Energy Vanguard is Now a HERS Rater Training Provider!

Yesterday was an exciting day at Energy Vanguard. Chris and I worked really hard in May to finish up and submit our application for Energy Vanguard to become a HERS rater training provider, and yesterday the answer arrived. RESNET informed us that we got the accreditation we sought and could begin to offer our very own HERS rater training classes! I screamed with joy when I read Steve Baden’s email. (Sorry office mates.)

This was immensely gratifying because it was a lot of work to put together the application. We had to send RESNET our entire curriculum for what, in our case, will be an 8 day class. RESNET wanted to know that we’d be up to the task of teaching all the required knowledge and skills related to building science, pressure testing, HERS Standards, and rating software.

Having studied and practiced the art and science of being an educator for about 25 years now, I’ve got some great ideas that we’ll be using to teach the class. You can read a little about my philosophy in the other articles I’ve written in this blog (links at bottom).

The bottom line is that the Energy Vanguard HERS rater class will be:

• Fun & active
• Student centered 
• Based on the most effective learning principles & research

Students will get their money’s worth and will leave with a feeling that they’ve really learned something important and useful. Because of the way the class is structured, they’ll also leave feeling successful because they’ll have the best possible chance of completing all requirements for the course during those 8 days. They’ll even leave with their certificate in hand instead of having to wait weeks to find out whether they passed all the requirements.

I don’t want to give away too many of the details because what we’re doing is revolutionary in the field of energy auditor training, but I’ll say a little about how we teach the home energy rating software, REM/Rate. 

Rather than make students wait until the third or fourth day of class to start learning and using the software, we’re going to start on the first day. We figure that if someone’s coming to learn how to do a home energy rating, we ought to start teaching that from the get-go. Right away students will get their hands on the software, and each day we’ll have rating activities that start small and lead to doing full ratings. 

I’m really excited about the rating activities that we’ve planned. These activities not only will teach students the software by having them do it themselves in small, digestible bites, but everyone’s going to have fun doing it. They’ll work in groups, play games, and solve some challenging puzzles, in the process of completing three full ratings during the class. One of the games is a scavenger hunt, which will have the students search through a rating file and find the required information, learning the ins and outs of REM/Rate as they hunt.

Our first class will start on Saturday, 14 August and go through Saturday, 21 August. I know. It’s going to be a long week, but I want to keep it to one work week, at least for now, because most people taking the class also have jobs or businesses they can’t afford to be away from for too long.

Plus, it’s going to be energizing rather than exhausting because of the way we’ve structured it. You may have heard of (or been through) a HERS rater class with 11 hour days followed by 3 or 4 hours of homework each evening, but the Energy Vanguard HERS rater class will be humane, and homework will be minimal. With our accelerated learning techniques, you’ll learn more in less time. 

To find out more and to get registered, see our HERS rater training page.

Related articles:

• Home Energy Rater Training – A New Approach 
• 5 Keys to Success in Education for Green Jobs
• Creativity, Education, and Green Jobs
• Sean Lintow’s 5 part series on his experience in the HERS class at Southface, where I’ve taught for the past 2.5 years.