Greetings of love and joy to you all, my Walther Family!
As we close this school year, I am filled with gratitude for all God has done in and through our Walther community. My first year as Principal has been one of learning, building, refining, and celebrating the faithfulness of God at every turn.
I am deeply thankful for our Head of School, Mr. Tim Bouman, whose leadership and trust have helped set me up for success. He has walked alongside me with wisdom and support, while also giving me room to implement new initiatives, strengthen systems, and honor the traditions that make Walther who we are.
This year, we worked intentionally to raise expectations, improve systems, celebrate students, and strengthen our school culture. Our teachers and staff have been incredible partners in that work. I challenged them to lean into greater rigor through quality instruction because our students deserve our very best. They answered that call with commitment, care, and excellence.
Our students remain the best part of every day. Walther students are unique. They are involved and deeply committed, driven, talented, and willing to push themselves in the classroom, in worship, in service, on the stage, court, mats, on the field and beyond! Our students remind us daily why this work matters.
We recently had the bittersweet honor of graduating the Class of 2026. While it is never easy to send students out from a place that has become home, I am confident they are equipped to walk boldly in the calling God has placed on their lives. It has been an honor to help nurture them along the way.
To the Class of 2026: Congratulations! We are proud of you, we love you, and we are praying for you!
Happy Summer, Walther family. Thank You for your continued support, prayers, partnership, and love! We are already planning for a monumental next school year!
May God Bless You Abundantly,
Dr. Terence D. Swims
June 30 marks the end of our fiscal year. This is a great time to make a donation to support the important ministry of Walther as we continue to share the Gospel and prepare our students for success. A gift today helps us end our year strong financially. Use the Donate button above or go towww.walther.com > Donate to learn of other ways to give.
Plans for Homecoming 2026 are underway. Look for a special email towards the end of this month with details of the weekend including information on the Alumni Concert, Athletic Hall of Fame Induction, and Class Reunions.
Bill Koehne ‘87
Director of Advancement
Walther Christian Academy
Walther’s Class of 2026 graduated on Sunday, May 31 in front of many family and friends.
This class pushed themselves academically and accomplished a great deal in their time at Walther. More than half the class took an Honors class while at Walther, nearly 45% took at least one AP course, half taking four of five, and more than a quarter of the class leaves Walther with college credit earned at Concordia University Chicago. In the class of 52 students, 12 earned an Honors diploma by achieving a weighted GPA of 3.8 or higher while taking at least 6 Honors, AP, or Concordia classes.
In addition to academics, members of this class have led efforts to add faith-based gatherings such as a Discipleship group, Kickstart, and Walther’s first Worship Night. They have excelled in lead roles in several drama productions, have performed numerous solos in choral and instrumental concerts, and they have completed countless hours participating in service projects.
Our graduates are heading all over the country to pursue a wide variety of majors. Illinois schools our grads are heading to include University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois State, DePaul, Knox College, Concordia, and Triton to name a few. Out of state destinations include Xavier University – LA, University of Minnesota, Morehead State – KY, Clark – Atlanta, and Jackson State.
To the graduates: We are so proud of this class and wish you well as you move on to new and exciting adventures. Remember, you may be leaving Walther now, but you will always be part of the Walther family. Go with God, Broncos.
Back in April, Walther science teacher Vanessa Ueltzen led two sessions for members of the National Science Teachers Association at their national conference in Anaheim, California. She led sessions on Alternative Assessments in a High School Earth Science Classroom and Teaching Engineering on a Budget. But, this was not new for Mrs. Ueltzen. With the encouragement of Dr. Selina Bartels, Mrs. Ueltzen began presenting at this conference in 2019. The first year they presented together, and since 2021 Vanessa has presented multiple sessions independently.
In 2017, when Walther opened the middle school, one of the focuses was on STEM. The Chicagoland Lutheran Educational Foundation (CLEF) agreed to finance an initiative to create a new STEM focused curriculum and Dr. Bartels, with her expertise in Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and work with pre-service STEM educators was hired to help lead the effort. Vanessa was hired in early August with the plan that she would work with Dr. Bartels to create the new curriculum. “We started that first year with Physical Science for the 8th graders and Earth & Space Science for the 6th & 7th graders,” Vanessa explained. “We were working one unit ahead of the students the whole year.” Then, in the summer of 2018 they created a Life Science curriculum for 8th grade, moving Physical Science to 7th grade. “It was a lot of work, but I really enjoyed the process. At the time, STEM was typically taught as an independent course, often as an elective for enrichment. We took the approach of integrating the STEM process into the full curriculum using the NGSS standards as the framework”.
Over that first year, they created a scope and sequence and developed close to 20 units in outline form with objectives related to the standards. There is no textbook. Instead they use a number of high quality online resources. “What I like about this format,” Vanessa shared, “is that it allows me to customize the instruction each year to meet the needs of my students. The objectives and standards don’t change, but the delivery and activities can.”
Mrs. Ueltzen has since gone on to create a new curriculum for Integrated Science, a class taught to most of our freshmen. The focus there is to develop skills for success in future science classes through a variety of lab experiences. Units include Water, Climate Change, Forensics, and Engineering. The high school Earth Science curriculum has also been overhauled to insure NGSS alignment. This course is taught to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and counts as a lab science toward graduation requirements.
“While working on the first few courses, Dr. Bartels encouraged me to attend and consider presenting at professional conferences. In 2019 we presented together on integrating STEM with the NGSS standards. It has been a great experience. I design my presentations at these conferences to include discussion and sharing of ideas, so I always walk away with new ideas as well. I have certainly grown professionally through this process and continue to look forward to presenting on new topics.”
Homecoming – October 10, 2026
Athletic Hall of Fame Induction – 10:00am
Football Game – 1:00pm
More Details on Alumni Weekend Activities to Follow
Now is the time to plan your Reunion! Contact Bill Koehne for assistance.
Spring Musical – The Wiz – June 5 & 6 @ 7:00pm, June 7 @ 2:30pm
Michael Tuomi, Walther Class of 2003, is the Vice President of Health, Safety, Environmental, Quality & Training for Liberty Energy, a major energy industry service provider specializing in next-generation technology for the development of energy resources and data center power generation. Michael oversees all the regulatory compliance work for Liberty Energy, as the company is regulated by hundreds of local, state, and national government agencies. With more than 120 employees under his management, his team works across North America and Australia to implement and facilitate systems that ensure regulatory and quality compliance, reduce operational risk, and mitigate impact to personnel, communities, and the environment.
Michael did not have a typical path to this position. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science degree, Michael moved to Colorado and started a personal training business partnering with the Denver Public Schools and various major trucking companies. In 2014, after a meeting in North Dakota regarding a new project and while stuck in a 2 hour delay at the airport, he got into a long conversation with the person sitting next to him. The next day he received a call from the head of Human Resources at Liberty Energy, which at the time was only a couple years into its existence, stating that their COO was impressed with him and wanted Michael to come in for an interview. “You never know who you are sitting next to in an airport,” Michael shared. “But if you are good with people, you will find opportunities. I did not know anything about the industry, but they believed I was the person for the job. I grinded and learned my way through it. My current position happened organically. I was ready to adapt to whatever moment I was in and now I lead a large team doing important work. I find great value and purpose in the work that we do, and when we work for each other, it becomes especially meaningful.”
Michael shared that his Physics class at Walther is the one that prepared him the most for this work. “It was Mr. Marusek’s outside the box, hands on, pragmatic approach that took theory into application and inspired me to be a problem solver. The other was Mr. Koehne’s Trigonometry/Pre-Calculus class. “When I won the math department award, I realized I was pretty good at math. It gave me the confidence to approach new problems.”
While at Walther, Michael participated in cross country, wrestling, and baseball as well Scholastic Bowl and WYSE. “You learn a lot about yourself on the wrestling mat. No one can come help you when you get thrown to your back; you have to dig deep and figure a way out.” He described his favorite memories as being the “in-between” moments. “It was the bus rides with teammates, talking in the dugout between innings, or in between matches at a wrestling tournament that I really appreciated. I still text my teammates at times about something from those conversations and we pick up right where we left off.”
While thinking about faith development, Michael commented, “I value that I was raised in parochial education throughout my life. Walther is such a
multi-cultural place. Students come from different Christian backgrounds,
but in chapel we come together in faith and unite. We realize we are a lot
more similar than we may originally think.”
“Walther has had a lasting impact in my career and on who I am as a person. I’m excited about the direction the school is heading for many more kids to
have the same opportunity.”
Psalm 116:15 Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His faithful servants.
We recently learned of three deaths over the last two years of graduates from the Class of ’73. They are
Linda Weidler who passed away on 02/14/2024
Steve Spomer who passed away on 05/25/2025
Bonnie Baldridge who passed away on 06/29/2025
Joshua Anderson, Class of ’97, passed away on May 20th.
Please email any death notices to Advancement@WaltherAcademy.org
Walther Christian Academy is operated for the purpose of providing Christian Education at the secondary level for the families of Lutheran congregations. However, it admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin, and religion to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin and religion in administration of its educational policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school administered programs.
