Steve VanderVeen (right), Calvin economics professor, worked with business owners in the Burton Heights area of Grand Rapids, including Luis Valencia of La Mexicana Bakery, to develop business plans and marketing strategies.

Calvin College business professor Steve VanderVeen’s commitment to emergent business owners has earned him a Faculty/Staff Community Service-Learning Award from Michigan Campus Compact.

VanderVeen’s work targeted Grand Rapids’ Burton Heights neighborhood, where, due to a 10-year demographic shift, many new businesses belong to Hispanic owners.

Jeff Bouman, director of Calvin’s Service-Learning Center, nominated VanderVeen for the award.

He said that VanderVeen “made the rounds” in Burton Heights, working to get these new business owners integrated into the established business community.

“Steve has been an excellent listener to the business owners who are sort of disenfranchised,” said Carol Rienstra, Calvin’s director of community relations. “He wanted to bring their stories out and share them with the community.”

Since 2000, VanderVeen and students from his small business management and advanced marketing classes have helped owners with their business and marketing plans at such places as the Los Amigos Mexican Market, Ingris Beauty Salon, La Loma Restaurant, Burton Meat Farm and several other new ventures.

The outreach project is part of Calvin@Burton Heights, Calvin’s many-pronged effort — funded by a HUD Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) grant — to forge meaningful relationships with the Burton Heights community.

The neighborhood presented special challenges for the professor, his students and the businesses they worked with. One was the cultural barrier.

Spanish and English editions of Heroes en Burton Heights profile the 12 Hispanic entrepreneurs with whom VanderVeen worked.

“It’s hard to work with people that you don’t know to begin with,” said VanderVeen, “and when you start to work with people who live in a different culture . . . it’s hard to get beyond those shallow relationships.”

Another challenge was the turnover in the Burton Heights community, with both residents and businesses. Of the 12 businesses with which Calvin worked, there were significant changes at four of them in a one-year period.

Despite these obstacles, VanderVeen helped a local Latino business organization hold workshops and a Latino business expo, and he co-authored, with Calvin’s Deyni Ventura, a book in English and Spanish, Heroes in Burton Heights, which spotlights the 12 Hispanic entrepreneurs with whom he worked.

And, he said, “we probably learned more from them than what they learned from us. We’ve been exposed to a whole different world, a different culture and a different way of doing business.”

Campus Compact annually recognizes one person on every member college and university campus who exemplifies the service-learning mission.