Completed Summer '05
Kim Gall received funds to lead a faculty learning community within the Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Dance and Sport Department that examined virtues that the college embraces as part of its core curriculum. The faculty had a book discussion group during interim and second semester focused on the development of virtue and character in connection to its curricular and extracurricular offerings available to all Calvin undergraduates.
Completed Summer 06
Julie Walton, of the Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Dance, and Sports Department, received funds to lead an interdisciplinary faculty/staff group during the summer and fall of 2005 in connecting Christian ethics and values into the human movement vocations, particularly those of coaching, training, rehabilitation and sports/health management. This group read about sports and ethics and prepared a white paper to be presented at the 2006 meeting of the Christian Society for Kinesiology and Leisure Studies.
Kathryn Jacobsen, a Biology faculty member, and five Calvin students received funds to investigate the effect of a clean drinking water, sanitation, and health education program on child health in rural Ecuadorian communities during the summer of 2005. During the first two weeks of August they interviewed about 30-50 families with young children in each of about 20 communities. Five Calvin students interested in pursuing careers in international health and development participated as research assistants. .
Susan Felch and Shelly LeMahieu Dunn, received funds to help support two initiatives at the Festival of Faith and Writing. The first supported six young writers who created FFW sessions in which to talk about their work as young writers and the paths that they have pursued since college. These panels were widely accessible to current Calvin students without full registration for the whole FFW event through a partial registration process. The second supported four vocation chat sessions with selected writers over a meal.
David Fuentes, a Calvin music professor, used funds to explore how musicians integrate faith with their duties as musicians. The money supported the interviewing of three groups of musicians to identify both natural and difficult integration points between one's Christian faith and carrying out one's duties as a musician. The groups were organized as follows: (Group A) musicians involved in performance and composition, (Group B) musicians involved in teaching music to students in the K-12 age group), and (Group C) musicians involved in programming and research. The goal was to determine what issues working musicians think their faith already impacts, what issues they think ought to be influenced by their faith and what issues they see as having little or no connection to their faith.
Completed Summer 07
Mary VanderWal, a nursing faculty member, did research on ways to impact the health and nutritional status of HIV-positive orphans in Ethiopia. Through Vocation Venture Fund support for her travel she designed a study of these children and created means for Calvin nursing students to be involved in her ongoing research. Together they developed health and nutritional inventions for AIDS orphans living in poverty and consider related recommendations for other at-risk populations.
Susan Felch and Gary Schmidt, two English Department faculty members, formed a Book Club that traced the ways in which fiction leads to questions about the world around us, new evaluations of our place in the world, and a greater awareness of the ways that God reveals himself within that world. Together the club read fourteen novels; and each of the readers wrote one or two essays to be published as a collection. The Vocation Venture Fund provided copies of these novels and supported lunch discussions for this group.
Kim Gall, a Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Dance, and Sports Department faculty member, organized a reading group discussion in response to the results of a HERI survey revealing that at Calvin many more men than women felt that women were treated fairly at Calvin. Generally speaking, data from other surveys have revealed that female faculty members seem to be evaluated more harshly than are their male counterparts. In addition, may females believe they are viewed and judged differently. Evaluations from coaching bodies have revealed that female athletes tend to evaluate their coach more negatively than do the male athletes. Through reading and discussion of ideas, and sharing of methods and actions, participants were able to become more effective in the development of a community effort in recruiting and mentoring and supporting females in their professional endeavors. The Vocation Venture Fund provided copies of books and articles and supported snacks during the discussions and the wrap-up dinner.
