Calvin College became Calvin University on July 10, 2019, the birthday of our namesake, 16th-century theologian John Calvin.
This was the first outcome of a visioning process that helped us prepare for our next strategic plan. Our campus community gathered to talk about our challenges and opportunities in light of our strengths and our identity as an institution. Ultimately, we asked, “What will Calvin look like in 2030?”
As a result of community conversations, we created the following vision:
By 2030, Calvin will become a Christian liberal arts university with an expanded global influence. We envision Calvin University as a trusted partner for learning across religious and cultural differences and throughout the academy, the church, and the world. Calvin University will be animated by a Reformed Christian faith that seeks understanding and promotes the welfare of the city and the healing of the world. We welcome all who are compelled by God’s work of renewal to join us in the formative pursuits of lifelong learning, teaching, scholarship, worship, and service.
Three ways we'll grow
Calvin’s 2030 vision is full of innovation and possibilities. And while the details of this vision, and the path to achieve it, will be the job of the next strategic plan, we are excited about the vision’s three areas of focus:
1. University status
Calvin took the initial step in 2019 to become known as Calvin University. But this transition is about much more than a name change. Discussions are already underway about what structural and governance changes will help us expand what we do well and experiment with new directions.
In many ways the college had already operated like a university, in organization and caliber. Renaming our institution as a university enhances our reputation and more accurately reflects the depth and variety of our educational work to external audiences.
2. Trusted partner
Calvin University aims to grow as a trusted partner. We desire to be a sought-after source for knowledge and resources for curious learners all over the globe. We want to be able to come alongside groups of all different Christian traditions, all over the world and ask how we can best partner with them to promote flourishing in the world.
Historically, the Calvin community has had a deep expertise in a variety of areas that can be matched with needs in our city, in our nation, and places across the globe. In the coming years we will redouble our efforts to seek mutually beneficial relationships with communities and institutions to promote redemption, justice, and the truth of Christ.
We want to be able to come alongside groups from all different Christian traditions, in all cultural and global contexts, and ask how we can best partner with them to promote flourishing in the world.
3. Reformed identity
Calvin University aims to become the source for Reformed Christian thinking in the world. While it may be countercultural, we believe with all our heart that the world needs a Reformed Christian transformational vision.
Calvin has long aspired to honor God’s sovereignty over all things and to work in and under the broad, covenantal reach of Scripture. To that end, we are expanding on our commitment to teach from a Reformed Christian perspective to become a resource for Reformed Christian thought leadership.
Calvin Tomorrow
Calvin’s transformation from a college to a university is happening amidst disruptive times in higher education.
A decline in the number of high school graduates in the Northeast, Midwest, and Michigan, combined with an ongoing pandemic, presents major challenges and reveals exciting opportunities. While this environment is not unique to Calvin, the university is charting a unique course through it.
Financial stewardship and strategic investment over the past decade have Calvin University operating from a position of strength:
- Calvin knows who it is—it has a strong mission and identity;
- Calvin knows where it is headed—it has a compelling vision;
- Calvin is financially stable—its assets have doubled in ten years, while its debt has been cut in half.
Enter Calvin Tomorrow. This university-wide initiative uses an established process to create a multi-year financial plan for Calvin University. This plan will map the desired route to Vision 2030, allowing university leaders to plan far enough ahead to identify and secure the resources necessary to make progress toward a bright future.
Higher education is facing strong headwinds in 2021 and they will only grow stronger over the next half decade. Fortunately, Calvin has been preparing for this storm for almost a decade through financial stewardship and strategic investments. It has been positioning itself to not be blown around by the winds, but to be primed for strategic transformation.
Shoring up the foundation
In 2012, WICHE, an organization that tracks high school demographic data, published a sobering report for higher education. In short, it showed severe declines in the number of expected high school graduates in the 2020s, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. The state of Michigan’s decline was even more striking. Recognizing this, Calvin got to work on a strategic plan that would strengthen, support, and secure the institution.
From 2014 to 2019, Calvin strengthened its financial position, improved student retention and career readiness, increased the endowment, reduced the amount of debt per student, renovated spaces on campus, significantly reduced the university’s long-term debt thanks in part to an unprecedented $25 million debt relief campaign, and increased salaries and wages of faculty and staff to match the market.
This strengthening of Calvin’s foundation prepared it to encounter the impending demographic decline and primed it to create a compelling vision for the institution.
Calvin College would become Calvin University. It would deepen its commitment to the Reformed Christian Faith, open up more pathways for learners of all ages and backgrounds, and grow as a trusted partner and as a global influencer.
Just months after the vision was cast, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, shifting planning efforts from their long-term focus into crisis mode, pausing or slowing some of the institution’s initiatives.
The successes
Despite the challenging terrain of the past decade generally, and the past 20-month pandemic specifically, the university has experienced much momentum toward Vision 2030.
The institution has lived into a university structure that drives growth and sustains excellence. To date, the university has received two transformational gifts to establish the School of Business and the School of Health and is seeking funding to further support additional schools.
The university also launched the Global Campus, including multiple new graduate-level programs, approved a new core curriculum that strengthens the university’s liberal arts identity, and received an $11 million gift—providing Calvin University the largest budget of any university worldwide to deepen its faculty’s ability to teach from a Christian perspective and expand its ability to shape Reformed Christian thought leadership around the world.
These successes allow Calvin to approach future planning from a position of strength.
Calvin Tomorrow will provide a clear, transparent, realistic, and hopeful road map for university leaders to reference as the institution looks to fulfill its compelling vision—a vision that is both invitational and transformational.
Calvin tomorrow’s plan will develop a tangible pathway toward:
- Growth strategies that diversify and increase enrollment;
- Investing in faculty and staff by restoring salary and benefits, improving professional development, and encouraging faculty and staff engagement in faith and learning initiatives;
- Capital investment strategies that keep Calvin in demand as it improves dining and community gathering, develops long-term strategies for student housing, and reinvests in academic and athletic facilities;
- Developing a long-term budget plan to balance revenues with expenses, and invest in institutional growth initiatives to adapt to the future;
- Cultivating faculty scholarship and student learning anchored in disciplinary study and invigorated by effective collaboration;
- Advancing the university-wide commitment to Creation care by reducing energy consumption and its associated costs;
- Equipping people to tell how Calvin University contributes to God’s work in the world.
This plan will provide the university with more lead time and flexibility as it continues to live out a story of transformation, as it thrives through the next decade.
Calvin University is not looking to survive the higher education challenges on a year-to-year basis, it’s planning to thrive through them.
As Calvin University leadership continues to chart a course toward Vision 2030, Calvin Tomorrow is coming alongside as a key guide. It will define a specific process for developing a plan, and will then create a strategic, coherent, multi-year financial plan that moves Calvin toward its vision.
Paving a path
The university will pair (a) expense reductions that are more than the sum of their parts and have longer implementation timelines with (b) strategic investments that meaningfully boost revenues and promote excellence. Calvin will not just take steps but envision whole pathways between the university’s current point and its desired destination: Vision 2030.
Enhancing the planning process
In the past three years, Calvin has made major strides—reducing costs, restructuring debt, exceeding fundraising goals, investing in the Global Campus, securing resources for first steps in the university structure masterplan, and strengthening the institution’s work with undergraduate enrollment. But, considerable work remains. On the one hand, Calvin Tomorrow is the result of the institution’s continuous improvement in this area, but on the other hand, it is not only what Calvin has done before. It will focus on what leadership has learned, add new analytical tools, enhance the planning process, and extend a hopeful pathway into the future.
The university begins this work from a position of long-term financial health. In the coming months, faculty, staff, and administration leaders will undertake a number of projects that will, together, support development of a sustainable plan for university operations within projected budgetary means, strengthen select areas through reallocation, and identify additional strategic investments that will position the university for greater long-term success.
Key planning groups, such as a university-wide strategic budget review team and, in the academic division, a reimagined academic portfolio planning task force, will be supported by new analytical tools and by policies, processes, and practices that help the university (1) reduce costs, (2) ensure that future expenses do not grow faster than revenues, (3) bridge through the next two years of fewer resources, and, most importantly, (4) build toward the future. All faculty and staff will have opportunities to engage in this process along the way. Recommendations from this process will be made to the Planning and Priorities Committee, a committee chaired by the president that includes administrators, faculty, staff, students, and trustees.
This process will give Calvin an outlook that allows the institution to develop a compelling plan for the next three, five, and ten years.