Campus News

Michael Le Roy will serve as Calvin’s president through the 2021-2022 academic year.

PRESIDENT LE ROY ANNOUNCES HIS FINAL SEASON AT CALVIN

Michael Le Roy announced that the 2021–2022 academic year, his 10th at Calvin, will be he and his wife Andrea’s last. He cited a pull to return to the Northwest to be closer to their young adult children and aging parents.

“The center of gravity for our family is now firmly rooted more than 2,000 miles away,” wrote Le Roy, Calvin’s 10th president. “During the pandemic, this distance only seemed greater to us. Having now emerged from this long crisis, we long to give greater emphasis to the family commitments in our lives.”

Le Roy led the transition from a college to a university and expanded the populations the university serves, including adding to the university’s graduate-level programming. During his tenure, Calvin also began offering bachelor’s degrees to inmates at the Handlon Correctional Facility through the Calvin Prison Initiative, a first of its kind program in the state and one of very few nationwide.

Le Roy will fulfill his role as president through the 2021–2022 academic year. A national search for Le Roy’s successor is underway and the search committee is led by Mary Tuuk Kuras ’86, vice chair of the board of trustees.

Professor Kumar Sinniah’s students said that he goes above and beyond.

KUMAR SINNIAH RECEIVES HIGHEST TEACHING HONOR

Professor of chemistry Kumar Sinniah is the 2021 recipient of the Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching, the highest teaching honor at Calvin University.

Sinniah joined Calvin’s chemistry faculty in 1995—and his courses and research projects have been raved about by students ever since.

Sinniah’s department co-chairs, professors Carolyn Anderson and Doug Vander Griend, describe him as the “total package” when it comes to being a faculty member at Calvin. Sinniah received the university’s Student-Faculty Research Award in 2012 and Advising and Mentoring Award in 2016, and he has published 30 peer-reviewed papers since starting at Calvin, often co-authored with students. His work has brought a number of National Science Foundation grants for Calvin, funding his research projects and scientific instruments for the university.

Anderson and Vander Griend also note Sinniah’s wide-ranging contributions to the university at large including his annual medical interim course in Nepal, multiple stints on the Professional Status Committee, and involvement in the university’s academic program review and prioritization processes.

Sinniah also serves regularly as a reviewer for proposals submitted to the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, the National Science Foundation, and the Fulbright Scholar Program.

2021 graduates Maggie Backus (left) and Ravyn DeWitt (center) received English Teaching Assistantships through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, and Juliana Knot (right) was selected as an alternate.

FULBRIGHT RECOGNIZES CALVIN TRIO

Maggie Backus ’21 and Ravyn DeWitt ’21 received an English Teaching Assistantship through the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Juliana Knot ’21 was selected as an alternate. Fulbright reported a record number of applicants for the U.S. Student Program this year.

“The Fulbright awards are merit-based and incredibly competitive, but more importantly, multiple selection committees have deemed the student a worthy candidate with an outstanding proposal who is well suited to represent the United States abroad,” said Dwight TenHuisen, Calvin’s Fulbright Program Advisor and professor of world languages. The fact that three Calvin students were named finalists or alternates from among 11,700+ applicants is a considerable accomplishment.”

Backus, a double major in linguistics and Spanish, will teach English abroad in South Korea for a year. She will live in a less populated city in the country with the goal of reaching a more underserved population. DeWitt, a special education K-12, Spanish education K-12, and elementary education major, will be assisting in an elementary English class in the Canary Islands. Knot, a German, mathematics, and philosophy major, is an alternate for teaching English in Germany.

Alex Raycroft pursues philosophy degree as a Lilly Graduate Fellow.

CALVIN GRAD SELECTED AS LILLY FELLOW

Alex Raycroft ’21 was selected as one of 10 Lilly Graduate Fellows. The double major in philosophy and political science will begin a fully-funded doctoral program in philosophy at Georgetown University this fall.

The Lilly Graduate Fellows Program is part of the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts that supports outstanding students who want to explore the connections among Christianity, higher education, and the vocation of the teacher-scholar as they pursue graduate degrees in humanities and the arts.

“She has accomplished a lot already and has a very promising future. I like to picture the whole world applauding her right now!” said philosophy professor Rebecca DeYoung.

Raycroft will pursue her PhD in hopes of becoming a philosophy professor herself.

“The Calvin philosophy professors have had such a huge impact on my life, my faith, and me as a person and a student. I would love to be that for other students someday,” said Raycroft.

After decades serving as a leader in academia and business, Jim Ludema returns to Calvin as the inaugural dean of the School of Business.

CALVIN SELECTS DEAN FOR SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

This spring, Calvin appointed Jim Ludema ’82 as dean of its School of Business.

Ludema returns to his alma mater as an experienced educator, researcher, and administrator. He also comes with an extensive network in the business world and consulting experience for Fortune 500 companies, including McDonald’s, John Deere, Allstate, and Merck.

Since 1998, Ludema has served as professor in the Daniel L. Goodwin College of Business at Benedictine University, and in 2008, he launched the university’s Center for Values-Driven Leadership.

He’s looking forward to adding his gifts and experiences to the various strengths of the business faculty.

“I’m excited to join the faculty in the School of Business—faculty who are academically excellent, dedicated to students, and have extensive experience in business, consulting, and working globally for companies like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Grant Thorton, Deloitte & Touche, Steelcase, Zondervan, and D&W Foods. They are bright, committed, caring, knowledgeable about business, and they are innovators. That’s impressive.”

Pictured above are just a few of the students from the first LifeWork cohort after they completed an escape room for the team building module.

CALVIN LIFEWORK GRADUATES FIRST COHORT

The 2021 graduating class represents the first cohort of students to complete Calvin LifeWork, a four-year developmental life and career readiness program.

The co-curricular program helps students develop the necessary life skills to thrive right out of college and throughout their career and life.

The program is perhaps best illustrated by a map that resembles the children’s board game Candy Land. Each stage of the journey has a different theme (discover, equip, experience, launch), but maintains four consistent tracks (vocation, career readiness, financial literacy, leadership) or “colored spaces.” Each space on the map represents a learning module. These modules cover topics like career planning, conflict resolution, elevator pitches, interview techniques, and time management.

The only investment for students is a few hours a month of their time. And while the skills learned help students become more marketable for their first job, they also prepare graduates holistically with the skills they need for both their long-term career and life—wherever God calls them.

“There are so many skills that I feel are necessary for emerging adults to have that LifeWork prepares us well for,” said Charles, a 2021 grad who completed the program.

Nathanael Kazmierczak’s research experience at Calvin led to publications, presentations, and fellowships. Now, he’s been named a Hertz Fellow.

CALVIN GRAD RECEIVES PRESTIGIOUS HERTZ FELLOWSHIP

The Hertz Fellowship is awarded to 12 promising innovators in science and technology. These graduate students learned how to research at places like Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, MIT—and Calvin.

“It’s hard to imagine I would have been better prepared in any other environment,” said Nathanael Kazmierczak ’20. “The research front at Calvin is fantastic.”

Kazmierczak started doing research with Doug Vander Griend, chair of the biochemistry and chemistry department, during his first year. He continued working on research projects throughout his time at Calvin, which led to three peer-reviewed journal publications, with two additional ones in the works. Kazmierczak, now a graduate student at California Institute of Technology, was also a Beckman Scholar and presented his research at a pair of national conferences.

The Hertz Fellowship is one of the most generous awards of its kind, providing support for five years of graduate research and the freedom to pursue innovative ideas wherever they may lead. The fellowship empowers extraordinary innovators at a pivotal point in their careers, helping to shape their scientific pursuits and accelerate real-world impact.

GRADUATE-LEVEL OFFERINGS EXPANDING

This fall Calvin launched online master’s programs in business administration, exercise science, geographic information science, and public health.

The expansion in graduate-level programming aligns with the university’s Vision 2030, which aims to meet the demands of a changing environment and find new ways to invite more learners into Calvin University.

In 2020, Kevin den Dulk stepped into the newly created position of associate provost of Calvin’s Global Campus, the working name for the office that is tasked with extending Calvin’s mission to reach new populations. He’s impressed with how faculty, staff, and administration are working together to make progress on this vision.

“Expanding our graduate programs and offering courses online is a dual culture shift for Calvin, but the campus community has quickly embraced these changes as part of our world-formative mission,” said den Dulk.

The university is set to offer an online option for another two of its existing graduate programs beginning this spring (media and strategic communication, speech pathology and audiology) and will launch two new graduate programs online in fall 2022 (data science, public administration).

Information about the graduate programs can be found at calvin.edu/academics/ graduate-programs/.