Alumni Awards
The Calvin College Alumni Association will present its "Outstanding Service Awards" and "Faith and Learning Award" on Saturday, February 5 to a Grand Rapids resident and two lakeshore residents at gatherings as part of the school's Homecoming 2000 festivities.
The Faith and Learning Award is is based on excellence in teaching, spiritual impact, concern for students and lasting influence. The Outstanding Service Award has been presented annually since 1969 to persons who have given extraordinary service to the college. The recipients need not be alumni of Calvin College.
"These awards are among the highest honors the Calvin Alumni Association gives," says Calvin director of alumni relations Mike VanDenend (above).
The Faith and Learning Award will be given to emeritus professor Jim Bosscher. The Outstanding Service Awards will be given to Roger Brummel of Holland, Calvin class of 1961, and Carol Aukeman Rienstra of Muskegon, class of 1969. Below are bios on this year's winners.
JIM BOSSCHER
Jim Bosscher, a professor of engineering emeritus at Calvin taught for 33 years at the college. Among Bosscher's first large undertakings was the establishment, with a good friend, of Camp Tall Turf, a Christian camp for inner-city youth in the Grand Rapids area.
"Calvin engineers constructed the chapel at camp, designed systems and buildings, and built cabins and staff housing," says Bosscher. "What was an unexpected dividend, beyond the obvious blessings to inner-city kids, was the expanded perspectives of the students from Christian colleges who became counselors."
As a spin-off from his camp experience, Bosscher was approached by a local TV station, which was willing to help raise funds for the camp. The station suggested raising funds by providing a well-publicized bottle-collecting drive and selling the resulting smashed glass to an area bottle manufacturer. The first drive netted $700.
This project, however, prompted Bosscher to suggest to his students that they design a low-cost, low-tech bottle smasher for glass recycling. Follow-up projects led to the creation of a can crusher, plastic-bottle shredder and a recycling trailer that incorporated all three units.
Household recycling was basically non-existent in the Grand Rapids area in the early 1970s, so Bosscher and Calvin engineering graduate David Genzink, class of 1973, decided a not-for-profit recycling enterprise was called for. Thus, Recycle Unlimited, the area's first community-wide recycling effort was founded. While initially it was supervised by college students and staffed with inner-city youth, it eventually became an employer for handicapped citizens as well. By the early 1980s recycling was established as a way of life and these efforts were taken over by the county and city.
Throughout his career, Bosscher continued to seek creative ways to minister to needy people. "The Camp Tall Turf experience got me into the world of ministries to hurting people and I felt the need to continue searching for service opportunities," he says.
Bosscher helped lead many students, like Genzink, to design projects which contained a societal component. "It seemed very natural to have them work on . . . real-life projects that could help real people," says Bosscher.
In his retirement, Bosscher has found more opportunities for service including his most recent work with Wycliffe Bible Translators on aircraft landing gear and aviation fuel. "We're working on developing a small-scale renewable aircraft-fuel generating system using vegetable oils on site," he says. "It's important not only for cutting costs and promoting on-site independence, but also for the sake of the environment."
ROGER BRUMMEL
Roger Brummel is vice president of chemical development for Parke Davis in Holland, Michigan. He's worked over three decades in a field he never intended to enter.
Brummel was an education student at Calvin who went on to earn a master's in education at Western Michigan University. He then settled into a teaching career at South Christian High School in Grand Rapids where he taught chemistry, math and physics and coached almost every sport the school offered, even leading his charges to a state cross-country title.
When Sputnik went into orbit the U.S. launched a wave of science projects and began doling out significant science-related grants. Brummel acquired summer fellowships in chemical education that eventually led to a Ph.D. program in organic chemistry at Wayne State University. He hoped to teach at the college level, but by graduation the job market for college chemistry professors was saturated and he had to explore other options.
He landed a job at DuPont and then was hired on by Parke Davis in its pharmaceuticals division. He took the job and has been there ever since. In 1989, he was promoted to the position of vice president of chemical development.
During his time in Holland, Brummel began serving the college as a Calvin volunteer in the Holland Area Business Drive, a Board of Trustee member and a member of the Calvin Alumni Association Board executive committee.
He also helped the college land a $1 million gift from Warner-Lambert, the parent organization of Parke-Davis, for the John "Doc" DeVries Hall of Science, a new state-of-the-art center for life sciences on the Calvin campus.
CAROL RIENSTRA
Carol Aukeman Rienstra is passionate about her love for God and children. Her community involvement is the result of that passion. "If you don't have passion for what you're doing, you're not going to be active," Rienstra once told a Muskegon Chronicle reporter.
Rienstra has been involved in her Muskegon, Mich., community for the past nearly 30 years in such capacities as a volunteer tutor, Muskegon Public Schools Advisory Board member, organizer of Fine Arts in the Heights (FAITH), an afterschool arts enrichment program, and co-initiator of the Muskegon County Youth-at-Risk Committee.
Most recently, she has been involved as a coordinator in a partner church for Calvin's Pathways to Possibilities (P2P) program which helps urban kids picture themselves in and work toward a future that may include college.
The P2P program includes local church initiatives, including tutoring, campus visits, Summer Journeys, Possibilities Pre-College Conference and Entrada. Rienstra is involved with identifying students who might fit this program, encouraging them, and following through with tutoring and serving as a mentor for them.
"I love riding in a van or bus with young people -- singing, joking around, discussing things, challenging them in informal, non-threatening ways to think. We need to help young people connect to culture by immersing ourselves with them into it. Go with one or two young people to concerts, libraries and museums. Talk about politics and current events. I think the America's Promise goal of raising the consciousness and involvement of more people as mentors and friends to our young people is such a worthy goal," she said.
Volunteering as a coordinator for Calvin's P2P program was a natural fit for Rienstra.
"When the children meet students at Calvin, which they usually do on campus visits, they get so excited about college," she said. "This is a wonderful program."
What inspires Rienstra is seeing young people with whom she's worked come back to be involved at the community level. "Recently I saw a college-age student with whom I've worked attending a Family Coordinating Council meeting," she said. "That is a real thrill for me."