NEW! Sustainability Summit Summary Report
On May 21, 2008 seventy members of the Calvin community gathered to consider our responsibility as an Reformed Christian college to care for God's creation. The Summit began with an overview and history of Calvin’s commitment to environmental stewardship presented by Gail Heffner and Clarence Joldersma through a powerpoint presentation, Building Campus Sustainability on the Strengths of Institutional and Cultural Identities: Calvin’s Decade Long Journey. This grows out of a paper written by Janel Curry, Gail Heffner and Clarence Joldersma for the Greening of the Campus Conference held at Ball State University last September. The conversation then shifted to consider the larger context of the issues we face and Matt Heun presented a powerpoint, Context and Goal-Setting: How Climate Change Could Affect Calvin. Summit participants then reviewed Calvin’s Statement on Sustainability and set priorities for Calvin’s future action. Finally action plans were developed for the coming year to foster greater environmental stewardship in our institutional practices. Click here to view the full Summary Report and click here to see pictures from the Summit itself.
What is CEAP?
CEAP is a collaborative effort of faculty across Calvin’s campus, but mainly in the sciences, whose focus is the understanding of the campus and local ecosystem. The goal is to impact the college and local municipalities as well as individual behavior. In this innovative program, faculty dedicate a regular lab session or project to collecting data that contributes to an overall assessment of the environment of the campus and surrounding area. Classes form working teams related to particular environmental issues. The data forms the basis for recommended changes in campus policies, for programs that target individual behavioral changes, and for identifying issues that involve and impact the adjacent neighborhoods. The program is dramatically increasing natural science faculty and students’ involvement in service-learning. CEAP is developing a model that can be used by other colleges and universities to move faculty to greater engagement with the local community.
Who is CEAP?
CEAP involves faculty across the college, but mainly in the sciences, who dedicate regular lab sessions or projects to collecting and analyzing data that contribute to an overall assessment of the environment of the campus and surroundings areas. Much of this research requires cooperative work among classes due to the problems’ interdisciplinary nature. The CEAP program models working-group strategies, with classes sharing data or specialties. For example, writing classes, in conjunction with science classes, will produce newsletters that transmit scientific information in a form for general readership. Engineering and political science students will work together to design wetland structures that filter out nutrients from water entering campus ponds as well as engaging in the work of reducing nutrient inflow from storm sewers draining from the adjacent municipalities’ lawns.
What does CEAP do?
The Calvin Environmental Assessment Program (CEAP) encourages an ethic of service and caretaking by helping students pay attention to that which is closest at hand – the air, wildlife, wetlands, and human communities that surround them. CEAP is a strategy called for in Calvin College’s five year plan to improve the equipping of students to better serve as articulate and resourceful community leaders. CEAP also highlights our interdependence with the local community.