and high expectations—for the students involved in this year’s project.
“Environmental sustainability is one of the grand challenges faced by humanity,” Heun said. “In the case of engineering for environmental sustainability in the classroom, we instructors face a unique problem: Humanity doesn’t yet know the answer to our environmental crises. So there is no established curriculum. I don’t know how the students will answer the semester’s question. I don’t know how the semester is going to end. This is question-driven, inquiry-driven work.”
The stakes are high, and the challenge is a call to innovation and collaboration. It is precisely the kind of work that brings out the best in Calvin’s engineering students, and that gratifies Heun, Molnar, and De Rooy as educators and Pruis as an administrator.
“It’s a very rich environment when I’m learning and engineering alongside the students,” Heun said. “I can’t wait to see the ideas they come up with. I’m consistently impressed by how hard they work. They’re working to help solve some of the important sustainability problems for our campus and for the rest of the world. The discoveries they make and innovations they produce will have real, lasting value.”
These classes also help support Calvin University’s commitment to carbon neutrality. The professors explain that sustainability isn’t an effort relegated to any particular group on campus. It’s a posture of care for creation adopted by students, faculty, administrators, staff, and the broader community.
How do we better manage our energy resources? How do we better use them? How do we produce energy that pollutes less, or undo the pollution that has already occurred? These are all practical questions that desperately need to be answered. In fact, Heun thinks they’re questions Christians in particular should be trying to answer.
“Sustainability is important for Christians to be invested in,” Heun said. “I think all the students have an idea that we should take care of the environment when they come to Calvin, but they need a little encouragement to consider the next step: What are the hurdles? What are the problems I can contribute to solving?”
The shift into practical engagement is at the heart of Calvin’s hands-on, service-oriented learning approach. And this practical engagement extends to everyone at every level of Calvin’s administration. Projects such as designing Calvin’s solar farm are an invitation to collaboratively and faithfully serve God and the world no matter who you are.
“At Calvin, there’s an understanding that we need to be engaged with the world,” Heun said. “Our faith is not a retreat. It’s a faith that gets its hands dirty and wants to serve and wants to help.”