Tunxis Community College Alumni from the Energy Management Program
Kyle Kalisz began his education as a Business Administrations major at Tunxis Community College, but after two semesters, he knew it was not the path he wanted to follow. Fortunately, while gathering information about possible new majors, he heard about the Energy Management Program at Tunxis. And after one phone call with Eric Gribin, the Program Director, Kalisz was ready to give the program a try.
Kalisz grew more interested with each class he took. The program touched on topics ranging from basic thermodynamics, heat transfer, and solar energy, to more advanced topics such as the energy utilization index, 10-year cash flows, building automation systems, and much more. The energy management field “[is] the best of both worlds for me. Half the time in the office, the other half in the field”, says Kalisz.
Since graduating, Kalisz has been working with Total Energy Connections, in the Small Business Energy Advantage Program (SBEA), helping small businesses in Connecticut save energy and money on their energy bills. In the future, Kalisz would like to work with a larger energy company to tackle bigger
commercial and industrial scale projects. Eventually, Kalisz would like to return to school to get his mechanical engineering degree; and as a long term goal, he has considered working for the Connecticut Department of Energy.
His advice for future students in energy efficiency is to relax and take your time to think things through. If you follow what you’re taught and approach problem solving in a methodical way, you’ll do great work and the people that you serve will benefit!
“Oh, and one last thing, NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK!”
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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #2201631. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National ScienceFoundation.
