17 minute read
Calvin Scholarship
A Campus for all Seasons
BY ABIGAIL HAM ’23 AND KATIE ROSENDALE ’23
FACULTY-STUDENT RESEARCH SHOWS CALVIN’S ARCHITECTURE AND IDENTITY HAVE EVOLVED, AND CONTINUE TO EVOLVE, SIDE-BY-SIDE
Art history professor Craig Hanson conducted summer research exploring the history and influence of Calvin’s Knollcrest campus architecture with three McGregor Student Fellows. The project was one of eight conducted this past summer through the McGregor Undergraduate Research Program, which has funded student-faculty research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences since 1999.
“We were exploring the architecture, the architect, and the student experience when the campus was first created,” said Gabrielle Freshly ’23, one of the student researchers. Freshly and the other students spent the summer digging through Calvin’s archives, researching the campus’ architects and conducting interviews with current and past Calvin community members. What they found points to a connection between identity and design.
When Calvin first moved to the Knollcrest campus in the ’60s and ’70s, the student body predominantly comprised a tightlyknit Reformed community. Both the physical campus and the Calvin community have changed since then, and while the school’s legacy remains potent, more expansive visions of Calvin’s future are also playing a role in the campus’ evolution.
In 1956, Calvin College purchased a large plot of land known as Knollcrest farm. Calvin’s campus at the time was located on Franklin Street, in the heart of Grand Rapids. But after World War II, the college experienced a period of intense growth that the Franklin campus couldn’t accommodate.
Then-President William Spoelhof turned to architecture firm Perkins and Will, which Hanson described as “the most progressive architects for education,” to design and build the new campus. The firm assigned architect William Fyfe, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, to the project.
Fyfe was a proponent of Prairie style architecture—a style focused on the integration of buildings and landscape via elements such as flat roofs and natural colors.
The design and construction of the Knollcrest campus took place in a period when the Christian Reformed Church in North America was beginning to think more intentionally about preserving the unity of its community. It made sense for campus architecture to reflect and reinforce that desire, but this has often been interpreted as campus having a “closed-in” feel.
When the campus was constructed, it was “pretty isolated,” Freshly said. “At the time, it was at the edge of town.”
The campus faces inward, too. “Entrances are not typically located outside the commons,” Hanson said. This design aligned Calvin with classical European universities like Oxford; officials also hoped that an inward orientation would prevent campus from disturbing the privacy of any surrounding neighborhoods, according to Hanson.
Calvin at the time was largely composed of the Dutch-American community. “The overwhelming majority on campus in the ’70s were insiders,” Hanson said. Campus buildings didn’t have signs; if you were part of the community, you’d just know where to go.
“We experience that as snooty inhospitality,” Hanson said—but, in reality, it was intended to be hospitable. “Fyfe had this vision that if you showed up on campus and you didn’t know where you were going, you would ask somebody. It was a vision of hospitality that depended upon an insider community.”
But Prairie style also has advantages, according to Hanson. “Buildings at the University of Chicago, buildings at Yale— they want to impress you,” he said. Calvin’s campus, on the other hand, “doesn’t suggest a kind of mastery of the surrounding landscape,” Hanson said. “It’s not hierarchical. It’s a very peaceful, coexisting form of architecture.”
The various master planning projects currently in the works aim to preserve this feature of Calvin’s campus while trying to mitigate the feeling of being closed-off. One example is a new residential master plan, which aims to make small tweaks with big impacts to residence hall designs. The goal is to add light and openness without sacrificing the integrity of the Prairie style.
Adjustments like these keep Calvin’s architecture from stagnating, according to Hanson, who gained a newfound appreciation for the dynamism of Calvin’s design through his research. Hanson said, “I now think of Calvin’s campus—even the parts I’m not in love with—as a sort of ongoing investment. Campus has to be a living, organic thing.”
This dynamism has been key throughout Calvin’s history. The original vision for campus was defined by paradoxes: both closed-off and welcoming, both American and Dutch, both—in Hanson’s words— “embracing cultural engagement” in its architecture and “shrinking away from community engagement” in its location. Now, it’s even more complex: updates to campus face the need to preserve Calvin’s historical integrity while recognizing that the school’s student body composition and reach have changed.
Now, as Calvin designs the next wave of renovations, changes to the physical campus will balance preserving Calvin’s historical legacy with visions of a more diverse and innovative community.
—CRAIG HANSON
PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY
POISED TO MAKE A POSITIVE IMPACT
WATCH THE BUILDING DEDICATION HIGHLIGHTS
ON SEPTEMBER 14, CALVIN’S SCHOOL OF BUSINESS OPENED ITS DOORS TO THE NEXT GENERATION OF ENTREPRENEURS, LEADERS, AND INNOVATORS
Left: On a warm autumn evening, faculty, students, donors, Calvin community members, and two of Calvin’s recent presidents gathered in front of Calvin’s new School of Business to dedicate its future in service to God. “Our agents of renewal that are educated here will be the entrepreneurs, the innovators, and the business leaders that set the standards for putting people over profit, and who can focus on the financial bottom line while considering how their businesses can create social impact as a core part of their business model,” said President Wiebe Boer during his address to the over 300 guests who attended the ceremony.
Top right: The 24,900 square foot building, made possible by a $22.25-milliondollar anonymous donation, is located next to the DeVos Communication Center on the east side of campus. Half the gift funded construction, while the other half went into an endowment for new business programs, including the addition of a certificate in global business for undergraduates and a new major in operations and supply chain management. A master of accounting program, an online master of business administration program, and MBA certificate programs were also recently added. More new programming will follow.
Middle right: Former President Michael Le Roy, Calvin Center for Innovation in Business director Bob Eames, and donors Cate and Sid Jansma Jr. ’65 also presided over the festivities. In her message, University pastor Mary Hulst ’91 spoke of practicing faithfulness in business. “Calvin University’s School of Business strives to help students learn how to be faithful. Faithful with a little. Start small. Try an idea. Work out a problem.” The Calvin Gospel Choir also performed two songs, including “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”
Bottom right: The student-centric building promotes collaboration with open, accessible spaces, a light-filled atrium, a live stock ticker, conference and breakout rooms, and classrooms equipped with the newest technology. Visitors find it easy to imagine the energy, innovation, and creative solutions students will put to work under the guidance of Calvin’s committed faculty, making it, in former President Michael Le Roy’s words, “the premier business school among Christian institutions in the world.”
— SID JANSMA JR. ’65
CALVIN UNIVERSITY SUPPORTER
REDISCOVERING CALVIN
CALVIN UNIVERSITY’S 12TH PRESIDENT SHARES 12 OBSERVATIONS FROM HIS FIRST SEMESTER ON CAMPUS
While Dr. Wiebe Boer graduated from Calvin University in 1997, he’s only been back on campus in earnest since late June 2022. In honor of his recent inauguration, we asked Dr. Boer to curate a list of 12 things he discovered about Calvin during his first few months on the job.
Here’s his list, which is meant to be representative, not exhaustive:
Top left: Calvin has a tree-to-student ratio of 1:1; actually, we even have a few more trees! Top right: A mural by Christine Vermeer brightens the underpass connecting the east and west sides of campus. Bottom left: Markus Boer joins engineering students during the cardboard canoe race at the seminary pond. Bottom right: President Boer drops the first puck at the alumni hockey game.
1. We have a full cross-country
course on our campus. I ran Cross Country back in the ’90s, and at the time, our home course was off campus. Calvin’s Grand Rapids campus is located in the middle of a city, so having a full 8K (five-mile) course is a huge asset to our community.
2. We have an Ecosystem Preserve on our campus that spans 100 acres.
What other university has this? Our professors and students use this space for research, and it’s a beautiful place to get away and find respite. What a gift to Calvin and the greater west Michigan community. As a side note, we have a mini tropical rainforest inside our Science Building. I’ll probably spend part of February in there.
3. You can find art all over this
campus in all shapes and forms, from the lobby of the new state-ofthe-art School of Business building to the underpass that connects the east and west sides of campus. We also have a beautiful Center Art Gallery that hosts multiple art exhibitions throughout the year.
4. We are a global campus. Our students hail from 55 countries, 48 U.S. states, and 5 Canadian provinces. This year, a record percentage of our incoming class is joining us from outside the United States.
5. My sons have quite a playground
right in their own backyard. Calvin’s campus spans 400 acres and is complete with a 40-foot rock-climbing wall, seminary pond, underground tunnels, lots of cool-looking shiny rocks, and a space to play any and every sport imaginable.
6. Our athletics program is
second to none. Since the ’90s, we have won 10 more national championships in four different sports. In late October, five of our fall teams were ranked inside the top 25 in NCAA Division III. During Homecoming Weekend, our hockey program celebrated its (belated) 50th anniversary year. What a proud moment for me as a Canadian citizen!
7. We are leading the way for all higher education when it comes
to prison education. Calvin Prison Initiative equips adult learners in prison with the knowledge and skills to become community leaders. The five-year program currently has 95 students and has granted 45 bachelor’s degrees to date. This past fall, the undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education visited and was blown away by what CPI is doing in moral formation and prison transformation. I am, too.
Top left: A student in the Calvin Prison Initiative program made two chairs and an end table for President Boer’s office, complete with an engraved Calvin University logo. Bottom left: The documentary Luminous, directed by Calvin film and media professor Sam Smartt, tells the story of Calvin astronomy professor Larry Molnar and his students’ research that made international headlines. Right: Fans cheer at a women’s volleyball game against rival Hope College inside Van Noord Arena.
8. Our community of learners includes undergraduate, graduate, and certificate-seeking students of all ages, in-person and online.
While we are committed to serving our residential undergraduate students well, we are also seeing major growth in our graduate-level programming—our online speech pathology and audiology program is one example to highlight.
9. We hold a commitment to
sustainability. In fact, during my first, full week on the job, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Sun FundED to pursue solar energy solutions for Calvin. What an exciting development!
10. Calvin University’s campus is home to some impressive facil-
ities, from amazing art and design studios, to beautiful performing arts spaces, to what I think are the best indoor athletic facilities in all of Division III. (Our outdoor facilities will undergo a major upgrade, beginning in 2023.) And if you live in the area, you should come check out our new School of Business building.
11. Our science building holds
a world class telescope. We can remotely access another telescope located in Rehoboth, New Mexico. I hear our professors and students make some exciting discoveries with said telescopes.
12. Alumni and friends of Calvin care deeply about our students.
I have met with many donors over the past three months who, in their giving, put students first. For example, Jon and Kerrie VerLee provided a significant financial gift to help launch the Calvin Startup Garage. Jon is also gifting four years of his time as director of the venture and as an entrepreneur-in-residence. This is what investing in students looks like.
CALVIN UNIVERSITY INAUGURATES ITS 12TH PRESIDENT
A DAY OF CELEBRATION
Music and celebration filled the Van Noord Arena on Wednesday, October 26, 2022, where more than 2,000 people gathered for the inauguration of Calvin’s 12th president, Dr. Wiebe Boer. The event included a Scripture reading in 11 different languages, a commissioned poem, prayers, charges of encouragement, and multiple songs sung and performed, including two submitted by students in the Calvin Prison Initiative program.
The ceremony provided an opportunity for the broader community to get to know the university’s 12th president and his family. It represented Boer’s vision for Calvin University as a place of renewal, partnership, diversity, and growth, while reaffirming a continued commitment to Calvin’s legacy of Christian higher education within the Reformed tradition.
A handful of special guests took the podium during the livestreamed ceremony, including Boer’s childhood friend Danladi Verheijen ’97, who attended Calvin with Boer. His introduction highlighted Boer’s wide-ranging personal interests and accomplishments, in addition to Boer’s impressive career in the business, non-profit, and energy sectors. “In every challenge [Wiebe] sees the opportunity to build or transform. He is a tsunami of ideas and a very creative problem solver.”
Boer’s eldest son, Jehan, addressed the crowd with moving words, sharing a story of his father rescuing him from a carjacking when he was just a baby. “[My father] is a brave, loving, caring, risktaker who will put himself on the line for the people he cares for,” said Jehan.
Other notable speakers included Shirley Hoogstra ’78, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and university pastor Dr. Mary Hulst, who reminded guests of the university’s legacy, built from the ground up. “We are grateful for those who have gone before us, those who took the risk to start this school. Those who prayed this place into existence. Those who took on second jobs so that their children could come here. Those who gave in church offerings for years so that this place would flourish. We walk through buildings we did not build. We sit under trees we did not plant.”
Highlighting Boer’s commitment to Calvin’s continued flourishing, student body president Nain Miranda Duarte ’23 spoke directly to the president from the podium. “You have taken a student-first approach. Since the day we met, you have always sought student opinion and have focused on ways to improve the student experience. And not only have you sought for the opinion, but you have consciously taken action by providing solutions.”
Boer’s own address invited Calvin to renew its call to global good, by learning from and esteeming the many cultures represented at Calvin. He encouraged the community to commit to deeper engagement with Calvin’s local and global community for mutual flourishing. He also challenged the community to renew its commitment to engaging with the church, “showing that our mission is not just abstract, but put into action for the welfare of the Christian Reformed Church, the city of Grand Rapids, and communities around the globe.”
Finally, Boer called the Calvin community to be innovative in its approach to the future of higher education, flexible in meeting challenges, unwavering in its Christian and academic commitments, and to do better at telling the Calvin story, “sharing what unites us all.”
Jane Bruin, director of Calvin Center for Intercultural Student Development and longtime friend of Wiebe Boer shared a West African (Mandinka) proverb near the ceremony’s close: “Faroolu meŋ be naaneeriŋ, woolu le jiyoo ka bori ñoo kaŋ: Adjacent fields get the same water running over their crops. Meaning, we all share in the same community.” “Welcome home, sir,” she said, “and as you begin your work, please know that we are in it together.”
In keeping with the globally minded, community-centered ceremony, four prayers of blessing and dedication marked the end of the event, each one reflecting on a different Boer family value—faith, diversity, dedication, and impact.
Community events also bookended the inauguration ceremony. These included a morning chapel on the theme of “God’s invitation to renewal” and a community screening of the new documentary film Luminous, about Calvin astronomy professor Larry Molnar’s scientific research made with a team of student researchers. Community members and guests of the inauguration also enjoyed a post-inauguration reception and an evening celebration dance in the Hoogenboom Gymnasium.
—DR. MARY HULST
CALVIN UNIVERSITY PASTOR
VIEW THE PHOTO GALLERY FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION OF WIEBE BOER
THE GREATEST GENERATION IS NOW
PRESIDENT WIEBE BOER REFLECTS ON THE PAST AND PRESENT OF CALVIN’S MISSION IN THIS EXCERPT OF HIS INAUGURAL SPEECH
Calvin is in a strong place right now with an amazing foundation to build on. ... If our mission is taken seriously, and our responses are agile to the needs of our students and the world, we will continue to attract new generations of Calvin students. And, in turn, we will continue to be known for our remarkable alumni.
Our mission produces alumni who are taught how to think rather than what to think. How to reach hearts rather than break them. How to seek and elevate goodness rather than counterfeit or bury it. How to lift each other up rather than hold each other down.
Calvin has always played a role in society in what we have called the messy middle, but that I would instead like us to call “the missing middle.” This is a place that is getting harder and harder to hold in our current local and global political context. On the Nigerian mission field [where I grew up], Christian Reformed missionaries were considered one of the more “liberal” missions; in other contexts, such as when I was a graduate student at Yale, we are viewed on the more “conservative” side. But these are just monolithic labels that society tries to put on us. Calvin must define our own place in the world, and not let the world define us with their labels.
What Calvin needs to focus on is what author Jim Collins calls, “the genius of and,” instead of the “tyranny of or.” Here are just some of the things Calvin can find the genius of.
As a committed Christian university and community, why can’t we be: Dutch and diverse, excellent and exciting, conservative and controversial, progressive and pious, gritty and grace-filled, orthodox and original, renewed and renewable?
We should leverage these living tensions as bridges to one another—to be the institution that influences the world by calling us back from division and calling us together through dialogue.
So today we need to revisit what it means to be a neighbor, as Calvin has done generation after generation. With a vision of hope, and a tenacious pursuit of that vision, our future will be promising—and our impact will be lasting. ...
Talk to a Calvin student today and you’ll see they are eager to make this world a better place, and to do that now—as radical agents of renewal.
Today’s Calvin students are a part of the greatest generation and they will go on to do even more world-shattering things than their predecessors. So it is our role here to make them ready. ...
We’re going to need all of you. And with God helping me, I’m going to bring all of myself to this mission.
For the chance to serve this university, I am overwhelmed and humbled. Let me close by saying thank you for the opportunity to be the 12th president of Calvin University.
Now, let’s get started.
”
WATCH THE VIDEO OF THE FULL INAUGURATION CEREMONY
Bottom left: After receiving the presidential medallion from board chair Bruce Los, President Boer celebrated on stage with his family. Bottom right: Nain Miranda Duarte ‘23 , student body president, paused to take a selfie after completing his remarks.
