A new interpretive center at Calvin College is intended to benefit the community. So it's appropriate that almost half of the center's cost has already been raised thanks to a member of the community and a community foundation.

Calvin's new ecosystem interpretive center will be a $2 million facility, complete with classroom, interactive displays and more. Grand Rapids resident Helen Bunker, who, with her deceased husband Vincent, lived for 40 years near the 90-acre Ecosystem Preserve, has donated $750,000 to the project. And the just announced a $100,000 gift to the effort.

Both donors resonate with Calvin's desire to preserve, in the midst of a busy suburban environment, the measure of peace and tranquility that can be found in the woods, ponds and wetlands.

“We all share the same planet, we all draw on the same resources and we all have the same opportunities to impact it,” says Randy Van Dragt, a Calvin biology professor and director of the preserve. “What better thing to share with students than the natural world?”

The natural world of the Preserve is home to over 100 species of birds, almost 30 species of mammals, nine species of amphibians, six reptile species and three fish species. A visit to the Preserve might turn up everything from deer to fox to frogs to snakes.

That unspoiled environment in the midst of the city was a big factor in the Grand Rapids Community Foundation grant, which comes from the Charles Evenson Fund for the Environment. Evenson, an avid outdoorsman who treasured Michigan's land, water and wildlife, established the fund to help preserve the natural environment for future generations. "Even after his death, Mr. Evenson is still helping to preserve the land he loved through this fund," says Diana Sieger, Grand Rapids Community Foundation president.

Calvin's Ecosystem Preserve has four goals: 1) to preserve the complex of habitats (the ecosystem) on the site; 2) to provide a scientific resource for study by regular college classes, as well as for individual research; 3) to provide a passive recreational resource for the College community; and 4) to provide an educational resource for the larger community of Grand Rapids.

It is this final goal that will be most enhanced by the new building, to be known as the Vincent and Helen Bunker Interpretive Center. Immediately it will allow Calvin to double the programs offered to local schools (already some 2,000 children from 35-40 local schools visit the Preserve in the fall and spring).

The Bunker Interpretive Center will contain:

• a classroom/auditorium with seating for 60 and a wall-to-wall windowed overlook on the preserve
• a classroom/laboratory for 24 students
• a workroom/conference room for 14-16 volunteers
• display spaces

All of this will enable Calvin to provide year-round environmental education and will allow Calvin to do more programming for the general public. Currently schools are limited to activities in the Preserve because of the weather. They have a short window in October and November and another in April and May.

The new Center will allow for hands-on learning (a key focus and need according to local K-8 science teachers) from September through May. It also will allow for expansion of Calvin's summer camps program in the Preserve. And it will be the setting for a new two-week summer course in outdoor education for local school teachers (to be led by Calvin faculty) that will run concurrently with the summer camps.

Calvin also plans to reach out beyond its students in putting together a cadre of Center volunteers. While it will continue to use students from such disciplines as education, biology and environmental studies, it also will reach out to adult volunteers, including seniors. The new Center will be the base of operations for this new corps of volunteers.

Finally the new Interpretive Center will be a plus for casual visitors to the Preserve with its educational and historical displays, its staffed information station and its restrooms!

Construction will begin in 2002-2003 and enhanced programming will begin in 2003-2004.