Campus News

Kristi Potter has helped shape the January Series for 25 years.

JANUARY SERIES DIRECTOR’S FINALE

The January Series 2022 lineup includes New York Times best-selling authors, a renowned theologian, a retired four-star admiral, and a popular public television host. The series kicks off its 35th anniversary year on Monday, Jan. 10.

Kristi Potter ’87, who has been involved with the January Series for a quarter century and served as the series director since 2007, will be stepping out of that role after 2022.

During Potter’s time, the January Series has expanded to reach a worldwide audience through remote webcast locations in over 50 cities throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. In 2021, the audience expanded even greater with the addition of on-demand virtual viewing, reaching a record 98,000 people all over the world.

The series runs from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. EST Monday through Friday in the Covenant Fine Arts Center on Calvin’s campus. In 2022, attendees can watch at live remote webcast locations. The daily lectures will be available virtually both live and until midnight PST on the day of each presentation at calvin.edu/january.

Search committee is seeking nominations for Calvin’s 11th president.

PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH UNDERWAY

This fall, a 16-member presidential search committee, led by vice chair of the board of trustees Mary Tuuk Kuras ’86, launched an international search for Calvin University’s 11th president.

The committee partnered with AGB Search, a widely recognized search consultant in higher education, gathered input from the Calvin community through a variety of listening sessions and a survey. Nearly 1,000 community stakeholders provided input. This helped in shaping the position profile.

The committee is now seeking nominations and applications and welcomes the candidacies of anyone who shows considerable evidence or aptitude for the desired qualities of leadership detailed in the search profile regardless of gender or race. Leaders from fields other than higher education are encouraged to apply as well.

The committee is also calling the Calvin community to pray for discernment and is adding resources weekly to facilitate this on the search website.

To be fully considered for the position, applications must be submitted by Jan. 4, 2022. The search committee is responsible for recommending a candidate to the board of trustees by March 1, 2022.

The website for the presidential search is calvin.edu/go/president-search.

Dance Guild, shown here in 2019, has provided an outlet for student creativity for 50 years.

DANCE GUILD CELEBRATES 50 YEARS

Dance Guild is celebrating its 50th anniversary during the 2021–2022 academic year. On Nov. 19 and 20, one of the most popular and the longest running student organizations on campus performed two sold-out shows in the Covenant Fine Arts Center.

Hundreds of students participate in Dance Guild each year. The student organization connects students of varying backgrounds— cultural, dance experience, physical ability—with the common interest of dance. It allows trained dancers to continue dancing throughout their university experience and provides a safe environment for new dancers to explore. The variety of genres makes choreographing and participating in Dance Guild a thrilling experience. With an Afrobeats style appearing one year and Dance Guild’s first-ever disco dance making its debut this season, there’s always something new cultivating excitement among guild members.

The student organization typically attracts a few hundred members each year, with dancers performing more than 30 different dances at both their fall and spring shows.

GUIDEBOOKS GIVE CALVIN HIGH MARKS

U.S. News & World Report ranked Calvin fourth overall among all Midwest regional universities featured in its 2022 Best College Guidebook rankings.

The report helps prospective students and their families evaluate colleges and universities based on 16 widely accepted indicators of excellence, such as first-year retention rates, graduation rates, and the strength of faculty. The report also takes into account qualitative assessments by administrators at peer institutions.

Among Midwest regional universities, Calvin moved up a spot to No. 3 in the “Best Undergraduate Teaching” category and moved into the No. 15 spot on the “Most Innovative Schools” list.

Calvin also continues to move up on the “Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs” list, which ranks all colleges and universities in the United States that are non-doctorate-granting institutions. In 2022, Calvin University’s engineering program moved up to No. 39, representing a 29-place improvement over the past two years.

Calvin University is given high marks by a number of other leading rankings guidebooks, including Fiske Guide to Colleges, Forbes, Money, Niche, Washington Monthly, and the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education.

For the 10th straight year, the Princeton Review has Calvin on a very short list of institutions that excel in delivering health services to their students.

David Smith’s On Christian Teaching challenges and encourages Christian teachers.

PROFESSOR WINS LILLY FELLOWS BOOK AWARD

David Smith, a professor in both language and education, is the winner of the Lilly Fellows Program’s Book Award.

Granted biennially, the Lilly Fellows Program honors works that animate the vocations of Christian teaching and theory in university settings. Smith’s book, On Christian Teaching, has been recognized for this prestigious award.

“I’m very happy for David,” says Matt Lundberg ’97, director of The de Vries Institute for Global Faculty Development. “He’s inviting Christians who teach to think about the subtle yet powerful ways in which pedagogical choices matter for how Christian faith shapes our students’ learning. ... This award is a sign that the Christian higher-ed world is starting to pay serious attention to his invitation.”

On Christian Teaching has made many appearances in The de Vries Institute’s teaching curriculum, influencing how faculty at Calvin and at universities worldwide have established their classrooms.

Through On Christian Teaching, Smith hopes to influence the teaching styles among Christian faculty at Calvin and around the world.

Students from 47 U.S. states and 49 countries around the world are enrolled at Calvin University for fall 2021.

ENROLLMENT REACHING NEW POPULATIONS

Calvin University’s first-year undergraduate enrollment is up 15% year-on-year, and the institution’s incoming graduate enrollment shows a 50% uptick during that time. The incoming class also represents geographic and demographic diversity and shows academic strength.

Calvin’s 2021 entering class totals 983 students, 785 of whom identify as first-time and transfer students in the traditional undergraduate areas. The remaining 198 or just over 20% of the class are nontraditional student populations (i.e. graduate, dually enrolled, Ready for Life, Calvin Prison Initiative, and non-degree seeking). This represents the largest number of nontraditional students in an incoming class in Calvin’s history. Calvin’s total enrollment for 2021 is 3,256, with students from 47 U.S. states, 49 countries, and four Canadian provinces. More than 12% of Calvin’s students are from outside the U.S. More than 30 denominations are represented in Calvin’s student body.

Since 2020, Calvin has added six new in-person or online graduate programs, with four more set to begin between now and fall 2022. One of the newly added graduate-level programs is an online MBA.

For more information about Calvin’s graduate programs, visit calvin.edu/ academics/graduate-programs.

Michelle Loyd-Paige with the newly published book she co-authored.

DIVERSITY LEADER SCRIPTS PLAYBOOK FOR CHRISTIAN ORGANIZATIONS

Michelle Loyd-Paige ’81, executive associate to the president for diversity and inclusion, is helping the Calvin University community lean further into its institutional core value of diversity and inclusion. And she is not stopping there.

Rev. Dr. Loyd-Paige and Rev. Michelle Williams recently co-authored Diversity Playbook: Recommendations and Guidance for Christian Organizations.

“We wrote this book because we felt like our experiences, expertise, and insights could be of assistance for Christian organizations and for those within Christian organizations striving to either lead or enhance institutional diversity efforts,” Loyd-Paige said. In the book, the co-authors build on their years of experience in Christian higher education and share pitfalls to avoid and plans that can extend God’s ministry of reconciliation to everyone.

Loyd-Paige said the book provides a fresh perspective to a topic that is often polarizing. “We feel like we bring the calm in the midst of all the noise. We offer both truth and grace. We share our experiences—the good, the bad, and the ugly. We offer stories of real events and situations to illustrate our points—not just the results of research,” she said.

ONLINE EXTRA

Read a Q&A with Loyd-Paige and find links to a webinar and podcasts at

calvin.edu/go/diversity-playbook. CALVIN RECEIVES $500K NEH GRANT

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded Calvin University $500,000 in relief funding as part of the American Rescue Plan that was passed by Congress in spring 2021.

The NEH awarded 292 cultural organizations and educational institutions grants totaling $135 million. These relief grants are intended to help humanities recover from the economic burdens of the pandemic, enable the reopening of humanities institutions and programs, and to support the retention of the humanities workforce.

“This relief funding provides an opportunity for us to continue to bolster the humanities, addressing the current challenges while identifying and creating pathways toward a brighter future,” said Benita Wolters-Fredlund, dean for the school of humanities, arts, and social sciences at Calvin University.

More than a dozen tenure track faculty in the humanities will have a lighter course load so that they can think creatively and envision and implement strategic initiatives to reenergize the humanities. Their focus is on three key areas: creating communities of practice, creating engagement with new learning communities, and investing in a foundational humanities course in Calvin’s new core curriculum.