Calvin College will participate in a first-of-its-kind in Michigan conference November 16 at the Eberhard Center on the Grand Rapids campus of Grand Valley State University.
"Plugging the Leaks: Energy Conservation and Efficiency" will be a day-long event bringing together representatives from a wide variety of Michigan's public and private colleges and universities. The goal of the conference is to get the state's college and universities thinking about energy conservation.
Said Terry Link, director of campus sustainability at Michigan State University and one of the event's organizers: "We need to stop the drain on our state economy that watches $18 billion of our hard-earned money leave the state to pay for the fuel that provide us with lights, heating, and transportation."
The state of Michigan's energy office is enthused about the upcoming event.
"We're hoping to build some new partnerships, share best practices, and learn our way forward utilizing the best minds from our higher education sector, state and local governments and business and civil society," said the office's John Sarver.
Calvin College academic dean Janel Curry will be moderating many of the morning sessions, while physics professor Matt Heun and Calvin vice president Tom McWhertor will participate in panel discussions.
Curry said it is important for Calvin to be part of the conference and to be involved with both the Grand Rapids Community Sustainability Partnership and the Michigan Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability (the latter group is coordinating the upcoming conference at GVSU).
"To be able to borrow ideas and share best practices on both a local and a state level is critical to the success of sustainability initiatives," said Curry. "Sustainability takes collaboration."
Curry said a current study at Calvin is a good example of what it means to be in partnership with other Grand Rapids organizations.
"The self-study we are doing now on our campus," she said, "is being modeled on a recent report Grand Valley did on their campus. Using some of the same measures they did makes it easier to figure out if we're going in the right direction."
Curry said one of the big goals for the upcoming conference is to create those kinds of partnerships on a state level, in much the same way as has happened already in a number of states, including Ohio and New Jersey.
That's one of the reasons the November 16 conference will include not only a variety of local speakers, but also national figures, including Marty Kushler from the American Council on an Energy Efficient Economy and Paul Meierdierck, co-chair of the energy ommittee of the New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability.
In addition Calvin alum and U.S. Congressman Vern Ehlers, sponsor of the recently introduced "Higher Education Sustainability Act," will open the conference with introductory remarks.