Connecting the Mind, Heart and Hands through
Intentional Community at Calvin College
Mark Mulder, Jeff Bouman, Joy Van Marion, and Don DeGraaf, Calvin College
Journal of College and Character
Volume VII, No. 2, February 2006

Abstract

This study examines three different models of building intentional community at Calvin College. Emphasis is placed on understanding if and how intentional communities can connect academics (mind), faith (heart) and service (hands) for a fully integrated life.

Introduction

A paramount assumption exists that fragmentation and specialization in higher education have led to a loss of community, making education for citizenship at least counter-intuitive for students. Bellah and his associates (1996), and more recently Putnam (2000), have presented convincing scholarship supporting this assumption. Higher education in America has contributed to this societal trend by separating knowledge, skills, and virtue and enabling students to buy into a rampant, and particularly American, societal individualism. The following study hypothesizes that intentional Christian communities of learning, growing, serving, living, and worship can and do counteract this powerful force for students, staff, and faculty at colleges and universities. The study’s context includes the historical context of student and faculty community involvement in American higher education, but focuses on Calvin College’s history and community activity as a case study.

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