Calvin awarded $488K to connect virtue formation and community-engaged learning
Calvin began its community nursing program in 2001.
Ask Calvin graduates about their education and one word seems synonymous: formative. If you look at the institution’s foundational documents, it’s not hard to figure out why. From the Expanded Statement of Mission to the Educational Framework, Calvin is clear about how it is intentionally preparing learners.
“When we talk about education, we are talking about forming the whole person,” said Noah Toly, provost. “If we stop with what we know or what we can do—it doesn’t matter what anyone’s job is after that or how much they earn, if we stop at that metric, we’ve failed. The education we offer is about who we are.”
Awarded a prestigious grant
On July 11, 2025, the Educating Character Initiative at the Program for Leadership and Character awarded 鶹 an ECI Institutional Impact Grant in the amount of $488,000 for its proposal: Forming Virtue through Community-Engaged Learning: A Proposal for Educating Character at 鶹. This three-year project provides Calvin the opportunity to take what’s deeply rooted in its ethos of virtue formation and connect it more intentionally to strengthen both longstanding and emerging programs.
“Through scholarship, curricular and co-curricular experiences, and commitment to fostering relationships, Calvin has been a leader in the thought and practice of character and virtue formation in Christian higher education,” said Kevin den Dulk, associate provost. “This grant now facilitates a more intentional approach to connecting the dots between what we teach and write about and what we do in practice.”
Working toward desired outcomes
According to the proposal, the primary aims of the grant are two-fold: first, to build a critical mass of Calvin faculty and staff with competence in a community-engaged approach to character education; and second, to engage various interested publics—both in the community and across academic networks—in opportunities for mutual learning about the approach.
How this will happen is through funding faculty and staff learning, developing courses and co-curricular opportunities, providing faculty time to reflect on and disseminate their work in ways they haven’t been able to do in the past, and nurturing community partnerships.
Strengthening longstanding and emerging partnerships
A few of the exemplars of a community-engaged approach that will be focused on are community nursing, Calvin’s most mature area for community-engaged learning; sustainability efforts through Plaster Creek Stewards, another long-standing initiative that encompasses multiple disciplines and perspectives; and, most recently, the Wayfinder program, an undergraduate experience for barrier-facing adult learners who explore concepts of calling and civic life through the study of the humanities.
“By connecting community-engaged learning with character formation, this grant helps us to enhance each and make that good work legible to the rest of the world,” said Toly. “We are also looking forward to learning with and from our community partners, to co-creating opportunities for character education, and to joining the broader conversation that the ECI network will bring together.”
Learning and sharing
Beginning in August 2025, the grant’s focus will be on building institutional capacity through establishing learning opportunities and an Office of Community Partnerships. In 2026, the aim is to provide more opportunities for faculty and staff to begin workshopping ideas for community-engaged learning.
Both Toly and den Dulk also emphasize that while there will be a lot of learning happening on campus and alongside community partners, this grant also has a focus on providing Calvin faculty and staff the space to disseminate best practices in virtue formation more broadly.
“We have an opportunity through this grant to give Mary Doornbos and Gail Zandee time to write and engage with the broader publics around the work they’ve been doing all these years in the community nursing program,” said den Dulk. “We’ve been doing this work for a long time, but it’s been hidden under a bushel.”