Criterion
4
Acquisition, Discovery, and Application of Knowledge
The organization promotes a life of learning for its faculty, administration,
staff, and students by fostering and supporting inquiry, creativity,
practice, and social responsibility in ways consistent with its
mission. |
Acquisition,
Discovery, and Application of Knowledge
At Calvin College, attitudes toward inquiry and creativity are shaped
by a strong religious tradition in which cultivation of the life of the
mind is not an arid or isolated pursuit; rather, it is respected as an
appropriate response to the Creator and is aimed at the fulfillment of
social responsibility. Through various institutionalized structures, the
college recognizes and supports the practice of inquiry as a holistic
endeavor, bearing fruit in publication, presentation, and performance
in an organic relationship with teaching and learning.
Learning and Mission: Maintaining a Community of Learning
4a
The organization demonstrates, through the actions of its board,
administrators, students, faculty, and staff, that it values a life
of learning. |
There has been an assumption in contemporary American academic life that
religion has little to do with the life of the mind. Likewise, there has
been a scandalous situation among American evangelicals, which historian
Mark Noll identifies as there being “not much of an evangelical
mind.”1 Calvin College, by contrast, has stood as an
anomaly in the American academy and as a beacon to American evangelicalism.
It resolutely insists on the integral relationship of Christian faith
and intellectual life. As the college of the Christian Reformed Church
(CRC), Calvin has placed itself explicitly in the tradition of St. Augustine,
John Calvin, and the Dutch Calvinist theologian, educator, and politician
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), who founded the Free University of Amsterdam
in 1880 and was prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. In
his address inaugurating the Free University of Amsterdam, Kuyper proclaimed
that
[n]o single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed
off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain
of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all,
does not cry: “mine.” That cry we have heard, and this work,
far too great for our own strength, we have taken up only in reply to
this call.2
For Kuyper, Christ’s sovereignty over creation includes the human
mind. At Calvin College, the common task, the project in which all campus
community members are engaged, is fleshing out the meaning of Christian
faith for scholarship and cultural creativity in all of the academic disciplines.
Calvin scholars seek to articulate a Christian voice in the American academy
and to transform academic culture for God’s glory.3 Since
the 1920s Calvin College has been the clearest American embodiment of
Kuyper’s intellectual vision, and it has donated to American intellectual
life a vocabulary and grammar for integrating faith and learning. Drawing
on its intellectually animated, richly theological tradition of cultural
and scientific engagement, the college has bequeathed to American higher
education a long list of well-known Christian scholars and teachers, including
philosophers William Harry Jellema, Alvin Plantinga, and Nicholas Wolterstorff;
Fuller Theological Seminary president Richard Mouw; and historian George
Marsden. All spent many years on the Calvin faculty.4
Faculty members at Calvin are keenly aware of the strength of the intellectual
tradition in which they work and are sensitive to the fact that each of
the above named scholars went out from the Calvin College faculty to make
a broader impact from faculty positions at research institutions. Calvin
faculty members strive to keep the torch of integrally Christian scholarship
lit and to pass it on to a new generation, to express a distinctively
Christian voice in the American academy while still intending, like the
Christian Reformed Church, to look “very different from most of
twentieth-century American evangelicalism.”5
A Talented and Committed Faculty
Calvin’s faculty hiring processes also demonstrate the college’s
continued attention to maintaining its strong intellectual tradition.
Departments conduct national searches for permanent positions. An unusual
feature of Calvin’s searches is that all are open in rank. Indeed,
of the 57 tenure-track appointments made at the college since 1999-2000,
23 (40 percent) were at the associate or full professor rank. When term
appointments are added, 48 out of a total of 140 full-time faculty appointments
(34 percent) since 1999-2000 have been at the associate professor or full
professor rank.
Table 5.1 Rank of Recent Faculty Appointments
| Year |
Tenure-Track
Appointments |
Tenure-Track
Assoc. or Full |
Total
Appointments |
Total
Assoc. or Full |
| 1999-2000 |
8 |
2 |
29 |
7 |
| 2000-2001 |
13 |
9 |
27 |
14 |
| 2001-2002 |
10 |
4 |
27 |
8 |
| 2002-2003 |
13 |
3 |
31 |
9 |
| 2003-2004 |
13 |
5 |
26 |
10 |
Calvin has made effective use of endowed chairs, especially the Spoelhof
Chair and the Byker Chair, to attract and retain outstanding faculty members
at the senior level. Spoelhof Chair holders have included philosopher
C. Stephen Evans, geography scholar Janel Curry, rhetoric scholar Helen
Sterk, historian of East Asia Daniel Bays, geologist Gerald Van Kooten,
and documentary filmmaker James Ault. Curry, Sterk, and Bays remain on
the Calvin faculty, Curry as the dean for research and scholarship. Evans
also held that post for three of his eight years on the Calvin faculty.
Van Kooten has returned to Calvin this fall to a tenure-track post. The
first holder of the Byker Chair, which, unlike the Spoelhof Chair, has
no term limit, is Paul Freston, a sociologist and leading scholar of Latin
American Protestantism, who joined the faculty in 2003.6
Calvin College’s unitary and fairly fl at pay structure has important
complicating consequences for recruiting a strong faculty. On the one
hand, because all faculty of equal rank and years of experience are paid
equally, the pay structure can work against hiring “established
and productive” scholars at universities with more steeply ranked
pay scales. It can also hinder the recruiting of faculty whose professional
fields offer them lucrative opportunities outside of academe and thus
tend to “bid up” their academic salaries. Even so, Calvin’s
pay structure provides an important distribution of quality across departments,
as salary monies are spread across departments and are not concentrated
on securing talented faculty in only a few such departments. And the fact
that so many new appointments have been made at the associate or full
professor rank further reflects the depth of commitment of these newly
recruited faculty to the mission of Calvin College.
Indeed, Calvin’s faculty hiring process targets depth of commitment
as well as scholarly talent. 7 In addition to a review of the
candidates’ research and teaching record, discussion of the way
in which candidates integrate faith and learning in research and teaching
constitutes a crucial part of the interview process for prospective faculty
members. New faculty members write initial statements on the integration
of faith and learning—statements that are developed and honed in
several stages as faculty members pass through the process of reappointment.
A finished essay on the topic forms part of each faculty member’s
dossier for tenure review. In their scholarship and teaching, Calvin faculty
members are expected to work from a Christian perspective and articulate
a Christian voice in ways appropriate to their disciplines.8
Institutional Support for Scholarship
Research stimulates institutional improvement and furthers the mission
of the college to be an agent for renewal in the world. The college’s
chartering documents and policies, as well as its financial allocations,
demonstrate that inquiry and creativity are valued—but not only
for their own sake. Research and scholarship are central to what it means
to be a faculty member because faculty members are the senior members,
the exemplars, in a community of learning. Calvin College supports scholarship
by protecting its members’ freedom and obligation to engage in truth-seeking
inquiry, by embracing a broad and varied understanding of scholarship,
and by devoting considerable attention and funding to scholarly tasks.
Academic Freedom at Calvin
The protection of academic freedom is vital to the survival of the Christian
community of learning of which the college faculty is the center. Calvin
College believes that religious communities should be free to work from
a distinctively religious perspective, to work from a starting point of
commonly held religious presuppositions. Hence, according to the Expanded
Statement of the Mission of Calvin College ( ESM) and the Handbook for
Teaching Faculty, academic freedom at Calvin is framed by commitments
that flow from each faculty person’s membership in the Calvin community.
These prior commitments are essentially three: the confessional standards
of the college, the professional standards of the scholarly discipline,
and the public standards of keeping the classroom free from partisan political
propaganda unrelated to a scholar’s discipline or teaching subject.9
Faculty members at Calvin submit to the limitations on academic freedom
implied by their acceptance of the confessional standards of the college
because their commitment to these standards forms the foundation and motivation
for their scholarship and teaching. Their shared religious convictions
are also common intellectual convictions about what is true. Their consensus
becomes a positive asset for the Calvin faculty; it forms a community
of scholars and teachers engaged with each other and with students in
the pursuit of truth.10
This is a more generous notion of academic freedom than exists at many
private, church-related colleges. At the same time, the practice of academic
freedom at Calvin is not without occasional strains. These strains typically
occur when academic investigation and comment bear on controversial issues
under discussion in the broader communities serving and served by the
college—the church, parents, alumni, and other constituencies. At
the time of Calvin’s 1994 self-study, these issues included the
role of women in the church (specifically, their suitability for holding
church office), the place of scientific theorizing in church life, and
the meaning for readers of the Scriptures of the evidence for a very old
earth and the theory of evolution. Topics of concern in 2004 include these,
as well as homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, capitalism, and the outlook
and methods associated with postmodernism. Structures of due process protect
faculty members from alleged violations of confessional or professional
standards and ensure that in the event of challenges to this right, the
college is committed to the implementation of Christian principles of
justice and charity in its community.11
At Calvin commitment to academic freedom for Christian scholars is rooted
in Abraham Kuyper’s insistence that the academy and the church constitute
different spheres of human endeavor. Calvin College is the college of
the CRC, but the college is not a church. As Anthony Diekema, president
emeritus, put it, the college and the church “keep faith with each
other by sharing a belief system and maintaining trust.” The “church
and its worldview deserve a distinctive place in the intellectual conversation
of the campus.”12 The college, in its mission statements,
affirms its close relationship with the church; the church, in its synodical
documents, supports the academic and intellectual mission of the college.
Faculty members at Calvin take seriously the right and the responsibility
to assess and critique the views of the church. There is very wide appreciation,
moreover, for the enrichment of community and church life that results
from careful protection of the principles of free inquiry at the college.13
Ambiguity arises, however, with regard to the extent to which specific church statements, such as acts of the denominational synod, are binding
on faculty members at the college.
It is very likely that there will be social, ethical, and religious
issues that challenge the college in the next decade. It is important
to recall that in well-publicized cases in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
the structures of due process at the college were found adequate, and
the academic freedom of Calvin faculty members was vindicated.14
The Nature of Scholarship at Calvin
At Calvin there is a strong tradition of encouraging scholarship while
resisting the impulse to define it narrowly and quantify expectations.
Scholarly production is treated as one of the four areas of responsibility
specifically assigned to the faculty, along with teaching, advising, and
service. Scholarship is viewed as a necessity, vital to successful teaching,
to the maintenance of the community of learning that is the college, and
to the formation and guidance of Christian witness in the world.15
Hence the ESM and the Handbook for Teaching Faculty
set out several purposes of Christian scholarship and differentiate types
of scholarship and cultural creativity. Defining a plan for research and
scholarship forms part of the self-evaluation and planning required of
all faculty members as part of reappointment, tenure, and post-tenure
reviews.16 Guidelines for planning scholarship and research
avoid specifying the amount of scholarship that is expected from faculty
members; rather, the guidelines refer faculty to departmental standards
for scholarship to flesh out expectations in the various disciplines.
Academic departments at Calvin drew up statements on expectations for
research and scholarship that were reviewed and approved by the Faculty
Development Committee and the Professional Status Committee in 1998. These
norms are shared with new faculty members and are used as a tool for ongoing
professional development.17
While all faculty members at Calvin are called to be scholars, not all
express this commitment in the same form. The college’s mission
documents recognize personal, applied, and advanced scholarship. Personal
scholarship means linking current debates in one’s chosen field
to issues in the world in creative and challenging ways. This kind of
research is essential to vibrant teaching and is thus expected of all
faculty. Applied scholarship means communicating the reflection
on one’s chosen field in a domain outside the professional academy,
through consulting, counseling, advising, or public speaking. At Calvin
an important audience for applied research is the CRC, whose denominational
headquarters are located in Grand Rapids. The many agencies and offices
of the church benefit directly from the expertise of Calvin faculty members,
and the dozens of CRC congregations in the Grand Rapids area regularly
call on Calvin faculty members as speakers and consultants. Advanced
scholarship is the creation and interpretation of knowledge in one’s
chosen field, and the creation or performance of works of art. Many Calvin
faculty have achieved national prominence in their chosen scholarly disciplines
through presentations at professional conferences and symposia; through
the publication of books, monographs, and journal articles; and through
exhibitions and performances.18
The ESM describes the purposes of scholarship at Calvin: to
conserve, that is, to promote understanding of the Christian tradition;
to transform, by “establishing Christian criteria for knowledge
or for its application,” especially by critically challenging the
prevailing wisdom in the academic disciplines; and to enrich, meaning
to bring the “insights or methods of the arts and sciences to bear
on Christian thought and the understanding of creation and culture,…
[to] enhance appreciation for God’s creation and human experience
[and] expand the fund of human knowledge and wisdom.”19
Each of these forms of scholarship is prized at the college.
Internal Funding of Scholarship
Since its establishment in 1997 the position of dean for research and
scholarship has served to coordinate internal college funding of faculty
and student research activities, disseminate information about and act
as a clearinghouse for opportunities for external funding, and promote
and celebrate the results of scholarly research on campus. This dean works
closely with the Development Office’s director of grants and foundation
relations.
Calvin offers two major and several smaller sources of internal funding
for faculty research. The first is through the annual budget for the
sabbatical program and for Calvin Research Fellowships ( CRFs). Faculty
members are eligible to apply for a sabbatical leave after their sixth
year of service. Successful applications are funded at 100 percent for
one semester and the January Interim, and at 50 percent for a full year.
Faculty members are required to report on their sabbatical activities,
present their findings in a public forum as appropriate, and continue
in their positions for one year for each semester of paid leave.20
CRFs are awards for reduction of teaching loads during the academic year
in order to help faculty pursue projects of individual scholarship and
to aid them in their ongoing independent research. Faculty members on
tenure-track appointments with a record of excellent teaching and scholarship
are eligible to apply. The funding that supports the sabbatical program
and academic-year CRFs (which are semester course reductions) as well
as summer salary stipends has grown from $574,955 in the 1994-1995 academic
year to $1,060,000 in 2003-2004 (Table 5.2). Note that unlike some institutions,
Calvin has no annual limit on sabbaticals. About 75 percent of faculty
members take sabbaticals within two years of eligibility. A separate fund
is available for summer CRF research stipends. The college’s goal
is to have a budget that will support the equivalent of a baseline of
25 sabbaticals and 40 CRF units annually.21
Table 5.2 Funding of Sabbaticals and
Calvin Research Fellowships
Year |
Number
of Sabbaticals Granted |
Number
of CRF Units Granted |
Total
Funding* |
1994-1995 |
17 |
28 |
$574,955* |
1995-1996 |
18 |
13 |
$537,255 |
1996-1997 |
16 |
11.5 |
$516,955 |
1997-1998 |
14 |
17 |
$506,555 |
1998-1999 |
12 |
27 |
$498,343 |
1999-2000 |
9 |
32 |
$531,430 |
2000-2001 |
15 |
29 |
$687,912 |
2001-2002 |
17 |
21 |
$742,486 |
2002-2003 |
29 |
20 |
$789,805 |
2003-2004 |
23 |
27 |
$1,060,500 |
* Note: These funding data reflect
the actual money spent, not the money initially budgeted for the number
of awards granted.
The second major source of internal funding for faculty
scholarship is the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship (CCCS). The
oldest of the five research centers at Calvin, CCCS was founded in 1976
to enable committed Christian thinkers to reflect upon pressing issues
of public concern across the academic disciplines. By means of proceeds
from an endowment, CCCS funds rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship of
a distinctively Christian nature on important theoretical or practical
issues. For such projects a principal investigator, who is a Calvin faculty
member, brings together Christian scholars from several institutions to
work on a project. CCCS also funds reading groups that think together
about issues of common concern and develop a shared body of Christian
insight. As Table 5.3 shows, CCCS’s grant-making capacity is endowment
driven and tends to rise and fall with annual returns.
Table 5.3 CCCS Funding, 1995-2004
Year |
Number of Projects
Funded |
Total Funding |
1994-1995 |
6 |
$161,140 |
1995-1996 |
8 |
$162,884 |
1996-1997 |
5 |
$82,270 |
1997-1998 |
15 |
$239,862 |
1998-1999 |
10 |
$159,109 |
1999-2000 |
14 |
$201,677 |
2000-2001 |
13 |
$172,052 |
2001-2002 |
8 |
$235,164 |
2002-2003 |
8 |
$151,041 |
2003-2004 |
9 |
$137,148 |
Total |
8322 |
$1,539,207 |
In addition to these major sources, faculty members have
access to several smaller funds for research support:
- The Calvin Alumni Association (CAA) makes faculty research
grants of up to $5,000 per project, with an emphasis on projects that
share skills and expertise. The total annual budget for CAA grants is
$25,000.
- The Center for Social Research (CSR) awards a fellowship annually
and has a small grants program for research in the social sciences.
- The Deur Endowment provides several faculty research awards in sociology
and social work.
- The Mellema Program in Western American Studies offers fellowships
to support research on the North American West.
The college also maintains a program begun in 1991 with
a matching grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to support summer
fellowships for students assisting science professors with research projects.
This program is now sponsoring 17 fellowships each summer.
The college’s McGregor Summer Research Fellowship
Program funds ten collaborative student-faculty research projects in the
humanities and social sciences each summer. This program, along with the
many opportunities provided by Science Division grants that fund student
researchers, is one important way for Calvin to leverage its support for
faculty scholarship. By having students do some of the basic research,
the college not only helps students develop their scholarly capacities
but also increases support for faculty scholarship.
In keeping with Calvin’s recognition that research
and scholarship include many forms, the college supports various expressions
of the faculty’s research involvement. The college’s program
of support for faculty travel to attend professional meetings and conferences
is unusual in that faculty members need not necessarily be presenting
papers at these meetings. The level of funding is currently $700 per faculty
member per year, administered through departments. Since this amount is
often insufficient to cover the expenses of attending a scholarly conference,
however, increasing this budget is a funding priority in the Provost’s
Office. The intention is to raise this by $100 per faculty member in
each of the next three years, until the figure reaches $1,000 per faculty
member. In addition to these monies administered through departments,
the Provost’s Office has created a supplemental travel fund of
$21,000. It is often used by faculty members who are presenting their
research at international conferences. This is part of a significant
investment to encourage faculty to expand their global experience.
The college has a history of encouraging and supporting
faculty members who become editors of journals in their disciplines. This
support comes in the form of reductions in teaching loads and in administrative
and clerical assistance, paid out of an endowment fund administered by
the Provost’s Office. For example, Roy Anker (English) received
a course release for four years while he edited Perspectives; Johnathan
Bascom (geography) received a course release for three years while he
edited the African Geographical Review; Jennifer Holberg (English)
received start-up support for Pedagogy, a journal published by
Duke University Press; Douglas Howard (history) received a course release
and administrative and secretarial assistance for five years while he
was editor of the Turkish Studies Association Bulletin; Ronald
Wells (history) and Frank Roberts (history) received a course release
and secretarial assistance while editing Fides et Historia.
Table 5.4 Calvin Faculty Editorial Involvement
in National Professional Journals over the Last Ten Years
Faculty
Member |
Discipline |
Position |
Journal |
| Roy Anker |
English |
Editor |
Perspectives |
| Johnathan Bascorn |
Geography |
Editor |
African Geographical Review |
| Jim Bradley |
Mathematics |
Editor |
Journal of the Association of Christians
in the Mathematical Sciences |
| Don DeGraaf |
Physical Education |
Associate Editor |
SCHOLE: A Journal of Leisure Studies and
Recreation Education |
| Laura De Haan |
Psychology |
Associate Editor |
Journal of Family and Economic issues |
| Charles Farhadian |
Religion |
Editor |
Pastoral Psychology |
| Ruth Groenhout |
Philosophy |
Associate Editor |
Annals of Bioethics |
| David Hoekema |
Philosophy |
Publisher |
Christian Scholar's Review |
| Arie Leegwater |
Chemistry |
Science Editor |
Christian Scholar's Review |
| Tom Hoeksema |
Education |
Editor |
Journal on Religion, Health and Disability |
| Jennifer Holberg |
English |
Editor |
Pegagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching
Literature |
| Douglas Howard |
History |
Editor |
Turkish Studies Association Bulletin |
| Frank Roberts |
History |
Editor |
Fides et Historia |
| Ronald Wells |
History |
Editor |
Fides et Historia |
| David Smith |
Germanic Languages |
Editor |
Journal of Christianity and Foreign Languages |
| Dianne Zandstra |
Spanish |
Assistant Editor |
Journal of Education and Christian Belief |
| Helen Sterk |
Communication Arts & Sciences |
Editor |
Journal of Religion and Communication |
| Glen Van Andel |
Recreation |
Editor |
Annual in Therapeutic Recreation |
| Gerard Venema |
Mathematics |
Associate Editor |
American Mathematical Monthly |
Another form of institutional support for research and scholarship
can be seen in the opportunities for professional development offered
at Calvin. During the academic year, these professional development programs
include a series of “teaching and learning lunches.” Summer
programs include faculty development workshops. In 2004 workshops included
“Developing a Five-Year Plan for Scholarship” and “Grant
Writing.”23 The Faculty Summer Seminars in Christian
Scholarship began in 1996 with a $1 million grant from the Pew Charitable
Trusts. This national program, now with varied funding sources, conducts
five to seven multi-week topical research or reading seminars each summer.
These are offered to scholars from Calvin and beyond.
External Grants
The academic year 2002-2003 was a prolific one for grant
writing by Calvin faculty and staff members, who submitted a college-record
66 proposals for external funding, totaling $6.5 million. This work resulted
in the funding of 41 new awards, totaling $3.4 million. The college’s
success, especially with governmental funding sources, demonstrates Calvin’s
growing national reputation as well as the competitiveness of its faculty’s
research and scholarship. As Calvin has moved more deliberately to seek
federal funding, it has received grants from the National Endowment for
the Humanities ( NEH), National Science Foundation ( NSF), National Institutes
of Health ( NIH), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ( HUD),
and U.S. Department of Education, as well as from state agencies and private
foundations.
In the humanities several examples of recent successes
in attracting governmental funding include:
- Karin Maag, director of the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies,
received a grant of $82,654 from NEH to host a five-week summer seminar
on John Calvin and the transformation of religious culture in France
and beyond. This was Calvin’s first NEH summer seminar grant
since the 1980s.
- Four other Calvin faculty members have received NEH funding, including
year-long fellowships by Steve Evans and Lambert Zuidervaart (philosophy)
and summer stipends by Simona Goi (political science) and Garth Pauley
(communication arts and sciences).
In the natural sciences Calvin has received 21 NSF grants
since 1998 for research, equipment, and programming, totaling $1.44 million.24
Stan Haan (physics) has received continuous funding from NSF for his research
over the past 20 years. A recent NSF grant is the largest one Calvin has
ever received from NSF—biologist David DeHeer’s award of $224,934
for the acquisition of a flow cytometer, an instrument for biomedical
research that one rarely finds on an undergraduate campus. 25
Science faculty use such instrumentation for their own research, and students
are also given hands-on experience with this advanced equipment. In the
last five years Calvin has received four of these NSF Major Research
Instrumentation awards: one in chemistry, one in computer science, and
two in biology.
Three recent grants have come from NIH:
- In 2000 John Ubels (biology) received a renewal award of $478,000
from the National Eye Institute for his study of interactions of retinoids
(Vitamin A) and androgens in control of lacrimal gland function (tear
production).
- In 2003 Laura De Haan (psychology) received a grant of $577,400 over
four years from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
for her work on rural adolescent poverty and alcohol use.
- In 2004 Steve Matheson (biology) received an award of $189,470 from
the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to work
on nerve cells—specifically, the actions of signaling proteins
called diaphanous-related formins, or DRFs.
In the area of international study three Calvin faculty members have
won recent Fulbright Awards, including David Van Baak (Ireland, 1999),
Joel Adams (Mauritius in 2002 and Iceland in 2004), and Johnathan Bascom
(Eritrea, 2004).
Calvin is also applying successfully for U.S. Department of Education
grants. In 1999 Steve VanderLeest secured a grant of $314,000 from the
Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education for implementing
the Research and Information Technology ( RIT) component of Calvin’s
core curriculum. In 2004 Randal Jelks received a grant of $144,000 to
develop curriculum and programming as part of a new minor in African and
African Diaspora studies.
The college is also beginning to secure state funding, most often for
programming:
- Michigan Department of Education (professional development in science
education for middle school teachers), James Jadrich and Ronald Sjoerdsma,
2003, $184,000
- Michigan Department of Consumer and Industry Services, Energy Office (solar and photovoltaic demonstration projects), Paulo Ribeiro, Randall
VanDragt, Matt Heun, and Charles Holwerda, 2003, $103,000
- Michigan Department of Community Health (programs to help older people
successfully age in place), emeritus professor Henry Holstege, 1997,
$351,260
- Michigan Department of Career Development (retention of at-risk minority
students), funding for 11 of the past 12 years, over $500,000
In addition to these governmental sources, Calvin regularly receives
major grants for research and programming from foundations.26
These include:
- $804,000 from the Freeman Foundation’s Undergraduate Asian Studies
Initiative, to enhance and develop Calvin’s Asian Studies Program
over four years (2002-2005)
- $2 million from the Lilly Endowment to enhance and deepen student
and faculty awareness of vocation within our faith commitments (2002-2006)
- $7 million from the Lilly Endowment, for Calvin Institute of Christian
Worship programming, research, and sub-grants (2002-2005)
- $700,000 from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, for science research,
faculty development, and community outreach (2000)
This success is partly due to the increased role of Calvin’s Office
of Research and Scholarship, which helps members of the Calvin College
community secure external funding from foundations, corporations, governmental
agencies, and individuals. Under the auspices of both the Provost’s
Office and the Development Office, the Office of Research and Scholarship
works to obtain funding for college-wide initiatives as well as for faculty
research and development programs. Calvin is also a member of the Washington,
D.C.–based Independent Colleges Office (ICO), a group that helps
negotiate grant opportunities for independent colleges. ICO director Jeanne
Narum has visited Calvin’s campus to provide workshops about grant
opportunities and grant-writing processes. Working with Calvin’s
director of foundation relations, Lois Konyndyk, Narum has contributed
to the overall grants knowledge of the college and has helped Calvin position
itself for future grant-seeking as an independent college.
The Office of Research and Scholarship provides a range of services
for grant proposal writers. These include research services; a Web site
that contains links to possible funding sources; reminders of reporting
requirements; editing and composition assistance for the final draft,
as well as assistance in drawing up the budget and writing cover letters
as needed; and recognition in the Board of Trustees report and on the
college’s Web site. With Calvin’s increased success in securing
grants from federal, corporate, and private foundation sources, the Office
of Grants and Foundation Relations has added a second proposal writer
to capitalize on these funding opportunities.
Recognizing Scholarship
With this robust institutional support, the faculty of Calvin College
is hard-working and intellectually active. The 2001-2002 survey of Calvin
faculty done by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) found that,
as measured by the number of publications (books, chapters of books, and
articles), Calvin faculty were extremely productive, far more so than
their peers at comparable American institutions. As can been seen from
Table 5.5 below, 77 percent of Calvin faculty had been published in the
two years prior to the survey, compared with 54 percent of faculty at
all private, four-year colleges and universities and 48 percent of faculty
at Protestant four-year institutions. The survey also found that 85 percent
of Calvin faculty have published articles in scholarly journals; 53 percent
have published chapters in edited volumes; and 53 percent have published
a book, monograph, manual, or the like.27
Table 5.5 Comparison of Scholarly Activities
of Calvin Faculty with Faculty at Other Institutions
| Form of Scholarship |
Calvin
College |
Other
Protestant Four-Year Colleges |
All
Private Four-Year Colleges |
| Have published in last two years |
77% |
48% |
54% |
| Have published in academic or professional
journals |
85% |
71% |
75% |
| Have published a chapter in an edited volume |
53% |
34% |
39% |
| Have published a book, monograph, or manual |
53% |
32% |
36% |
Source: 2001-2002 Higher Education
Research Institute (HERI) survey
This research activity receives public recognition as well,
on campus and beyond. Seldom does a week pass at Calvin without multiple
public presentations of scholarly work. Many departments have a regular
colloquium or seminar series in which faculty members present the results
of their research. One such seminar series of note is the interdisciplinary
Christian Perspectives on Science seminar, which meets monthly throughout
the school year. The Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship and many
academic departments also hold public gatherings to fete the publication
of major books by faculty members. Departments also host colloquia for
presentations, and through the medium of Calvin News, the campus e-mail
distribution list, these become campus-wide events to which all faculty
and staff are invited.28
The results of this scholarship also reach the wider public
through two principal media. First, Calvin has an excellent relationship
with the local and national media news, through Phil deHaan, director
of media relations. The Office of Media Relations maintains a guide designed
to help the working press connect with Calvin experts who may be able
to serve as resources for stories.29 As a result, Calvin faculty
have been quoted in the Detroit News, Newsweek, Christianity Today,
New York Times, Washington Post, Dallas Morning News, Los Angeles Times,
USA Today, and Boston Globe, and have been interviewed on
affiliates of National Public Radio, PBS, and commercial networks.30
Second, Calvin’s quarterly alumni association magazine, The Calvin
Spark, gives Calvin faculty members and their research extensive coverage
and presents a balanced view of their work. The mission statement of the
magazine notes that, besides communicating news about Calvin initiatives,
it aims to “be a continuing education source to readers, reflecting
a distinctive Reformed perspective,” and to “draw an increasingly
wider national audience to Calvin as a center of Christian thought.”31
Inner Compass, a Calvin-produced television talk show on the local
PBS affiliate, explores how people make decisions about ethical, religious,
and social justice issues. Guests include visiting scholars, authors,
activists, religious leaders, and politicians from around the world, as
well as active members of the local community. It is seen throughout West
Michigan on Tuesday evenings at 6:00 p.m., a prime news hour.32
Another means of recognizing and rewarding research and
scholarship is the annual Calvin Worldview Lectureship. Jointly sponsored
by the college and the Campus Ministry Department of the CRC’s Board
of Home Missions, the lectureship is intended to communicate a Reformed
Christian perspective on a crucial issue in an academic discipline or
in the culture at large. Each year one member of the Calvin faculty is
selected as the Calvin Lecturer. The lecturer is chosen by a committee,
and nominations are solicited. During the academic year, the Calvin Lecturer
receives a one-course reduction each semester and also is freed from normal
January Interim teaching duties. The lecturer prepares and gives public
lectures and seminars for campus ministers at approximately six universities
in North America and at two or three universities abroad. The lectures
are then developed into a short book and published in a series, currently
under contract with InterVarsity Press.
Table 5.6 The Calvin Lectureship
| Year |
Lecturer |
Department |
Topic |
| 1999-2000 |
John Hare |
Philosophy |
"Does Morality Need God?" |
| 2000-2001 |
Susan Felch |
English |
"God and the Embarrassment of Meanings" |
| 2001-2002 |
David Van Baak |
Physics |
"Purpose, Teleology, and the Laws of
Physics" |
| 2002-2003 |
Kurt Schaefer |
Economics |
"Social Policy after Modemism:A Citizen's
Guide to Welfare Reform in the United States" |
| 2003-2004 |
Mark Fackler |
Communication Arts and Sciences |
"Finding Hope in Virtuous Communication" |
| 2004-2005 |
Dalvin Ratzsch |
Philosophy |
"Philosophy of Science" |
| 2005-2006 |
Ronald Wells |
History |
"Faith-based History in the Study of
Justice and Reconciliation: Case Studies from America and Ireland" |
Ample evidence thus shows that Calvin is not content to
rest on its scholarly laurels and that members of Calvin’s current
faculty do not merely live in the shadow of the past but actively work
to carry on the legacy of scholarly achievement established by earlier
generations. It is not difficult to find current Calvin faculty who
are winning national recognition. In 2002 the inaugural Steinbeck Short
Story Award was bestowed on “Summer’s Heat,” a story
by English professor and Steinbeck scholar John H. Timmerman. That same
year, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers named engineering
professor Paulo Ribeiro as a fellow. In 2003 communication arts and sciences
professor Garth Pauley won the Karl R. Wallace Memorial Award in communication
studies for his work in recovering the forgotten civil rights speeches
of the 1963 March on Washington.
Calvin faculty members have been founders of and leaders
in national organizations that develop Christian perspectives within the
academic disciplines.33 For example, in 1991 Calvin political
science faculty members were instrumental in founding Christians in Political
Science, an affiliated organization of the American Political Science
Association, and the Calvin foreign languages departments were involved
in founding the North American Christian Foreign Language Association.
Likewise, Calvin faculty have helped to sustain such organizations by
holding office,34 hosting conferences,35 and presenting
papers.
Calvin is home to six research institutes and centers.
The past decade has been a period of significant growth, reorganization,
and reorientation toward collaborative faculty-student research.
- The Center for Social Research, founded in 1972, serves as a catalyst
for research in the social sciences.36
- The Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship was founded in 1976. Described
above, CCCS is a recognized leader in the growing international project
of intentional, self-critical Christian scholarship.37 In
fact, CCCS now has 48 titles to its credit from its funded projects.
- The H. Henry Meeter Center, founded in 1981, is a research institute
and special collection that focuses on the study of John Calvin and
Calvinism. In North America the Meeter Center’s collection of
sixteenth-century religious works is second only to that of the Folger
Shakespeare Library.38
- The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, founded in 1997, promotes
the scholarly study of the theology, history, and practice of Christian
worship, and the renewal of Christian worship in congregations. Among
its major projects is a national grants program supporting creative
worship projects, funded by the Lilly Endowment.39
- The Paul B. Henry Institute, founded in 1997, promotes serious reflection on the interplay of Christianity and public life, and aims to
become a national forum for research, dialogue, and information on their
interaction. It is named for former Calvin political science professor
and U.S. Congressman Paul B. Henry.40
- The Milton and Carol Kuyers Institute, founded in 2004, promotes
Christian thought and practice in the broad realm of teaching and learning,
not only in higher education but in primary and secondary education
as well. It will serve as a base for mounting a variety of projects
in educational research and professional development.41
In addition to hosting a variety of topical and regional
discipline-specific conferences, Calvin is also home to several major
conferences:
- The biennial Festival of Faith and Writing, which the English Department
began in 1990 with 11 speakers and about 100 guests, featured more than
100 speakers and 1,700 registrants at its April 2004 meeting. The festival
has become a major national event for authors, readers, and critics
who are interested in the role of faith in contemporary imaginative
writing. Among its keynote speakers have been Elie Wiesel, John Updike,
Garrison Keillor, Maya Angelou, and Joyce Carol Oates.
- The annual Symposium on Worship and the Arts, produced by the Calvin
Institute of Christian Worship, has grown from 400 to 1,500 participants
in its six years of existence.
- The biennial Youth Writing Festivals attracted 1,600 area elementary,
middle school, and high school students for its April 2003 conference.
Thousands of participants come to Calvin’s campus
each year to benefit from renowned work in faith-engaged scholarly and
artistic fields. As a result, faculty members have opportunities to present
their work, confer with others with common interests, and receive encouragement
from the exemplary scholarship and artistry they encounter. Students likewise
gain inspiration and encouragement, and through encounters with authors
and scholars in special sessions, they participate in literary discourse
not possible through classroom work alone. Construction of the Prince
Conference Center to serve Calvin’s many and varied conferencing
needs makes it possible to attract even more scholarly attention and strengthen
the college’s position as a convening center for Christian scholarship.
The Center Art Gallery, which was founded in 1974 with
the opening of the Spoelhof Center, likewise serves the college’s
mission to promote Christian scholarship and artistry among faculty and
students and to cultivate lifelong patterns of learning. The gallery is
the conservator of the college’s 1,200-piece art collection, dating
from 1600 to the present, and it is the home display center for student
and faculty artists, each group of which sponsors an annual exhibition.
Under the leadership of director Joel Zwart, the gallery hosts special
programs devised by students and faculty as well. It also features the
work of artists of note from the region and beyond. With funding from
its own modest exhibitions budget and grants from local organizations,
the gallery hosts two or three traveling exhibitions each year.42
Staff Development
Professional development for administrative staff has lagged
somewhat behind what is available for faculty, but there are a number
of opportunities to grow and learn. Perhaps the most central opportunity
for learning and self-improvement offered to Calvin employees is the opportunity
to take courses for free—two per year, in fact, for Calvin employees,
and one per year for each employee’s spouse. A variety of safety
and orientation training seminars (materials handling, sexual harassment,
safe driving, etc.) also occur regularly, both for new employees and as
refreshers for those who have been here for some time. Every summer, Calvin
Information Technology ( CIT) provides a variety of courses to train staff
and faculty to use new software systems. One recently established staff
development program has been a seminar for new employees. Included in
the seminar are sessions devoted to understanding the Christian educational
mission of the college.
There are also a number of positions on campus that have
specific developmental features built into them. Residence hall directors,
for example, are given funds for conference attendance and are eligible
for reimbursement of 50 percent of their tuition toward advanced degrees,
or simply for classes related to their job. Most of the Student Life Division’s
employees have the option of attending the annual conference of the Association
of Christians in Student Development. Although there is no standard policy
or expectation, many holding professional-grade (exempt) positions in
administrative offices are afforded opportunities to attend annual meetings
of associations in their respective professional fields. One of the more
salient findings for Calvin from its participation in the 2002 survey,
“Best Christian Places to Work,” was that administrative staff
do not find that the college meets their expectations about professional
development. The newly installed director of human resources, Todd Hubers,
has indicated that staff development will be one of his top priorities.
Back to top
Scholarship and General Education: Preparation for Life
4b
The organization demonstrates that acquisition of a breadth of knowledge
and skills and the exercise of intellectual inquiry are integral
to its educational programs. |
Commitment to General Education
In a time at when the increasingly narrow specialization
of higher education is a matter of national debate, Calvin College maintains
a commitment to a broad, liberal arts education. All faculty, both newly
hired assistant professors and veteran full professors, academic stars
and toilers in the vineyards, teach core courses. Calvin uses comparatively
few part-time instructors, almost no grading assistants, and teaching
assistants only in laboratories. The core curriculum is large, and the
revision of the core curriculum done in the late 1990s did not reduce
it. Core requirements frequently consume 65 hours out of a total graduation
requirement of 124 hours (52.4 percent).43
Content of the Core Curriculum
Calvin’s core curriculum requires that students take
courses in each of 19 categories. Each category addresses a certain group
of objectives and allows for objectives to be addressed and the category
fulfilled by a choice of courses in several disciplines. These categories
are organized in four broad groups, which roughly represent stages in
a student’s progression through Calvin College.
- Core Gateway—a course on Christian faith and contemporary
issues required of all first year students, called Developing a Christian
Mind
- Core Competencies—gaining skills and perspectives in
Research and Information Technology, Written Rhetoric, Rhetoric in Culture,
Foreign Language, and Health and Fitness
- Core Studies—requirements in twelve content areas,
many drawing on courses offered in a variety of departments. The content
areas are as follows:
Biblical
Foundations- Theological Foundations
- History of the West and the World
- Philosophical Foundations
- Mathematics
- The Natural World
- Literature
- The Arts
- Persons in Community
- Societal Structures in North America
- Global and Historical Studies
- Cross-Cultural Engagement
- Core Capstone courses in Integrative Studies, developed
in the various academic disciplines, integrate “at a higher level
the themes and concerns introduced in the first year interim course
( Developing a Christian Mind).”44
This core curriculum is a capacious one, no smaller in
size than the one it replaced. The task force that designed it decided
early on that the initial goal of creating a smaller core curriculum would
not be met. Their initial thinking about reducing the size of the core
changed when they learned from recent enrollment patterns that students
were not likely to take advantage of a smaller core by broadening their
education with free electives; rather, it was more likely that they would
take additional courses in their major or add another major or minor.
By keeping the core large but offering some choice of courses within the
core categories, the college reinforced its support for a broad education
by means of these “guided electives.” Thus Calvin College
keeps faith with its mission to provide students with a Christian liberal
arts education for lives of service. It balances depth and competence
in a chosen field with context and perspective from an array of studies
that range as broadly as God’s care.
The outlook, objectives, and theme of the general education
requirements are meant to carry over into all major programs, an aim that
is written into the current strategic plan. This integration is built
into the new core curriculum through its requirement of a senior-level
capstone course in a core category called Integrative Studies. The core
curriculum document describes this as “a category covering upper-level
courses that seek to draw students into critical reflection upon the
deepest assumptions, commitments, and issues in some domain of human inquiry,
belief, or practice.”45 These capstone courses revisit
major themes of the core curriculum and the mission of the college, but
they are located in the academic disciplines. Most academic departments
have created capstone courses within their majors. Beyond these formal
tie-ins to the core curriculum, the various departments are taking care
to rearticulate their purposes as they update their majors. They are finding ways to articulate the charter-forming virtues of the studies they
offer, in echo of the core curriculum.46
As noted in chapter four, assessment data substantially
motivated the revision of Calvin’s core curriculum, and the college
has developed an assessment plan for the new core curriculum. 47
Data from the first graduating class that has completed the new
core curriculum will be available in 2005.
Graduate Education at Calvin
Calvin College has offered postgraduate programs in teacher
education at the graduate level since the mid-1960s. In November 1983,
in anticipation of a growing engagement in postgraduate studies, the faculty
approved a governance structure for graduate studies that assigned oversight
of the master of arts in teaching program to the Graduate Studies Committee
and a director of graduate studies. The college later issued a comprehensive
report on the principles and prospects for graduate education at Calvin
College— Graduate Education: A Report on Advanced Degrees and
Scholarship—which was approved by the faculty in 1989. By the
late 1990s, however, an earlier attempt at offering a graduate liberal
arts degree, a master of arts in Christian studies, had ceased, and the
master of arts in teaching degree had been transformed into a more professionally
focused master of education ( M.Ed.) degree. The strategic plan of 1997
called for strengthening the M.Ed. program and investing scholarly energy
in faculty research and focused research institutes rather than in additional
postgraduate degree programs.
In order to strengthen and deepen the M.Ed. program, its
three degree areas were reduced to two, so that currently Calvin offers
M.Ed. degrees in the areas of learning disabilities and curriculum and
instruction. In addition to taking courses in these specialty areas, all
students in the graduate program take a shared “core” that
includes courses in advanced educational psychology, advanced education
foundations, and research methodology, as well as an integrative seminar
that includes a final research project. Calvin currently has 65 students
in its master’s degree program. The college also offers post-baccalaureate
endorsement programs in learning disabilities, cognitive impairment, early
childhood education, bilingual education, and English as a second language
for certified teachers who do not wish to pursue a graduate degree. Calvin
currently serves 35 students in these programs. Additional postgraduate
offerings in education at Calvin include credit-bearing week-long summer
workshops on a variety of topics, and a leadership development institute,
which Calvin offers in cooperation with Christian Schools International.48
In recent years the college has developed a more focused
system of review and oversight for the M.Ed. program, in compliance with
NCATE ( National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education) standards,
which require cohesion of the teacher education program at both the undergraduate
and graduate levels and a program “head” who provides oversight
for the whole program. In 2002 the Committee on Governance approved a
new structure that placed both undergraduate and graduate programs under
the direction of the Teacher Education Committee.49
The graduate teacher education programs are evaluated regularly
as part of an extensive, performance- based assessment system.50
Assessment data—including exit surveys of candidates, focus group
data from administrators, GPA statistics, and performance on final research
projects—have been used to evaluate and make changes in the program.51
The Graduate Program Development Committee is currently evaluating the
structure and content of the program in relation to the needs of a national
and international teacher education audience and is exploring models of
combined distance education and face-to-face learning to best meet the
needs of this audience.
Co-curriculum and General Education
One area noted by the 1994 accreditation review team—the
links between the general education curriculum and the co-curriculum at
Calvin—has been improved through several means. One is the Prelude
program, a one-credit-hour segment of the new core curriculum administered
and taught to first-year students by the staff of the Student Life Division.
The content of the course introduces students to the broad mission of
the college and is directly connected to the themes of the first-year
January Interim course, Developing a Christian Mind.
The Student Life Division has created additional partnerships
with academic departments through the Student Activities Office, Broene
Counseling Center, and Career Development Office. The Student Activities
Office has worked with the Music, English, and Communication Arts and
Sciences departments on a new biennial event, the Festival of Faith and
Music, to bring some analytical focus to its outstanding concert series,
which has featured performers as diverse as Joan Baez, Ben Harper, Steve
Earle, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Dave Matthews, and the Blind Boys of Alabama.
Staff members from the Broene Counseling Center and the Career Development
Office make classroom presentations concerning aspects of their work,
and two counselors of the Broene Counseling Center carry regular teaching
loads in the Psychology Department.
The Student Life Division also has developed some important
support procedures with faculty, including attendance checks for first-year
students who may be at risk for dropping out, “background checks”
of disciplinary records before students enroll in off-campus programs,
assistance in the training of faculty members taking student groups abroad,
and faculty development and support for addressing academic dishonesty.
Before becoming involved in the core curriculum, the Student
Life Division engaged in another significant curricular initiative, the
Academically Based Service-Learning (ABSL) Program. Today, the majority
of Calvin students engage in service-learning in connection with course
work. Faculty members in almost every department of the college integrate
external community engagement and service into the content of their courses,
providing a connection between theory and practice. For example, beginning
chemistry students learn laboratory analysis by gathering and testing
soil, air, and water samples for the Calvin Environmental Assessment Program.
Accounting students help inner-city merchants set up bookkeeping systems.
Students in Written Rhetoric interview World War II veterans and record
their life stories for a National Archives project. By incorporating important
service experiences into course work, faculty and students seek to understand
how they can better serve God in their chosen professions.52 The
community relations enabled by ABSL will be further discussed in chapter
six.
Learning Leadership
Many opportunities exist for students who want to develop
their leadership skills. They receive broad exposure to issues and ideas
through the programs of the Office of Residence Life. Resident assistants
provide guidance and accountability in the residence halls, while the
halls’ elected officers manage the social and service initiatives
of the residents. Student leaders coordinate much of the work of the Service-Learning
Center. Through the Jubilee Fellows Program, funded by the Lilly Vocation
Project grant, junior students participate in an academic seminar, led
by the college chaplain, that focuses on Christian ministry. After completing
the seminar, students spend the summer interning at churches across the
country. Then, during their senior year, they participate in a group retreat,
mentor junior students, and write papers on their experiences. Two-thirds
of these students enroll in seminary programs.53 For many years
now, a select number of Calvin students have participated in a summer
program of service and leadership development at Colorado’s Snow
Mountain Ranch, a YMCA family facility.
Calvin’s student-run organizations also provide opportunities
for students to shape and frame their own learning, recreation, and service,
and to hold each other accountable. This whole sector of the Student Life
Division is headed by Student Senate, an elected body that approves charters
and officers, apportions funding, and receives financial and programmatic
reports from the more than 60 student organizations, including Chimes,
the college’s venerable weekly newspaper; the Hockey Club, 2004
national club hockey champs; the Fish House Café, a jazz and poetry
coffee bar; and the Linux Users Club.54
Other leadership opportunities for students include the
Worship Apprentice Program and the Barnabas Team. These allow students
to develop leadership skills related to worship and spiritual formation.
The Worship Apprentice Program is integrated with the college’s
daily chapel services and Sunday evening worship program. Worship apprentices
receive two weeks of intensive training in late August before the school
year begins and meet weekly with worship staff to receive ongoing mentoring.
The Barnabas Team, which works on spiritual formation in the residence
halls, also is directed out of the Chaplain’s Office. This team
receives intensive training prior to the start of the academic year, and
each student is given formal feedback and evaluation sessions at the end
of the first semester.55
Living-Learning Communities
Several living-learning communities further the aim of
fostering lifelong habits of engaged learning by offering academic credit
for an action-and-reflection model of service-learning based in residential
settings. One example is the Mosaic Community, which began in the fall
of 1996 as a grant-funded project to increase the retention rates of certain
ethnic minority students. Students who reside in this on-campus multicultural
living community on one floor of a residence hall receive one academic
credit for participating in a variety of living-learning activities. Students
from many countries, cultures, races, and backgrounds live in the Mosaic
Community. About one-third are international students, one-third are North
American minorities, and one-third are Caucasian students from a variety
of backgrounds.56
Another such opportunity is Project Neighborhood, intentional
Christian residential communities within urban neighborhoods. Three large
houses in different inner-city locations in Grand Rapids form Project
Neighborhood. Participants are committed to personal spiritual growth,
structured time together as house residents, and service to the neighborhood
and community. Students receive guidance from community leaders, college
representatives, and in-house mentors while gaining academic credit for
their work.57
The Spanish House—actually, several apartments in
the college’s Knollcrest East complex— gives Spanish-language
students the opportunity to live with native speakers. They develop their
language skills while gaining experience living and learning with students
from Latin America and Spain.58
Back to top
Relevant Scholarship and Teaching: Curricular Renewal
4c
The organization assesses the usefulness of its curricula to students
who will live and work in a global, diverse, and technological society. |
Faculty scholarship and research are often thought to be
separate from and in tension with the obligations of teaching, but the
two can complement and inform each other. Faculty members at Calvin College
aspire to be “scholar-teachers.” During the last decade academic
departments at Calvin have been active participants in the extraordinary
changes in teaching and learning at the college, by which curricula are
becoming internationalized, inquiry-based learning is reshaping syllabi,
and student-faculty research is a growing feature of undergraduate education.
Such work challenges the assumptions, popular in public discussions of
higher education, that faculty are self-focused and that either teaching
or research advances only by diminishing the other. Rather, teaching can
inform scholarship, with scholarship in turn informing teaching, in a
mutually reinforcing dialectic.59 This exchange needs continual
maintenance, however, since not all forms of either activity are equally
amenable to mutuality.
Two trends in Calvin’s engagement with teaching have
supported the complementarity of teaching and scholarship: an international
broadening of the curriculum and a movement to review and reform the curriculum
and modes of learning.
Internationalization of the Curriculum
One of the most significant developments at Calvin since
the 1994 accreditation review is the internationalization of the curriculum.
The college has been expanding its off-campus programs and globalizing
its curriculum. These changes have been propelled by several interests:
- persistent feedback from students that the college needs to engage
them with a wider variety of people and places60
- a welling up of faculty interest in cross-cultural research and course
topics
- a growing conviction that students must be prepared for cross-cultural
engagement
Off-Campus Programs
At the time of the 1994 self-study and site visit, Calvin
College offered three semester abroad programs: one in Spain, one in Great
Britain, and one in Hungary. Additionally, several hundred Calvin students
were participating in Calvin January Interim courses taught off-campus,
and in several Calvin-endorsed semester-abroad programs run by partner
institutions such as the Christian College Coalition (now the Council
for Christian Colleges and Universities). In that academic year, 1994-1995,
a total of 428 Calvin students studied abroad.61 Today, the
picture looks considerably different: in addition to the endorsed programs
run by outside agencies and the Calvin courses taught off-campus during
the January Interim, Calvin now administers ten semester abroad programs.
These are in Hungary, China, Ghana, France, Washington, D.C., New Mexico,
Honduras (which has two programs—one in Spanish and one in development
studies), Spain, and Britain. In 2003-2004, 760 Calvin students studied
off-campus, 78 percent more than the figure of ten years ago. The most
recent survey data suggest that more than half of Calvin graduates now
study abroad at some point during their undergraduate years.62 Out
of the 775 students who went through Senior Salute in May 2003, 465 completed
an off-campus programs survey. Of these students, 38.5 percent had studied
on a semester program, while 55 percent had completed at least one off-campus
experience, either during a semester or during the January Interim. This
high level of student participation in off-campus studies ranks Calvin
fifth in the nation among master’s degree–granting institutions.63
Figure 5.1 Students Who Study Off Campus
The numbers tell only part of the story. These programs
are driven by the Calvin mission, and they utilize personal and institutional
connections that grow out of Calvin’s institutional identity. Students
on the Semester in Britain program live and study at Oakhill College,
an Anglican evangelical theological seminary in London. The Semester in
Hungary program works closely with the pastors and officials of the Hungarian
Reformed Church, and is affiliated with Károli Gáspár
Reformed University in Budapest. Programs in Honduras and China have on-site
directors seconded to Calvin faculty by the CRC’s world relief and
world missions agencies. Several of the programs integrate with language
and area studies concentrations in the Calvin curriculum, including the
programs in China, Ghana, Spain, Honduras, and France. Each of these programs
has a cooperative relationship with a host university or college that
allows for cross-registration of students.
The college commits significant resources to these programs.
Unlike semester abroad programs offered by other colleges and universities,
regular Calvin faculty members personally direct and teach in all but
two of the semester programs noted above. These professors and their families
relocate to the site abroad for the semester, at college expense. The
college’s Off-Campus Programs Office has grown from one part-time
coordinator in 1997 to a full-time director with a full-time administrative
assistant today.
These programs pay long-term dividends for the college
in other ways. For example, the close institutional relationship between
Calvin’s Semester in Hungary Program and the Reformed University
has resulted in an exchange arrangement whereby one Hungarian student
of the Reformed University receives a scholarship to spend the academic
year studying at Calvin. In each site where Calvin has a program, opportunities
for student or faculty exchanges have arisen. In Hungary, local Reformed
churches also host a biennial tour of the Calvin College Band.
Globalizing the Curriculum
Three new elements of the core studies program illustrate
the progressive globalization of the Calvin curriculum. One is that in
the required course, History of the West and the World, students learn
about “the development of Western civilization within a global context.”64
The guidelines for the course specify that students will read primary
texts from both Western and non-Western traditions, will consider issues
concerning gender and the status of women in history, and will examine
various worldviews. Topics covered include the development of major world
religions and the evolution of societies around the world.65
In the core category Global and Historical Studies, students
select courses in non-Western history or culture to address issues of
global diversity and interdependence, to deepen their “awareness
and understanding of the larger global and historical contexts of North
American life,” and to better understand “temporally and culturally
distant vantage points from which to assess the contemporary world and
their own lives.”66
A third core element that illustrates efforts to increase
awareness of the global character of contemporary life is the cross-cultural
engagement (CCE) requirement. The objectives of the requirement are that
students will accomplish the following:
- gain skills in cross-cultural engagement
- understand how the world might look from the standpoint of another
community of interpretation and experience
- learn how to discern and, where appropriate, adapt to the cultural
expectations of the other
- learn how to distinguish between the enduring principles of human
morality and their situation-specific adaptations
- witness other cultural adaptations of faith
- reflect on the substance and definition of their own faith by comparison67
Students fulfill this requirement either by taking a course that is
designated as a CCE course (this includes most off-campus semester programs,
many off-campus January Interim courses, and regular courses that have
an integral or an optional CCE component), or by initiating an independent
study in which they become engaged in a cross-cultural experience (a foreign
travel experience, a service-learning project, participation in a cross-cultural
living-learning experience, or the like).68 CCE is overseen
by a director and a faculty committee, the Cross-Cultural Engagement Coordinating
Committee.
In many other ways Calvin’s campus is becoming transformed to
reflect the realities of a global age. The foreign language core requirement
holds firm; students may fulfill this requirement by taking Japanese
or Chinese, in addition to six ancient or modern European languages. Calvin
is a charter member of the SCOLA Project, which delivers foreign-language
television programming from around the world directly to students and
faculty. The Off-Campus Programs Expo each semester feeds students’
awareness of the global nature of Calvin’s programs. Faculty members
have expanded opportunities to study and teach abroad, not only through
the off-campus programs described above, but also via partnerships with
foreign universities. Over the past five years Calvin faculty have taught
at more than a dozen foreign universities, ranging across Africa, East
Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, as well as in Western and Eastern
Europe.69 And last but not least, the number of Calvin students
coming from the global South and East has doubled over the past decade.
This explosion of cross-cultural interest and engagement is one of the
most striking developments at Calvin over the past decade. One of the
ensuing challenges it faces is how to convince inquirers that this small
Midwestern college is actually a gateway to the world.
Academic Programs
Depending on how one does the calculation, some 90 concentrations are
offered in Calvin’s 26 academic departments. Review and revision
of these major and minor programs constitute a continual process, the
ongoing work of the Educational Policy Committee (EPC).
Program Assessment and Curricular Change
In the years since Calvin’s last NCA site visit, several dozen
departmental curricular review and redesign efforts have been approved
by EPC, ranging from comparatively minor streamlining of aspects of departmental
curricula to substantial overhauls of major programs. Curricular revision
proposals approved in the mid-1990s, before EPC established strengthened
requirements, typically referred only vaguely to assessment criteria,
asserting or reporting anecdotal evidence of student interest. Since about
2000, however, proposals for curricular revision have been based more
frequently on assessment data. The Nursing Department’s initial
curricular proposal included a “Blueprint for Evaluation,”
used test performance results to support the strengthening of requirements
in the area of nutrition, and employed an e-mail survey of 67 randomly
selected college and university programs to argue for a reduction in the
chemistry requirement for prenursing students.70 The Psychology
Department’s proposal to increase its research requirement was supported
by data from both objective measures and alumni questionnaires; the History
Department’s substantial curricular revision was based on weaknesses
identified in a wide-ranging alumni survey; the Art Department’s
curricular revision was based on the results of alumni survey data as
well as the realignment of the department’s programs with the mission
of the college and the new core curriculum. The Communication Arts and
Sciences Department based revisions of its course offerings in film studies
on results of an alumni survey and feedback from current students.71
Not all proposals for curricular change have been as thorough in their
use of assessment data as those cited above, yet recent revisions consistently
refer to the need to assess student learning as a means of guiding curricular
and program development. The Religion Department’s revision of its
general major was prompted by the creation of a new departmental assessment
plan. Writing a mission statement led the Sociology and Social Work Department
to propose changes to its major; the specifics were informed by the department’s
evaluation of its first assessment. Creation of the environmental geology
major concentration was driven by the awareness that a significant percentage
of geology graduates were employed in environmental geology jobs. The
Computer Science Department introduced a concentration in information
systems in response to specific student demand for a program that enabled
them to gain expertise in working with computer technology but did not
require them to concentrate on programming. In coordination with the Computer
Science Department, the Mathematics and Statistics Department revised
some courses in response to the same demand.72 As one might
expect, other proposed changes were motivated by accreditation reviews,
personnel turnover, increasing or declining enrollments, and the like.73
Multiple Majors
Two important developments over the past ten years have been the increase
in the number of students majoring in more than one department at Calvin
and the number of students choosing to pursue a minor (Calvin does not
require students to declare a minor). In 2003, 92 students graduated with
double or (in a few rare cases) triple majors, compared with 63 ten years
ago. This trend may be receiving encouragement from the institutional
change from a course-unit to a semester-hour system of academic credit.
Whereas in the last year of the course-unit system only 33 students took
five courses in a single semester, now well over 500 students do so.
Not surprisingly, the majority of these are students majoring in humanities
fields, whose courses typically carry three hours of credit.74
It is not hard to suggest reasons that students pursue multiple majors.
Besides simply having a passion for more than one discipline, many students
pursue double majors because it enhances their personal marketability
or because one of the majors may have a smaller perceived job market.
Some students see it as a way of getting the most education for their
money. Others find that the number of required cognates for a particular
major pushes them close enough to an additional major that they decide
to complete it.
Table 5.7 Students Who Have Graduated
with Multiple Majors or with Minors
|
Students
who completed multiple majors |
Students
who completed minors |
| 1993-1994 |
63 |
279 |
| 1994-1995 |
67 |
284 |
| 1995-1996 |
55 |
264 |
| 1996-1997 |
61 |
294 |
| 1997-1998 |
80 |
307 |
| 1998-1999 |
90 |
325 |
| 1999-2000 |
84 |
358 |
| 2000-2001 |
101 |
373 |
| 2001-2002 |
93 |
397 |
| 2002-2003 |
32 |
393 |
By 2003, 393 students graduated with a minor program concentration
at Calvin, compared with 279 ten years ago. Both the increased flexibility
of the new core curriculum and the growth in interdisciplinary minor programs
have contributed to this trend.
Interdisciplinary Majors and Minors
Another interesting trend is the creation and growth of
interdisciplinary major and minor programs. Interdisciplinary programs
are not exactly new at Calvin; over the years several majors that cross
disciplinary boundaries have been created. These are formally called group
majors and currently include the following:
- digital communication (computer science and communication arts and
sciences)
- business communications (business and economics and communication
arts and sciences)
- social science (economics and business, and four courses from among
history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, or political science)
- mathematics and economics
- business math
- information systems (computer science and economics and business)
- engineering and geology
- engineering and physics
- environmental science
- physics and computer science
- Asian studies
Besides these programs, some 40 students are enrolled in
an interdisciplinary major, in which they create a major of their own
design, subject to some regulations, comprising 12 courses from three
different academic departments.
In addition to group and interdisciplinary majors, Calvin
also offers interdisciplinary minors, including third-world development
studies and urban studies. These briefer concentrations began to appear
in the early 1980s, but in the past three years four more have been designed
and approved, and others are in process.
Table 5.8 Interdisciplinary Minor Concentrations
Interdisciplinary
minor |
Year approved
(terminated) |
| Bilingual Education |
1977 |
| German Studies |
1980 |
| Journalism |
1981 |
| Church Education |
1981 (1987) |
| Environmental Studies |
1981 |
| Missions |
1985 |
| Linguistics |
1985 |
| Japanese Studies |
1992 |
| Third-World Development Studies |
1993 |
| Archaeology |
1994 |
| English as a Second Language |
1998 |
| Gender Studies |
1999 |
| Classical Studies |
1999 |
| Medieval Studies |
2002 |
| African and African Diaspora Studies |
2004 |
| Asian Studies |
2004 |
| Urban Studies |
2004 |
| Latin American Studies |
proposal in process |
Accompanying the apparent student demand for additional
majors and minors, and the
proliferation of new academic concentrations has been a decrease in the
“efficiency” with which
Calvin delivers its overall academic program. As the following table shows,
the growth in the
number of faculty members and the growth in student semester hours have
increased faster over
the past five years than the college’s overall student enrollment
has.
Table 5.9 Five-Year Change in Student-Faculty
Ratio
| |
Fall 1998 |
Fall 2003 |
Change |
| Enrollment (SSH) |
57004 |
60473 |
6.1% |
| Faculty (head count) |
269 |
305 |
13.3% |
| FTE Faculty Teaching |
247 |
290 |
17.6% |
| Faculty Semester Hours (total) |
2562 |
2846 |
11.1% |
| Faculty Semester Hours (average) |
10.4 |
9.8 |
-5.6% |
| SSH/FSH |
22.2 |
21.3 |
-4.1% |
| Student Faculty Ratio (teach only) |
16.5 |
14.9 |
-9.4% |
Students are taking more hours, and the college is adding
more professors. Both the average number of students per course and the
student-faculty ratio have decreased. Adding courses, concentrations,
and professors faster than adding students may in fact be as much a sign
of adding quality as adding inefficiency. Yet with the college committed
to a no-growth enrollment pattern and inhibited by market forces from
making any sudden tuition increases, there are limits on how much more
“value” the college can add to the academic program without
finding some less valuable things to eliminate. The provost and the deans
presented a preliminary study of this problem of curricular sprawl and
sustainability to the Planning and Priorities Committee (PPC) in May 2004,
and they were encouraged to produce a more complete analysis in the coming
year.75
Faculty-Student Research
In many arenas Calvin has broadened opportunities for collaborative research
and training
that support and deepen learning. These include collaborative student-faculty
research projects
and internships, both on campus and with Calvin community partners.
The curricula of several departmental major and minor programs
have been reoriented toward inquiry-based learning and teaching, including,
for example, history and biology. Previously, upper-level history courses
typically asked for “research” papers, but they tended to
be reviews and summaries of already published history. The students’
first real assignment in writing history from primary sources came only
in the senior seminar. With the revised major, however, the History Department
has put much more emphasis on learning history by doing the work of a
historian. The department created a sophomore-level research methods course,
thus enabling students to do original research in all subsequent history
courses. A senior-level research seminar prepares students to write a
more sophisticated article-length paper based on original sources. The
traditional senior seminar thus is freed up to address “capstone”
kinds of questions—philosophical questions about the nature of history
and its uses, and religious questions about its ultimate meaning.76
The Biology Department is currently working on a thorough revision of
the introductory and
intermediate courses for its major, as well as its basic introductory
core course for non-majors.
Its aim is to create an inquiry-based approach in which the traditional
lecture–lab segregation of
courses is reintegrated into a problems-oriented approach, with lecture/discussion
and laboratory
problem-solving more intertwined. The proposal is expected to make its
way to EPC in the
coming year.
The college has supported a growing number of opportunities
for student research, mostly in the form of student summer research assistantships,
including more than 60 in the summer of 2003.77 Students in
the humanities and the social sciences are funded by the college’s
McGregor Summer Research Fellowship Program mentioned above. Started with
grant funds, this initiative is now funded at about 50 percent through
endowment raised for the program, and at about 50 percent through gifts.
It pairs ten student researchers each summer with faculty members in the
humanities and social sciences.78
Yet perhaps the strongest advance in this movement has
occurred in the sciences, where Calvin participates in the major national
organizational expressions of the undergraduate collaborative research
revolution: Project Kaleidoscope and the Council on Undergraduate Research
(CUR). Calvin faculty members have been active in CUR, and students have
presented at its annual meetings. The Science Division’s active
summer research program involves about 50 out of the 60 total summer student
researchers per year in projects with faculty mentors in Calvin laboratories
and related facilities. This activity is supported by the general budget,
endowment donations, and research grants. Every fall, the work of the
student researchers in the sciences is featured in a day-long poster display.
Social science and humanities student researchers funded by the McGregor
Program also make presentations on a day in the fall or winter.
In the fine arts, performances and exhibitions are analogous
to student papers and posters in the humanities and sciences. As discussed
above, the Center Art Gallery provides a major venue for showing student
artwork, but art students take to the hallways as well each year for their
Subterranean Art Show, and to the Commons lawn each May for the Fine Arts
Festival.79 The music calendar for 2004-2005 shows 39 concerts
featuring student ensembles (two bands, orchestra, six choirs, and various
specialty groups, including the bell choir) and faculty recitals.80
Student recitals and off-campus ensemble concerts, weekend trips, and
longer tours make for extraordinarily full and rich musical opportunities
for audience members, non-music major participants, and budding music
professionals alike. The award-winning, student-organized Calvin Theatre
Company produces at least three major dramatic productions per year, featuring
both old standards by Shaw, Ibsen, and Shakespeare, as well as some freshly
written contemporary works as well. One of these, As It Is in Heaven,
by New York playwright Arlene Hutton, won entry into the American College
Theatre Festival’s annual competition in 2002.81 The
Calvin Theatre Company, like the college’s programs in music and
the visual arts, is broad and inclusive in its structure. Through a variety
of programs, including a Wandering Thespian troupe, student-directed Lab
Bills, and student-written Sushi Theatre productions, opportunities abound
for devoted participants— theater majors and non-majors alike.82
In all these ways, the college seeks to live out its commitment to a liberal
arts education aimed at lifelong learning, service, and delight.
The Honors Program
Table
5.10 Students Graduating with honors |
Year |
Number
of Students |
1994 |
4 |
1995 |
3 |
1996 |
4 |
1997 |
30 |
1998 |
38 |
1999 |
44 |
2000 |
44 |
2001 |
57 |
2002 |
55 |
2003 |
56 |
2004 |
71 |
One of the most venerable forms of inquiry-based education
that weaves research, teaching, and learning together is the Honors Program
at Calvin. This program, which the college has maintained since 1969,
is rather different from the typical honors program. Typically, such initiatives
are quite small and selective, they have a separate curriculum, and they
become, in effect, a college within a college. Calvin’s program
aims at making challenging advanced work available to a maximum number
of students. It offers eligibility to up to one-third of the entering
class each year and begins with 15 to 20 honors sections of introductory
courses in the core curriculum. These honors sections have smaller enrollment
ceilings, develop the basic course content at a faster pace, feature some
focused theme, and offer more opportunity for independent inquiry. To
continue in the Honors Program and graduate with honors, students must
take at least six additional courses under honors contract (custom-written
course requirements, usually with a mentored independent project), including
two courses in their major; complete a senior honors thesis in many departments;
and maintain a Dean’s List–level grade point average. Prior
to 1994, the Honors Program’s introductory courses were quite popular,
but the number of students who continued with the program through graduation
was small. By the mid-1990s only about four students per year were graduating
with honors.83
In 1994, however, Calvin was awarded a grant to enhance
its Honors Program as part of the Pew Younger Scholars Program, a national
initiative run out of the University of Notre Dame and funded by the Pew
Charitable Trusts. The grant enabled Calvin’s program to feature
new activities and build some group dynamics that had been missing before.
Calvin honors students were now eligible to apply for places in the national
program as well, both for summer seminars at Notre Dame and for a funding
program for postgraduate study. In the national program’s first
five years, nine Calvin graduates received Pew Younger Scholar Awards
for doctoral studies. With these infusions of funding and exciting opportunities,
Calvin’s program grew rapidly. The number of honors graduates at
Calvin suddenly shot up from four in 1996 to 33 in 1997. With creative
leadership from classics professor Kenneth Bratt and two successive grants
from the McGregor Fund, the Honors Program added a summer research program
in 1999, enabling ten students in the humanities and social sciences each
year to work on projects alongside professors, and a sophomore-year program
in 2002, designed to bridge the gap between the freshman honors sections
and the honors contract courses in the junior and senior years. In May
2004 the number of honors g
