Matt Heun & Kate van Liere (Week 3)
Matt Heun & Kate van Liere
Kate van Liere and Matt Heun are both recipients of the Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching at Calvin University. They are both on a mission to inspire students to dream big. In this talk, the professors discuss together their different teaching styles and what they’ve learned in the classroom.
Dr. Kate van Liere holds a B.A. in History of Ideas from Williams College, an M.A. in history from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University. Before moving to Grand Rapids she taught at the College of Charleston (S.C.). She teaches courses on European and world history since 1500 at Calvin, with an emphasis on the Renaissance and Reformation eras, religious history, and historiography. Kate publishes articles on early modern Spanish intellectual history. She also teaches part-time in the Spanish and Dutch departments. She directs the history internship program at Calvin which places students in museums, historical societies or local non-profit organizations.
After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Matt Heun worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA, where he led studies and experiments related to planetary exploration with balloon systems. After working at JPL, Dr. Heun joined Global Aerospace Corporation (GAC), a start-up aerospace R&D company, as its first full-time employee. At GAC, Dr. Heun proposed, led, and completed several projects in support of NASA’s Earth Science activities. Dr. Heun spent his 2009 sabbatical in South Africa at the Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology where he taught and participated in sustainable energy development.
About Us
Our Mission
The January Series cultivates deep thought and conversations about important issues of the day in order to inspire cultural renewal and make us better global citizens in God's world.
Background
For over 30 years, the January Series of Calvin University has been one of the leading lecture/cultural arts series in the country. The series has been a three-time recipient of the Silver Bowl Award as the “Best Campus Lecture Series in the U.S.A.” by the International Platform Society. The diversity of presenters and topics has changed as the world of ideas has changed.
The foundation for excellence both in the classroom at Calvin University and at the January Series is the philosophy that an outstanding liberal arts education teaches students how to think, not what to think. We want our students to look at current ideas critically in light of history and creatively with an eye to the future. We support freedom of speech and expression; we encourage faculty, students and the community to listen to viewpoints that differ from their own. Bringing excellent speakers on a wide variety of topics to campus is one very valuable factor of education at Calvin.
Calvin University is a Christian academic community dedicated to rigorous intellectual inquiry. Located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Calvin has an enrollment of 3,800 curious and inquisitive students. The dynamic liberal arts university has been named a “Best College” by U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, The Fisk Guide, The Princeton Review and Washington Monthly. A Calvin education, marked by scholarly engagement with enduring questions and emerging concerns, prepares students to answer God’s call to live and serve in God’s world as agents of renewal.
At Calvin, the month of January is an interim term in which students are encouraged to select a course of academic enrichments not offered during the other semesters. During interim, the university sponsors the January Series, a daily, hour-long cultural enrichment series. Presented at 12:30 pm in the 1000-seat Covenant Fine Arts Center Auditorium on campus, the series is open without charge to students, faculty and the west Michigan community. Despite typical Michigan winter weather, the auditorium fills up and the audience spills over into closed-circuit television rooms as needed. Thanks to the inspiration of our founding director, June Hamersma, who served as the series director for its first 20 years, the January Series has become an important part of the cultural and educational offerings in the state and has received nationwide attention. The International Platform Society, founded by Daniel Webster in 1834, awarded the series the Silver Bowl Award for “Best Campus Lecture Series in the U.S.A.” three times (1994, 1995 & 1999) and has since retired the award. In 2008, we opened our program beyond our auditorium walls to remote sites across the country. Each year we have expanded and in 2020 we will have 60 remote sites that will watch the live presentation as part of our January Series audience. In 2019 we had a total audience of more than 78,000 people over the fifteen days of lectures.