Calvin News

While Roger Stouwie was pursuing a career with Spartan Stores in their “cutting edge” computer center in the early 1960s, he was also reading a lot of books on psychology.

Throughout this decade and into the next, the field of psychology was going through major changes and garnering a lot of attention.

It was this wave of interest that prompted Stouwie to return to Calvin as a student to pursue a degree in the field and would lead to a quarter-of-a-decade teaching career, with 22 of those years at Calvin University. Stouwie died on Oct. 6, 2021; he was 87.

Upon graduating from Calvin in 1965, Stouwie attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He began his teaching career at the University of Texas-Austin, but returned to Calvin in 1972.

Contributing to a growing department

Stouwie joined a burgeoning psychology department, focusing his attention on developmental psychology.

“He was always friendly and polite, but reserved,” said longtime psychology administrative assistant Janet Sjaarda Sheeres.

While he was reticent about his personal life, he had an inherent interest in kids and their development.

“Everything we study about infants and children is a marvelous testimony to human growth and development and a continuing testimony to the wisdom of the Creator,” he said in an interview upon his retirement. “It’s been exciting to be able to participate in that.”

Stouwie was preceded in death by his wife, Dolores. He is survived by his two children, Jonathan (Kristin) Stouwie and Kristin Volpe.