KCCS is on Calvin’s home page today, thanks to Allison Graff—have a look.

We are releasing today our new report Cultivating STEM: Why West Michigan college students select majors in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The Van Andel Education Institute sponsored our fall 2008 survey of West Michigan college juniors at four local schools. 888 students participated. Key findings in the report include:
The online phase of the Multicultural Climate Survey has been completed as of Saturday, May 9, with 2,127 responses. Here's the final response rate chart:
We are now moving toward collecting paper responses from staff members who do not have regular access to email. Final results of the survey will be shared with the Calvin community in the fall.
Of 50 winners of $20 gift certificates to the Campus Store; only 18 responded to the survey and received their certificate, though. Here are the winners:
| Faculty | Staff | Students |
|---|---|---|
| Margaret Goetz Delvin Ratzsch Jolene Vos-Camy |
Heidi Rienstra Nancy Westra |
Monica Bressler Nathan Elzinga Emily Howell Nicholas Kramer Jessica Leugs Holland Mayer Hope McElroy Kathleen Merz Rachel Mudde Rebecca Timmermans Eric Van Giessen Laura Weglarz Melissa Winegar |
Five winners also enjoyed a lunch with President Byker at the Manor House on Thursday, May 7. The winners were:
Thanks to all the respondents for your time and attention!
Following up on the Gatherings of Hope report for a general public readership, CSR and our research partners are beginning to produce academic studies from the 2007 Kent County Congregations Study. CSR Director Jim Penning will present our paper on "Clergy Participation in Local Politics" at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association; the presentation is part of a panel on clergy activism that will take place at 8:00AM on Friday, April 3.
Key findings from the paper: Kent County clergy are quite active in contacting public officials; about 60 percent of the 496 ordained clergy in the study data said they had contacted a public official about an issue of interest to their congregation. Like other citizens, members of the clergy are strongly influenced by their educational level; those with Master's and doctoral-level education were 22 to 24 percent more likely to contact public officials than those with less than college education; those with Bachelor's-level education were 8 percent more likely.
Congregational context is also important; for example, clergy from congregations with large percentages of high-income persons were dramatically less likely to contact public officials, probably because they do not perceive serious needs to do so; the percentage of theologically liberal participants in the congregation was also an important influence. Clergy serving congregations that experienced internal conflict in the last two years were actually more likely to contact public officials. The paper also models which kinds of officials were contacted (city, state and federal, for example) and what issues the contacts were about. Education was the most frequently cited cause for contacting officials, with much higher levels of contact by clergy from congregations with Black and Hispanic pluralities and near schools with high proportions of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.