Signs of God's Faithfulness - Christianity Today

Richard Mouw, Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and George Marsden are just four scholars among many who spent their most formative years teaching at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Mouw would eventually leave for Fuller, Plantinga for Notre Dame, Wolterstorff for Yale, and Marsden for Duke (and then Notre Dame). If asked, however, my guess is they would all say Calvin is home.

Calvin has forged a reputation within higher education as a place with a deep commitment to the life of the mind and to how the Christian narrative animates such a life. Its beginnings were humble. In 1876, members of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) came together to establish a college and seminary. Before its centennial, Calvin outgrew what was known as the Franklin campus, moving in 1957 to the sprawling 400-acre Knollcrest campus on what was then Grand Rapids' suburban edge.

As Calvin approached the turn of the millennium and with an enrollment of approximately 4,000 students, additional facilities became an administrative priority. However, the financial resources needed to fund those efforts never materialized. MLive reported on March 5, 2013, that "Long-term debt at Calvin grew to $115 million between 1997 and 2012, as investments meant to pay down the sum generated smaller than expected returns, and the college spent more money than it had on construction projects and real estate."

Shortly after beginning his tenure as Calvin's eleventh president, Michael K. Le Roy and his colleagues uncovered these financial circumstances and brought forward the details that would garner national attention. Town hall meetings, reductions to the operating budget, and even layoffs would follow. A rightfully proud community now entered a season of questions challenging the fabric of its identity. Before the start of his second year as president, I sat down with Michael Le Roy in his office in Calvin College's Spoelhof Center.

At what time did you know your sense of vocation included the possibility of serving as a college president?

I didn't seriously consider it until I was in my sixth or seventh year as provost at Whitworth University. I have always loved teaching, learning, and scholarship—I love the activities of being a faculty member. I viewed my administrative foray as an opportunity to serve the campus at Whitworth in a way that aligned with my sense of calling and gifts at that time. And so I didn't set out as a professor to be an administrator, and I didn't set out as an administrator to be a president.

I've said over the years that where I serve and the mission I serve is more important than the particular job I'm doing. Being part of an academic community that fulfills my deepest sense of Christian calling is far more important than being in a certain role. In my fifth or sixth year as provost, I got some calls about being a president, and I said, "Where my family is-the place that I'm in-a move like this is not something I'm ready to consider."

But I went to the IEM [Institute for Educational Management] at Harvard in my sixth year as provost. Great program! I learned a lot. And I was challenged by one of the professors in the program to seriously consider a presidential position. He said there are a lot of people who set out on this path who shouldn't be on it—and then there are those who should be aspiring to take on that job but aren't actively pursuing it. He wanted me to consider it, and he was pretty persistent about it! He really came after me, and so I said, "Well, I'm very picky. There are only a few places I would even consider." And he said, "Make a list." So I made a list of five places. And within two months of giving him that list, three out of those five places contacted me telling me they were looking and I had been nominated. My wife and I decided we'd better pray about this. We'd better think about this. And so the whole process for me was really a discernment effort that could have led me right back to staying where I was and doing what I was doing.

I had known and appreciated Calvin for years—so much so, I had a hard time imagining that they would really want me. But the process was very affirming, and I came to see that Calvin had done a wonderful job of studying itself, understanding what it needed and wanted. What it needed and wanted aligned with who I thought I was and what I thought I had to give.

Given the array of challenges facing colleges and universities today, in what ways, if any, does a rise through the faculty ranks cultivate the leadership skills needed by individuals who become presidents?

That is a really good question. No one has asked me that. But I feel like my time on the faculty equipped me, and time on different faculties-having been at Wheaton and Whitworth and now being at Calvin, you see the ways in which faculties differ and you also see lots of things they have are common.

The challenge in higher education is all about change. There is a tremendous amount of change coming at us. External, accountability, government regulation, price pressures, cost pressures. Giving has changed in terms of what people want to do and how they want to do it. All of these changes are pressing institutions to become different. They have to adapt. And yet I know that the most important things that happen at a college happen between a faculty member and a student, between a residence hall director and a student. Those environments are the crucibles of learning. And those environments rely on a lot of practices and folkways that are pretty stable over time and for lots of good reasons are resistant to change. And I so I think I understand how an academic community feels about change.

I see a college as an ecosystem: things have to be kept in balance. If changes are too abrupt, part of the system is going to die, and we don't want that to happen. I think my experience as a faculty member and provost equipped me to think about change in management in a different way—especially to respect the value of collaboration. There are some things a corporate leader might observe in a college and wonder why we discuss an issue to death. They might wonder why presidents of colleges don't just issue more edicts.

And you know, sometimes you have to do that, but what you really like to do is bring the whole community along and help its members understand the challenges. I respect a faculty's desire to know and understand and to question and to be thinking critically about things. When we do that, we make better decisions. And I also think I have seen enough, I have been enough places, to know that rarely is there only one way to do things.

How do you extract a vision from a community? That is what we have been doing with the strategic plan. It isn't about imposing a vision from the top; it's about listening and getting input and arriving at a shared vision. God was already at work at Calvin long before I arrived, and it is my responsibility to listen to the grammar that this culture has formed in its longstanding service to Christ. (Faculty will tell you that they were here long before you arrived, and they will be here after you go.)

I would describe administrative leadership by borrowing a phrase from Eugene Peterson (which he borrowed from Nietzsche): what you need is "a long obedience in the same direction." That reality, I think, gives you some humility in how you go about things.

What have you enjoyed most so far?

There is so much I have enjoyed about the job. I have enjoyed all of the people that I have come to know here. It is a daunting task to go to a college environment you have never been a part of before. I have probably shaken 10,000 hands and tried to learn a lot of names. We have more than 700 employees here, and I was pulling together flash cards to get their names down because knowing a person's name really matters.

We have had at least 60 events at the house during the last year. Those events have all been enjoyable—really gratifying. I think you know we have had challenges—not only the usual ones for any first-year president but also some unique financial challenges. Those have stretched me and pushed me more than anything in my career has. But we are making progress and seeing signs of God's faithfulness all around us.

I have also enjoyed leading out of the mission. I have enjoyed talking about the mission and thinking about the challenge of learning how others express that and draw from that. I have enjoyed learning about a new place. I love learning, so that has been great.

What are the things you have enjoyed the least?

The things that are most painful are the losses in a community. We have had students who have lost loved ones—parents, siblings—and we have lost faculty members, one very suddenly. Bill Vande Kopple, the co-chair of the English Department, was diagnosed with cancer and died the next week. You see how those losses rip at the community, and that has been really hard. And we have had to lay off some folks, and that has been very painful. And so I would sum it up and say the losses. And I don't run from those —I move right into them because I think that is what you are supposed to do, but moving into them means that you feel them really deeply. I wasn't an English Department faculty member, and I didn't know Bill the way his colleagues did. But I went over to their department right away when they got the news and sat with them and listened and shed tears with them. And I felt privileged to be a witness. I get moved right now just thinking about those losses.

In what ways does the Reformed tradition define the present nature of Calvin College? And its future?

The Reformed tradition has given many in Christian higher education—not just at Calvin—a language for thinking about the world through the lens of faith. Even that phrase—through the lens of faith—comes from a philosopher here. So the heritage is rich and the influence is profound. And it is rigorous and it is serious in its academic utility. It provides us with a very useful set of tools to fearlessly engage the world. And I don't expect that to diminish at all. That is a part of the ongoing legacy of this place, and I am honored to be a part of it.

At the same time, the percentage of students coming to Calvin from a CRC background is not as high as it once was. Currently it's just over 50 percent, and we are projecting, based on demographics and birth rate, that in another 10-20 years we'll be down to 20 percent and probably stabilize at that level. So our future is diverse, in terms of the Christian influences and denominational backgrounds that people are coming from to be part of this, and I think that is already happening on the faculty as well.

As we engage a broader Christian audience, I think we need to do a couple of things. We need to think well about how we communicate our rich mission and heritage, because lots of people are finding us. They go to Google, they put in Christian college and engineering in the search, or Christian college and philosophy, and they get Calvin. And this may be the first time they have heard about it. So when we talk about Reformed Christian education to such audiences, we are going to need to say, "How many of you have even heard about this?" and then explain it. This form of education is a tremendous gift to students and to the academy as well. How do we humbly offer that gift? I think it's important for us to do it with humility. Reformed people sometimes come off in a way that is perceived by others as arrogant or all-knowing or condescending. And I don't want to be a part of that. I want us to humbly offer an approach to educating students that can enrich their lives and help their faith to endure in whatever vocation they pursue. That is the future for Calvin.

If you were to offer a prospective faculty member the most important reason for teaching at Calvin, what would it be?

I'm somebody who believes that to be in an academic community, one needs to constantly be growing and be challenged. Every academic community I have been part of has helped me do that. What's distinctive here—and I've been a beneficiary of this already—is the way that faculty are pushed to develop their teaching abilities, the way they are pushed to develop their scholarly and research identities, the way they are pushed to integrate all of that as a crucible for faculty development. So we say if you are going to start anywhere, this is a wonderful place to start your career. You will be a great faculty member for us or for anybody else after you have come through this.

The other half of that question involves prospective students. Why should they come and study at Calvin?

I think Calvin will be a place that prepares you well to carry your faith into the world. We talk about wanting our students to be agents of renewal in a broken world. I think this is a place that doesn't shrink from talking to students about the brokenness in the world and the reality of that engagement, but it equips them, too. It doesn't just break them down and leave them wondering; it equips them theologically to engage the world and to deal with the adversity that comes. And the alums I meet are a testimony to that.

Todd C. Ream is professor of higher education at Taylor University and a research fellow with Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion. His most recent book (with Perry L. Glanzer) is The Idea of a Christian College: A Reexamination for Today's University (Cascade Books).