Campus News

Michelle Merritt ’22 and Sarah Gibes ’22 earn top awards.

TWO 2022 GRADS EARN FULBRIGHT AWARDS

Michelle Merritt and Sarah Gibes are recipients of 2022 Fulbright awards. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international education exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or personal achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields.

Merritt ’22, who majored in linguistics and Chinese, received a highly competitive Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship grant. She will teach English to university students in Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, in 2023.

“Teaching ESL/EFL at the university level is one of my key interests, so having the chance to develop that skill right out of university is a rare, perfectly suited opportunity. At the same time, I will be broadening my own language skills through immersion,” said Merritt.

Gibes ’22, who majored in biochemistry, English, and German, received a United States Teaching Assistantship of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Research. This year, she will serve as an English class teaching assistant for two high schools in Salzburg, Austria.

“I believe that public service is important, and that investing in young people is a particularly important form of public service. This grant allows me to pursue both of those things,” said Gibes.

President Michael Le Roy is honored by state leaders, including Senator Mark Huizenga ’90.

STATE LEADERS HONOR PRESIDENT LE ROY

On April 22, outgoing president Michael Le Roy was meeting with the Calvin University board of trustees when two surprise guests walked in the room: Mark Huizenga ’90, a state senator and Calvin alum, and Emerson Silvernail ’20, a former student body president at Calvin who now works with Huizenga.

The two delivered a special tribute to Le Roy, honoring his steadfast commitment to the Calvin University community. Signers of the tribute included state senators Winnie DeVries Brinks ’90, Aric Nesbitt, and Mark Huizenga, along with Lieutenant Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

“I’m overwhelmed, humbled, and grateful,” said Le Roy. “First of all, I didn’t know this was possible. Second of all, it’s bipartisan, so I like that a lot.”

The tribute begins, “LET IT BE KNOWN, That it is with a deep appreciation that we honor Dr. Michael Le Roy upon the occasion of his retirement after a decade of serving as President of Calvin University. As Dr. Le Roy transitions into this next phase of his life, we add our voice of thanks to those of the professors, administrators, students, parents, and alumni throughout the Calvin community for a job well done.”

The tribute applauds Le Roy’s leadership during a changing higher education landscape and his tireless pursuit of the institution’s long-term health.

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Find more campus news at calvin.edu/news.

Ruth Padilla DeBorst has been involved in leadership development in Latin America for decades. Jillian Herlinger ’22 is the first geology student to win a Goldwater Scholarship.

RUTH PADILLA DEBORST AWARDED KUYPER PRIZE

On April 6, Ruth Padilla DeBorst accepted the 2022 Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life. Padilla DeBorst, a theologian, missiologist, educator, and storyteller, has been involved in leadership development in her native Latin America for several decades.

The Kuyper Prize was established in 1996 by Rimmer and Ruth de Vries and is named after Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper. The prize is awarded annually by Calvin’s de Vries Institute for Global Faculty Development to a scholar or community leader whose outstanding contribution to their chosen sphere reflects the ideas and values characteristic of the Neo-Calvinist vision of religious engagement in matters of social, political, and cultural significance in one or more of the “spheres” of society.

Padilla DeBorst currently serves with Resonate Global Mission, leading in the Comunidad de Estudios Teológicos Interdisciplinarios, a learning community with students across Latin America. She also coordinates the Networking Team of International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation and is actively furthering missional leadership formation processes with the Christian Reformed Church of North America. Beginning in fall 2022, she will join the faculty of Western Theological Seminary serving as the Richard C. Oudersluys Associate Professor of World Christianity.

GEOLOGY MAJOR STRIKES GOLD

Calvin senior geology major Jillian Herlinger ’22 is the recipient of a prestigious 2022 Goldwater Scholarship. The Goldwater Scholarship is known to be highly competitive and rigorous; those awarded with the scholarship demonstrate a strong dedication to their field in STEM, including their influence in research and involvement. Herlinger is the first geology student at Calvin to earn the prestigious honor of being named a Goldwater Scholar, as well as one of only 408 students nationwide to be so honored this year.

Throughout the scholarship selection process, students must prove themselves by writing a long paper within a short deadline, performing field research, and balancing their class responsibilities.

“The award isn’t about the highest GPA,” clarified engineering professor Chris Hartemink. “It’s about [a student’s] dedication to research and their desire to change the world.”

For Herlinger, this passion surfaces as she studies paleoclimatology. “I study [paleoclimatology] through geology by sediment coring or glacier coring, which can key us into the environmental conditions in the past. And we study those to understand the conditions of the past, but also to inform us about the future and what the climactic response will be.”

Adejoke Bolanle Ayoola is a globally recognized practitioner and educator.

CALVIN SELECTS SCHOOL OF HEALTH’S INAUGURAL DEAN

Calvin University has appointed Adejoke Bolanle Ayoola as the founding dean of its School of Health.

A member of Calvin’s faculty since 2007, she is nationally and globally recognized as an experienced practitioner, educator, researcher, and administrator.

She has received several awards and distinctions recognizing her accomplishments in the health field. She served as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholar and was inducted into the 2020 Class of Fellows of the American Academy of Nursing. She is a member of the American Association of Nurses, the Honors Society of Nursing, Sigma International, and the Midwest Nursing Research Society; and she currently serves as a reviewer, associate editor or on the editorial board of 12 scholarly publications.

“My vision is for one’s experience in the School of Health to be transformative and for our future health professionals to be well-prepared in their calling to serve as great advocates for their patients,” she said.

Ayoola is supported by a growing list of accomplished health-related professionals from around the world who are serving on the school’s advisory council. The School of Health currently serves approximately 600 undergraduate and more than 75 graduate students in health-related programs, and dozens of other students in other pre-professional tracks.

Joel Adams will serve in the new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy.

ADVISING THE U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE

For 30-plus years, Joel Adams has been equipping and advising his students at Calvin University to be agents of renewal in their fields. Now, the professor of computer science is being asked to advise the Secretary of State.

“This is an opportunity to have input into U.S. policy,” said Adams, “and if we take seriously this business of every square inch [matters to God], even the U.S. State Department ought to be included in that area. It’s all under Christ’s reign.”

Adams has been selected to be part of the 2022–23 class of Jefferson Science Fellows (JSF), an initiative of the Office of the Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State. While this is JSF’s 19th class of Fellows, Adams is among the first experts to be selected since the new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy was established in fall 2021.

According to the Department of State, this new bureau will address “the national security challenges, economic opportunities, and implications for U.S. values associated with cyberspace, digital technologies, and digital policy.”

Adams will serve in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of Cyber and Emerging Technologies. He will be an analyst, reading broadly and advising on emerging technologies.

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Find more campus news at calvin.edu/news.

Emmalon Davis ’10 will explore abolitionist Maria Stewart’s political thought.

ALUMNA SELECTED FOR PRESTIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP

Emmalon Davis ’10 is the only philosophy professor nationwide to be selected for a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), one of the preeminent representatives of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences.

Davis teaches at the University of Michigan. Through the ACLS fellowship and a faculty fellowship from the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, she will explore Maria Stewart’s political thought as it developed during her short career as a public lecturer. Stewart was an abolitionist, feminist activist, and political thinker who worked in the public sphere beginning in the 1830s. “She was the first Black woman to give public lectures to an audience of men and women within the context of civil rights,” said Davis. Through her research, Davis is looking at Stewart’s political thought from a philosophical perspective. She said Stewart’s work has been difficult to characterize in terms of its methodology, in part because she draws from so many different styles and approaches.

“Part of what I’m interested in thinking about is how to make sense of and appreciate her political thought in a way that doesn’t try to explain away or flatten these contradictions but allows us to see these contradictions as actually illuminating some of the paradoxes that confront political activities in the public sphere.”

Kate van Liere awarded top teaching honor.

A ‘HISTORY’ OF TOP TEACHERS

Kate van Liere, professor of history, is the recipient of the 2022 Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching, the highest honor the university awards for teaching. The award includes a special medallion designed by Carl Huisman, Calvin professor of art emeritus, and a cash award funded from an endowment established in memory of George B. and Margaret K. Tinholt.

Van Liere is the 30th winner in the history of the award and the third history professor to be so honored, following Bert de Vries in 1998 and Jim Bratt in 2013. “I’m not as gifted as some of my colleagues are as a scholar,” she said. “I realized years ago that my time was better spent trying to be a good teacher. And this (history) department has long valued good teaching. So, yes, this award is a wonderful validation.”

The award criteria notes that “award recipients not only have exceptional teaching skills, they also consistently influence the lives and careers of Calvin University students in lifelong Christian ways.”