October 2016

Table of Contents

• ACADEMICS
• COMMUNITY
• STUDENT LIFE
• INTERNATIONAL
• ALUMNI AND PARENTS
• ENROLLMENT
• RESOURCES
• ATHLETICS

ACADEMICS

Calvin prepares the heart and mind for rigorous inquiry, always seeking God’s truth.

• Girls Who Code (GWC) is a national organization that introduces middle school and high school girls to computer programming through weekly after school clubs. Calvin’s computer science department is sponsoring three GWC clubs (one for each level of the GWC curriculum), averaging about 15 girls per club. Computer science majors Beka Agava, Paige Brinks, Lauren Ebels, Elizabeth Koning, Hannah Ludema and Tammie Thong are the club facilitators, and Thong worked with Calvin professor Joel Adams to secure a $9,335 Google IgniteCS grant to support this year’s clubs. GWC was founded by Reshma Saujani, a 2017 January Series speaker.
   
• The pre-law program is sponsoring its first ever pre-law day on Monday, Oct. 10 with a full day at the Prince Conference Center, including sessions that feature alumni attorneys talking about their career path, law school professors and recruiters talking about law school admissions and applications, a mock law school class, and a closing networking reception.
   
• Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship director Susan Felch and colleague Mark Rankin of James Madison University have received a three-year, $335,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to edit the writings of William Tyndale (1495-1536). Tyndale, best known for translating the first printed English New Testament (1526) and portions of the Old Testament, also wrote theological works that helped shape the English reformation.
   
• The fourth title in the Calvin Shorts series was released this summer by the Calvin College Press. American Roots, by Jim Bratt, traces the roots of American diversity back to the earliest Native American, European, African settlements along the Atlantic shore. It follows the development of five distinct regions that would eventually converge in the young United States, identifying the strengths, vulnerabilities and arguments that each contributed to the new nation.
   

COMMUNITY

Calvin fosters communal connections that inspire wonder, curiosity and action.

• Our Kuyers Institute (in collaboration with the Colossian Forum) has just completed a three-year project funded by the John Templeton Foundation to develop an extensive new online resource for high school science and Bible/religion teachers. The new resource, freely available at teachfastly.com, offers teachers more than 100 fully developed teaching activities for science and Bible classes that explore the intersections between science and Christian faith. The activities aim to engage students (and in some cases parents) in ways that help them respect both science and faith and see the many different ways they can interact beyond the confines of the most common controversies.
   
• Once a year, the Calvin music department collaborates to demonstrate the power and emotion of more than 300 musicians. Explore the wonder of eight ensembles, multiple solos and small chamber groups joining forces to create delight for the ears. In the spirit of Family Weekend, the Calvin Music Festival revisits the collage-style concert, capturing all the department of music has to offer. Tickets are $15 for adults and just $5 for students/children and are available via the Calvin Box Office.
   
• January 2017 marks the 30th anniversary of the award-winning January Series of Calvin College. The lineup has just been released and promises to bring another exciting month-long discussion on important national and international issues. Once again the noontime series will be available on campus, online and at more than 50 remote sites across the country. Calvin looks forward to welcoming Gary Haugen, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Eugene Cho, N.T. Wright and others for 15 days of a free liberal arts education! Join us weekdays Jan. 4–24 at 12:30 p.m. EST or at https://calvin.edu/january.
   

STUDENT LIFE

Student life at Calvin is a journey where students engage in experiences that broaden the mind, strengthen the body and inspire the spirit.

• Our Career Center has recently restructured to allow our coaches to be more focused in specific career areas and industries. Students can choose to meet with whichever coach is most closely aligned to their interest areas, including:
   
  • Education, Non-Profit, Public and Human Services: Wes Trammell
  • STEM and Healthcare: Brandon Jacob
  • Business, Communications, Arts and Media: Meredith Segur
  • Undecided and Interdisciplinary: Bonnie Speyers
     
• The Revelation Bible Study is a NO HOMEWORK study for group participants, including alumni. Students living in a residence hall can sign up to join a floor Bible Study, but non-dorm groups are available too and study guides for the Bible study are available in English, Korean and Spanish.
   

INTERNATIONAL

We are pursuing an environment of inclusive excellence, cultural competency and global awareness.

• Can’t make it in person to our Chapel or LOFT (Living Our Faith Together) services? Both are streamed live Monday-Friday from 10–10:20 a.m. and Sundays at 8 p.m., respectively. Our online average views for LOFT have increased by 87 percent over the past year, with Chapel views increasing by 200 percent. We have viewers from around the world who tune in to join us at the Calvin College Chapel in worship. If you miss the worship services on livestream or would like to go back and reference something you saw or heard, you also have the option of watching a recording at your convenience through our archives page.
   

ALUMNI AND PARENTS

We are committed to building community among Calvin College alumni and friends around the world.

• Andrea and I are eager to welcome Calvin parents back to campus for the Oct. 21–22 Family Weekend. It’s a great time to re-visit sons and daughters and to meet roommates, friends, faculty and staff who have already made a positive impact in the lives of these young people. Many great events are available for parents and families.
   
• The Calvin Academy for Lifelong Learning (CALL) has offered a variety of programs for senior learners on campus for more than 20 years. This fall, 60 dynamic and diverse courses are offered to its members, and nearly 1,900 classroom seats have been filled to date. CALL now lists 2,100 members (just 38 percent of whom had a prior affiliation with Calvin) representing 21 church denominations.
   
• The latest edition of our redesigned Spark magazine is available with additional visuals and other features. Check out a recent multimedia feature, “Borderlands,” for a terrific example of interesting, in-depth coverage.
   

ENROLLMENT

Calvin is a community committed to thinking deeply, acting justly and living wholeheartedly.

• This fall we welcome nearly 1,000 new students to campus. Calvin’s 2016 incoming cohort includes 909 first time students and 75 transfer students. This group represents many Christian denominations, significant academic excellence, geographic breadth and diversity of background. Our total student population is 3,918. These current students hail from 62 countries, 48 U.S. states and 5 Canadian provinces. This year, 11 percent of our student body is international students and 15 percent is AHANA students (African, Hispanic, Asian and Native American).
   
• All of us on campus are now turning our attention to recruiting the fall 2017 class and are excited to have two important new talking points (messages that you can also share whenever you ReCommend Calvin) as we interact with prospective students and their families:
   
  • We’re #1! Calvin is proud to be “the best in the Midwest!” U.S. News & World Report ranked Calvin College number one on their list of Midwest regional colleges for 2017.
     
  • Also, we are rolling out a unique new “life readiness” program, Calvin LifeWork. Over the years, I have found that our prospective students and parents put increasing value on finding careers and lifestyles that are both meaningful and sustainable. Calvin LifeWork is an incentivized, four-year, co-curricular program that will help students prepare for life and work after graduation, beginning in fall 2017.Through a series of workshops, experiential learning opportunities and intentional coaching, students will be guided through significant milestone activities designed to prepare them for their lifelong vocational goal of engaging God’s world. Students who complete three years of the program will be eligible for a $3,000 scholarship during their fourth year at Calvin.
     

RESOURCES

We will strengthen Calvin’s financial foundation for future generations.

• The Calvin Annual Fund supports thousands of Calvin students every year, and this year, through letters and emails, you will get to know one of them: Bethany Love, a senior from Grand Rapids, Mich. The financial aid provided by your gifts to the Calvin Annual Fund made it possible for her to come to Calvin, and she is thriving here. She is an education major, a campus leader and one of the top-ranked shotput throwers in the country. Bethany is on an amazing journey made possible by your generosity. You can continue supporting Bethany (and 4,000 students like her) with a gift of any amount at https://calvin.edu/go/annualfund.
   

ATHLETICS

Follow the fall season at calvinknights.com.

• Our nationally ranked volleyball team is off to a terrific start (undefeated in the MIAA as of press time), and middle hitter Laura Danhoff was honored two straight weeks as the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA) Volleyball Player of the Week.
   
• Calvin College senior Stephan Hooker is the subject of the MIAA’s latest student-spotlight feature. Over the course of his Calvin College career, Hooker has been an all-conference and all-region soccer selection, but has also found time to be a standout in the classroom as a business marketing major. A captain on this year’s Calvin men’s soccer team, Hooker explains his decision to attend Calvin and what his experience as a Division III student-athlete has been like.