Community service is also integral to Calvin classes. Nursing students perform their practicums at clinics in three Grand Rapids neighborhoods; English students collect oral histories of Grand Rapids residents; and media production students film documentaries for local nonprofits.
The broader community
Exhibition at (106) Gallery
from Calvin’s international student community) Calvin students forge friendships and also create meaningful events for everyone on campus. Calvin cultivates a strong culture of the arts on campus. Every year, the Student Activities Office sponsors a whole roster of films and concerts, and the Calvin Theatre Company and Lab Theater perform a range of plays. Among this year’s theater offerings were She Stoops to Conquer and scenes from Shakespeare staged in various settings around campus. And the Center Art Gallery sponsors a schedule of both traveling exhibitions and work by students and faculty.
Service-learning The ethic of serving the community beyond campus begins early at Calvin. Incoming students are introduced to servicelearning through Streetfest—three days of painting, cleaning stream banks, stocking food pantries— encouraging them to engage meaningfully with the community. Throughout the school year, Calvin’s Service-Learning Center maintains Calvin’s service-learning tradition in the local area, and during spring break, the center also sends students to serve in locales all around the nation.
The Calvin community also reaches into downtown Grand Rapids through the college’s (106) gallery, an off-site location for college art exhibitions, through the Ladies Literary Club, a historic facility that hosts Calvin speakers and events, through the six local Project Neighborhood homes, where Calvin students live in intentional community, and in many other places. The college’s perennial cultural series also gives a wider audience a glimpse of Calvin. This year, the biennial Festival of Faith and Music, welcomed The Civil Wars, Matisyahu and Vienna Teng among its guests, and last year the biennial Festival of Faith and Writing hosted Mary Karr and Richard Rodriguez. The January Series, a 15-day lecture series, featured Temple Grandin and Cal Ripken Jr. among its speakers, and the Artist Series hosted Chanticleer and the Bach Collegium among its performers. Inner Compass, an issuesoriented television show, is offered in 65 public broadcasting markets. In all these ways, through all these events, Calvin reaches out to the larger world— and welcomes that world into the Calvin community.
The Civil Wars performing at the Festival of Faith and Music