Calvin's Commuter Advisory Board (CAB) will be sponsoring an on-campus oil change clinic at 4 pm on Wednesday, November 16.

Two technicians from Valvoline Instant Oil Change will lead the clinic, teaching students how to change a car's oil, replenish fluids, adjust air pressure in the tires and more.

"It's going to be a quick program," says Bob Crow, dean of student development at Calvin College. "But it will provide some basic maintenance issues for people who don't know much about cars and want to take care of their cars for the winter so they don't get stranded."

And two lucky students will leave the clinic with coupons for free oil changes.

The oil change event is the latest in CAB's efforts to meet the needs of Calvin's commuter students.

The group was convened at the beginning of the fall semester to advise Crow and to plan activities both social and educational. CAB has already hosted a golf tournament, a farm visit and a rock climbing outing and is currently planning a low-budget cooking demonstration and a Christmas banquet.

"We have a fantastically well-developed residence life program, and what I want do is make sure that the 44 percent of our students who live off campus also have a great experience," Crow says. "We have over 1,750 students off campus. That's a pretty sizeable number, and I wanted to figure out how we can best serve them. It's far better to have students who live off campus tell me what they need."

Though he concentrates a good portion of his time on off-campus issues, Crow says his goal is to keep commuter students strongly tied to the college.

"I think that it is important that we recognize that they are all our students," he says. "We have one campus. We are one college. And we want to facilitate well-rounded student development for all of our students."

Some of the ideas that CAB discusses address more serious issues than low budget cooking, and safety is chief among them, he adds.

For example, upon learning that the Eastown neighborhood, where the largest concentration of Calvin's off-campus population resides, had experienced a rash of muggings in the past few months, CAB hosted a safety seminar.