Calvin University has a long history of creation care, involving decades of research, scholarship and action.

Creation care is a phrase that comes out of Christianity, meaning “a commitment to practice loving formation, liberating advocacy and life-giving conservation as individuals, congregations, ministries and dioceses,” according to the Episcopal Church. At Calvin, phrases like creation care create “a certain shared kind of vocabulary, and a certain shared sense of commitments about creation care rooted in Christian faith” that allow for easy communication across disciplines, according to Jamie Skillen, a zprofessor in the geology, geography, and environment department. 

In the Classroom

Creation care and sustainability are concepts that most students will first encounter in classes. One core requirement that all students have to achieve to graduate is an Environmental Sustainability (ES) tag, which “is huge and unusual, especially for Christian colleges, that we have an ES tag requirement, and it’s one of our three commitments. So Calvin — as Christian colleges go — we’re pretty exceptional,” Debra Rienstra, a professor in English, told Chimes. 

Classes covering sustainability or with the ES tag span many disciplines, according to Skillen. 

Rienstra told Chimes that “literature can help us to see things more clearly, to perceive more clearly, to notice better, to pay attention better,” when asked about her class on environmental literature. She said that literature has an important role in helping “us imagine possibility” when considering the different paths we may choose to go down.

Matt Heun, a professor in engineering, walked Chimes through classes offered in that department surrounding the idea of sustainability, including classes covering System design and energy management, and how that relates to the economy.

Statement on Sustainability

Creation care goes further than just inside the classroom, as exhibited by Calvin’s Statement on Sustainability, which in part says, “We integrate sustainability principles and practices throughout our academic programs, student experience, campus operations and community partnerships. We seek to model best practices and careful thinking, equipping students to help build, by God’s grace, a more just, equitable, sustainable and ecologically healthy world for current and future generations.” 

The statement was rewritten and endorsed by the Board of Trustees, Faculty Senate and Student Senate in 2025, according to Rienstra, who helped rewrite it. The Energy and Environmental Sustainability Committee (EESC), convened by Matt Heun and Dave Warners, oversaw the revision of the 2007 statement, which called for revision in 2021 in the Strategic Plan, according to Rienstra.  

“I’ve been impatient with this old statement. Can I write a new one?” Rienstra said. Ian Tjoelker, chair of Earthkeepers and a student who helped rewrite the statement, recalled reading the 2007 statement in a Core 100 class, and said it “did not even mention climate change by name.” So a strategy was formulated and then proposed to the provost and the cabinet so that the cabinet could mandate the rewriting, according to Rienstra. 

The new statement has a “biblical rationale for this and a history of Calvin’s work, which goes back more than four decades,” according to Rienstra. “We’ve always been doing this, and it’s more urgent now because of the climate crisis, which yes, we believe in because of science, and we acknowledge that science is a way of knowing here.”

Rienstra told Chimes that having this statement in place was important so we can have something that we can all get on board with and point to if anyone challenges the work being done in the field. Tjoelker found it important to have “something that would give us the language to be able to explain why we care about the environment. And I think that’s what the new document does really well. Open space for some more specific goals, which are coming soon.” 

Nature Preserves 

Calvin also has two preserves, one of which is on Campus, “which is 104 acres, a quarter of campus, and then we have a second preserve, about 35 minutes north of here, that has a 17-acre kettle lake and a prairie that we manage with fire,” according to Skillen. 

The Preserve works to protect the natural environment by removing invasive species, planting native plants to support pollinators and working to properly manage the land according to Skillen. 

Outside of the environmentally focused work, Skillen felt that the preserves provide “a space to take a break from, like, the incessant need to accomplish, and there is a way in which then what we’re talking about are kind of many experiences of Sabbath.” In that rest, “this work ends up teaching us about who we are” in relation to nature, ourselves, others, and God. 

Solar

In an effort to “combine classroom knowledge with real-world application…while advancing Calvin’s long-term goal of sourcing 100% of our energy from renewable sources,” according to John Zimmerman, associate director of public relations, Calvin is moving towards adding solar panels. 

As part of Heun’s Thermal Systems Design class, “I always have a project in where I ask the students a one-sentence question. The question was simple. What should be the design of a Calvin solar farm?” The suggestion from students was to add a solar photovoltaic system for several roofs on campus, including on the aquatic center, according to Heun. The project has changed location, but is still in the works. 

“The revised project, if approved at the board of trustees later this month, would be being funded through the university’s endowment,” Zimmerman said. “The plan is for installation to begin during the 2025 calendar year and wrap up in spring 2026. The system will significantly expand both our renewable energy capacity and our student involvement opportunities.”

Student Involvement

Students are at the core of pushing involvement with creation care at Calvin. Earthkeepers, one of the sustainability-focused clubs on campus, is “building community around sustainability and creation care,” according to Tjoelker. “There’s a lot that can divide us around, like, environmental issues, environmental politics, but we really want to be a space that people can come together around these ideas and around sustainability.” 

Jack Klop, a senior in civil and environmental engineering and director of the Sustainability Coordinators and the Earthkeepers Project Committee, found it important for students to be involved in creation care “because it connects our faith with tangible action. It’s a way of living out gratitude and stewardship by caring for the places and communities that sustain us.”

Why do people care? 

According to Rienstra, environmental work is moving “forward with passion and enthusiasm,” with many feeling this is a vital time for decisions regarding the environment. “There’s this sort of pragmatic or prudential reason, which is that, you know, if we don’t take care of the environment, we’ll all die,” Skillen told Chimes. “At a deeper level, it’s really about as we attend to the non-human world around us, as we think about what it means to be in human community in relation to the non-human world.” 

Heun said that he considered climate change to be the biggest challenge that faces humanity today, and “our reaction to climate change is going to define what the planet and our species will look like for the next probably thousand years.” He feels that Christians are “called to serve and protect the non-human parts of creation” and ensure a stable future for humanity. 

Ian Tjoelker is an editor at Chimes, an interview was conducted in the belief that his other positions on campus made him a valuable source and would not raise any conflict with Chimes and the reporting process.