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What Holds True: Five Decades of Graduate Education at Calvin

Mon, Dec 08, 2025
academics
Maroon and gold yarn

In the summer of 1976, Calvin launched its first graduate program, a master of arts in teaching, with a vision rooted in faith, servant leadership, and academic excellence. Linda Glerum Crouch ’74 MAT’77 and Jim Boonstra ’65 MAT’77 were among the first graduates of that program. Reflecting back, they say Calvin’s vision wasn’t just theoretical—it shaped their lives and careers.

RETURNING TO LEARN

Both Crouch and Boonstra entered the MAT program mid-career. Though they were drawn to Calvin’s strong academic reputation, they say the ultimate selling point was the ability to return to school without uprooting their lives.

After teaching fourth grade for two years, Crouch moved back home with her parents while completing the year-long program. Earning the degree gave her the credentials she needed to return to her childhood home of Nigeria, where she led a 37-year career as a missionary music educator.

For Boonstra, the degree was a practical step toward better pay and strengthening his pedagogy—especially for the middle school students he loved. When he enrolled, he was a decade into his career. “I didn’t want a master’s in mathematics. I was more interested in the teaching of math than math itself,” Boonstra says.

Focusing on the art of teaching during his graduate studies equipped him with strategies to support a broad range of learners. He eventually became a principal, but he likes to joke that he never left seventh grade. “I never stopped learning how to reach stu- dents in that pivotal time of life.”

GROWING PAINS

Graduate education at Calvin has not been immune to various growing pains. Over the years, the university cut some programs and added others. The MAT was replaced by a master of education (MEd), then revived two years ago to better serve career changers simultaneously pursuing a graduate degree and teaching certificate.

Calvin has also experimented with various models of instructional delivery to make learning more accessible for adults with competing priorities. Today, many programs are offered online, while others remain available on campus.

Yet one thing remains the same.

EXPERIENCE-GUIDED LEADERSHIP

Dean of Graduate Studies Kyle Small says the 50th anniversary is a celebration of a long-standing commitment to adult and professional learners who “are already leading and want to lead better.”

Currently, Calvin has over 300 graduate students living around the globe. Whether on campus or online, all programs emphasize building leaders through community- and faith-centered learning.

Crouch says that was true even in the 70s. She was delighted when her professors encouraged her to engage with undergraduate education majors on campus, giving her opportunities to share her teaching experi- ences with them. She took that mentorship experience with her into retirement. Now living in Charlotte, North Carolina, she regularly meets with the next generation

of young missionaries headed into the field.

EXPERTISE IN THE CLASSROOM

Small, too, values how graduate students bring extensive knowledge and experience to the table and often refers to the graduate classroom as a “transformative equalizer.”

“Graduate education allows us to bring people from different spheres into the same house. Everybody becomes a learner. Your salary, your title, your prestige, your background—they don’t go away, but they’re leveled by the process of becoming a learner. Even the faculty person is a learner in the community.”

Passing down the wisdom gained from experience also plays out in another import- ant way: 40% of graduate courses are led by full-time Calvin faculty, but the other 60% are taught by experts in the field.

Leonard Van Drunen, director of the master of business administration program, is enthusiastic about that balance. Since the MBA is geared toward full-time professionals who want to strengthen their leadership and effect change in their organizations, offering graduate students direct access to experienced business leaders active in their fields holds great value. “Eight of the courses in the program focus on leadership and innovation, which is the main animating theme of the MBA,” Van Drunen says.

INTEGRATING FAITH AND LEARNING

Although Crouch doesn’t remember every graduate course she took, she easily recalls the classes that sparked creativity and spiritual reflection, giving her a sense of purpose in her chosen profession. Her final project focused on the emotional impact of missionary life on children; she says the research served as a bridge between personal experience and academic inquiry.

Both Crouch and Boonstra say they benefited from the quality of teaching. “The professors loved what they were doing, and they wanted to lead us and equip us to be godly ambassadors in whatever work we were doing,” Crouch says.

“The aim of Calvin’s graduate programs has never been just to hand out degrees,” Small adds. “Graduate education at Calvin is about becoming more fully who God made you to be. We’re forming leaders who are attentive to the Spirit—who lead not just with strategy, but with soul.”

WORTH CELEBRATING

Crouch recalls how participating in the MAT program in its infancy was a little like “walking on holy ground. I felt like we were forging new territory, enabling others to come along behind us and complete their stories with the same quality of support and training.”

By way of illustration, on an ordinary weekday afternoon, Kyle Small opens an email from exercise science graduate student Natashia Green, who writes, “I have been officially offered the position as the new fitness center supervisor and events coordinator for Flathead Valley Community College as of yesterday evening! I’m about to do some magical things, I can feel it.”

If there’s something special to celebrate in five decades of graduate programs at Calvin, it’s these points of intersection: professional growth, leadership development, and Christian faith. A master’s degree becomes more than a credential hung on an office wall but also an invitation to serve wholeheartedly wherever time, experience, and the Lord lead.

Calvin University has nine graduate programs, including:

Authors:

Sara Korber-DeWeerd
Editor, Spark magazine

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