Legacy

Gift of Faith

A young, international alumna established a scholarship to honor her host parents and her heritage

BY SARA KORBER-DEWEERD ’00

An Dinh with host parents Ken and Rose Kruger in June 2021, presenting them with a certificate commemorating the named scholarship she established in their honor.

An Dinh ’11, MA ’13 grew up in Vietnam, where, she says, many people are not Christians. She first traveled to the United States in 2006 to spend her senior year of high school as an international exchange student. Her host parents, Ken and Rose Kruger, shared more than their home with her; they also shared their faith. “Through my host parents, I came to know Jesus. I was young in my faith. My host parents wanted me to attend a Christian college because that would help.”

Dinh’s host family lived an hour north of Grand Rapids. Occasionally, Dinh traveled to the city to shop or hang out. Her first impression of Calvin was the pedestrian overpass that connects the university’s east and west campuses. Dinh remembers thinking, “Wow, that looks really nice. I want to go there,” she laughs, recalling how little she knew of Calvin. Navigating the admissions process opened her eyes to Calvin’s unique community. “Even from the beginning of the applying process, my admissions counselor in the international office was very helpful—getting me more

financial aid so I could come, answering a lot of questions about my faith. So it wasn’t just about Calvin trying to get another person on campus.”

Dinh, now an associate professor of speech-language pathology at Toledo University, says she knew she wanted to give back to the university that nurtured her education and her faith. She hoped to establish a scholarship in her host parents’ names, but she never intended to create one so early in her career. “My plan was to do this ten years in the future, when my career was established. I’ve only been a professor for three years.” However, Dinh’s host mother had Parkinson’s disease, and when Rose’s health deteriorated, Dinh changed course. She wanted Rose, who passed away three months after the scholarship’s inception, to enjoy knowing her legacy of faith would live on.

Dinh describes her time at Calvin as a kind of miracle. Despite living thousands of miles from her family, being a new Christian, and majoring in speech-language pathology as a non-native speaker, she felt embraced. She recalls taking a phonetics class as a sophomore. “I had heard stories from other international people who could not get a degree in speech therapy in the U.S. because they are not from here. I wanted to sound like an American, so I worked really hard. And my professor asked, ‘Why? Everyone sounds different. As long as you are intelligible, that’s fine. There is no such thing as an American accent.’” Dinh smiles, “That made me feel more confident. You know, it’s more about people being people.” Her professors encouraged her “to use this thing you think is an obstacle as your strength. You can empathize with people.”

Dinh also recalls the summer in which former vice president of Student Life, Shirley Hoogstra, and other faculty learned she hadn’t seen her family in four years. In response, a group of faculty arranged to fly Dinh home for the next Christmas break. She remembers her supervisor calling her away from a therapy session with a client and leading her to a room where all her professors had gathered. They shared they had been praying for Dinh about going home and had decided to pay for her plane ticket. She was overwhelmed by the gift. “My family’s not Christian,” she says, “so it was a huge battle just for me to be at Calvin every year. They thought I should transfer. When they knew Calvin paid for my plane ticket, they were like, ‘Why? What’d you do? Win an award or something?’” The community’s generosity made a positive impact on her family, too.

Dinh hopes her scholarship will relieve some of the financial strain that international students commonly experience, since they can only work on campus, and they can’t take out loans in the United States. She also says, “My deepest hope would be that through this scholarship, a student from Southeast Asia will either come to know Jesus or grow more in their faith. The legacy my host parents have left with me, I want to continue that.” The Ken and Rose Kruger scholarship is now in its inaugural year and is awarded annually to an incoming or current student from Southeast Asia who has a heart for Christian service. The Ken and Rose Kruger Scholarship is part of Calvin’s Named Scholarship Program. Each year approximately 20 new scholarships are added and, for the 2022–23 academic year, more than $5 million was given to support students through over 1,475 individual awards. While many awards are in memoriam, others are gifts of gratitude for the role Calvin played in an individual or family’s life. Donors can indicate criteria for students, including financial need, program of interest, residency, high school attended, and diversity. Visit calvin.edu/support/ where-to-give/scholarships/ for more information.