Calvin Students Work on Plans for Rehoboth High School

When the new, $13.7 million Rehoboth Christian High School opens its doors, students at Calvin College may see their fingerprints all over it.

Calvin engineering professors Matt Heun and Gayle Ermer were approached last year by Ken Zylstra, the director of development for Rehoboth Christian School (RCS), about assessing the feasibility of alternative energy production in Rehoboth, New Mexico.

In January, the two professors asked their interim to answer the question "what would it take for RCS to construct, own, operate and maintain a solar photovoltaic (PV) energy system?"

In three weeks, the team of 15 students had done a comprehensive assessment and presented their work to RCS representatives.

“The Calvin students did an excellent job of fully assessing the different areas involved including potential equipment, installation processes, system costs and long-term financial impact,” said Zylstra.

“They should be extremely proud that they did both important technical design work, and they worked on many political, policy and regulatory issues, too,” said Heun.

To read more about the challenges that students faced and things that they learned in developing this alternative energy project, read story.

Also, Rehoboth Christian High School is in the midst of a capital campaign to raise funds to build the $13.7 million facility. Over $550,000 was recently raised at an event in Grand Rapids, Mich., bringing the total raised in the “Preparing the Way” campaign to over $4.6 million.

There is still $5 million available in a double-match challenge grant. The recent event, held at Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, was geared to be the opening of the public portion of the campaign.

For more information about the capital campaign, contact Ken Zylstra, director of advancement at 1-505-726-9683 or [email protected].