Wikipedia Deep Dive

Calvin University

12 min read

A School That Cities Fought Over

In 1910, something unusual happened in western Michigan. Two cities—Muskegon and Kalamazoo—got into a bidding war over a small religious college. Muskegon offered ten thousand dollars and a tract of land. That's roughly a quarter million in today's money, just to convince a junior college to pack up and move.

Grand Rapids, where the school already sat, scrambled to match the offer. The college stayed put.

What made this little institution so desirable? And how did a school that began with seven students in a rented room become a university that would one day host a sitting American president—to both cheers and public protest?

Seven Students in a Rented Room

Calvin University traces its origins to August 4, 1876, when the Christian Reformed Church in North America—a Protestant denomination rooted in Dutch immigrant communities—decided it needed to train its own ministers. They rented an upper room on Spring Street in Grand Rapids, Michigan, hired a teacher named Geert Boer, and enrolled seven students.

The curriculum was ambitious despite the humble setting: four years of literary studies followed by two years of theology. The goal wasn't just to produce preachers who could deliver sermons. The church wanted educated leaders grounded in both faith and the broader Western intellectual tradition.

The school is named after John Calvin, the sixteenth-century French theologian whose ideas shaped Reformed Christianity. Calvin didn't found the university—he died more than three hundred years before those seven students gathered in Grand Rapids. But his theological framework, which emphasizes God's sovereignty over all aspects of life and the importance of engaging with culture rather than retreating from it, became the intellectual DNA of the institution.

From Seminary to Something Bigger

For its first two decades, the school existed primarily to funnel young men toward ministry. But in 1894, something shifted. The administration expanded the curriculum to include students who weren't planning to become pastors—effectively transforming the institution into a college preparatory school.

In 1901, women were admitted for the first time.

By 1906, the literary department had become John Calvin Junior College, and the school held its first commencement ceremony. A year later, students launched a newspaper called Chimes—a publication that still exists today. The institution was evolving from a seminary appendage into something recognizably collegiate.

The transformation accelerated in 1920 when the school officially became a four-year liberal arts college. The model it chose to emulate came from across the Atlantic: the Free University of Amsterdam, founded by Abraham Kuyper.

The Kuyper Vision

Abraham Kuyper was a Dutch theologian, journalist, and politician who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. He's one of the most influential figures in Reformed Christianity, and his ideas shaped Calvin's educational philosophy in profound ways.

Kuyper rejected the notion that Christianity should be a private matter confined to church on Sundays. He argued instead that Christian faith should inform every sphere of human activity—business, art, science, politics, education. "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence," Kuyper famously declared, "over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, 'Mine!'"

This wasn't a call for theocracy. Kuyper advocated for what he called "sphere sovereignty"—the idea that different areas of life (family, church, state, commerce, academia) each have their own integrity and shouldn't be dominated by any single institution. The state shouldn't run the church. The church shouldn't run the state. But Christian principles should inform how believers engage in all these spheres.

For a college, this meant something specific: education wasn't just about preparing students for careers or even for churchwork. It was about forming minds that could think Christianly about everything—philosophy, literature, science, economics, art. The goal was integration, not compartmentalization.

Calvin's first official president, Reverend J.J. Hiemenga, appointed in 1919, guided the school through this philosophical transition. Under his leadership, the college awarded its first bachelor's degree in 1921, opened its first dormitory in 1924, and appointed its first female faculty member—Johanna Timmer, as Dean of Women—in 1926.

Growing Pains and a Bold Gamble

The Great Depression hit Calvin hard. Financial hardship beset the institution throughout the 1930s, and growth stalled. By 1930, enrollment had only recovered to its pre-World War One level of around 350 to 450 students.

Then came the postwar boom.

Like colleges across America, Calvin experienced explosive growth after World War Two as returning veterans flooded campuses on the G.I. Bill. By 1950, enrollment had climbed to 1,270—more than tripling in two decades. The college joined the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association and began building a more robust campus culture.

But success created problems. The Franklin Street campus, which had served the college since 1917, was bursting at the seams. Something had to give.

In 1951, William Spoelhof became president. Five years later, he convinced the Christian Reformed Church's Synod—the governing body of the denomination—to authorize a bold purchase: the Knollcrest Farm, 390 acres of land beyond Grand Rapids city limits, bought from a man named J.C. Miller for four hundred thousand dollars.

Many thought Spoelhof was overreaching. The college was small. The farm was enormous—expanding the campus from roughly one city block to nearly four hundred acres, including a hundred-acre nature preserve. Could the institution actually finance this?

Spoelhof pressed forward anyway.

Building a Campus from Farmland

The transition took over a decade. The seminary moved first, constructing a new building on the Knollcrest site and beginning classes there in 1960. The college followed two years later with its first academic building on the new campus.

For ten years, from 1962 to 1973, Calvin operated on two campuses simultaneously—a logistical headache that finally ended when the last operations moved to Knollcrest.

The master plan for the new campus came from William Beye Fyfe, an architect influenced by the Prairie School tradition associated with Frank Lloyd Wright. Working with President Spoelhof, Fyfe developed design principles meant to physically embody Calvin's educational philosophy. The layout was supposed to promote integration—of faith and learning, of administration and faculty and students, of different academic disciplines with one another.

One building captures this integrative spirit quite literally: the Science Building, constructed in the shape of a hexagon to evoke a benzene ring—the fundamental structure in organic chemistry. It houses engineering, physics, astronomy, psychology, and nursing departments, plus half of an astronomical observatory that opens to the public on clear weeknights.

By the late twentieth century, Calvin had grown to around 4,200 students. The seminary and college, which had shared origins but increasingly distinct missions, established separate boards of trustees in 1991.

Presidential Controversy

In 2005, Calvin made national headlines for reasons having nothing to do with academics or athletics.

President George W. Bush accepted an invitation to deliver the commencement address. For a small Christian college in Michigan, hosting a sitting president was an extraordinary honor—and an extraordinary flashpoint.

The reaction on campus was sharply divided. More than eight hundred faculty members, alumni, students, and friends of the college signed a full-page advertisement in the Grand Rapids Press protesting the invitation. They argued that Bush's policies "violate many deeply held principles of Calvin College."

The controversy illustrated something important about Calvin's institutional culture. This wasn't a school where everyone thought the same way politically. The Reformed tradition that shaped the college emphasized rigorous intellectual engagement, not ideological conformity. Students and faculty felt empowered—even obligated—to publicly dissent from what they saw as departures from Christian principles, even when that dissent might embarrass the institution.

The Homosexuality Memo

Four years later, in August 2009, the board of trustees issued a memo that provoked even fiercer internal debate.

The memo stated that faculty were prohibited from teaching, writing about, or advocating on behalf of homosexuality or same-sex marriage. The board adopted this policy without consulting the faculty beforehand.

The Faculty Senate responded with a vote of 36 to 4 asking the board to withdraw the memo. Many professors objected not just to the policy's content but to the process—the board had acted unilaterally on a matter that directly affected academic freedom and classroom teaching.

The official position of Calvin University remains that sexual relations belong within "a marriage relationship between a man and a woman." This stance places the institution firmly within the conservative mainstream of evangelical Christianity, though it creates ongoing tension with faculty and students who hold different views.

Financial Crisis and Program Cuts

When Michael K. Le Roy became president in 2012, he quickly disclosed an uncomfortable truth: Calvin faced a financial crisis. The institution carried $117 million in debt.

The response was aggressive. Within eight months, Calvin raised $25 million to reduce long-term debt to $90 million. Cost-cutting measures followed. In 2015, four majors with low enrollment were reduced to minors, and one minor was eliminated entirely.

On July 10, 2019—chosen to coincide with the 510th birthday of John Calvin—the institution changed its name from Calvin College to Calvin University. The rebranding was strategic: internationally, "college" often implies a lower academic tier than "university." The hope was that the new name would make the school more attractive to prospective students, particularly those from abroad.

But the financial pressures didn't relent. In 2021, citing continued strain, the university ended several more programs: astronomy (as a minor), Chinese (major and minor), classical studies (major and minor), Greek (minor), Latin (minor), Dutch (major and minor), German (major), and global development studies (major and minor). Tenured faculty members were dismissed.

The cuts revealed a painful tension at the heart of liberal arts education. The Kuyperian vision that shaped Calvin emphasized the integration of all knowledge—the idea that every discipline, from astronomy to Dutch literature, offers a window onto truth. But when enrollment declines and debt mounts, somebody has to decide which windows to board up.

Leadership Turbulence

President Le Roy announced in June 2021 that he would step down. The board appointed Wiebe Boer as the twelfth president in March 2022.

Boer's tenure lasted less than two years.

In February 2024, he resigned facing allegations of "concerning and inappropriate conduct." The details were not made public, but the aftermath grew messy. Boer and his wife Joanna filed a federal lawsuit against Calvin University in April, alleging defamation and breach of contract. They included complaints about how the university handled the resignation and its actions beforehand.

By June, the Boers had dropped the suit. A joint statement from the board and the couple said only that "the matter had been resolved."

Gregory Elzinga, who had served as interim president since Boer's departure, was named the thirteenth president in October 2024. A month later, citing continuing financial strain, Elzinga announced plans to cut faculty headcount by 12.5 percent over the next two years. The French and sociology majors would be eliminated, along with minors in German and journalism.

What Remains

Despite the cuts and controversies, Calvin University still offers majors or minors in over a hundred fields, plus ten graduate programs. It remains accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and is a member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

The admission numbers tell a story of modest selectivity: for the class entering in fall 2021, Calvin accepted about 92 percent of applicants. Of those accepted, roughly a quarter chose to enroll. The freshman retention rate is 86 percent, and 77 percent of students graduate within six years.

Calvin still sends an unusually high proportion of its students abroad—ranking second among baccalaureate institutions for study-abroad participation. The university runs its own semester programs in eleven locations: the United Kingdom, China, France, Germany, Ghana, Honduras, Hungary, Peru, Spain, and Washington, D.C. During the one-month interim term each May, dozens of additional international programs are offered.

The core curriculum requires students to take roughly 45 credit hours across four categories: Foundations, Competencies and Skills, Knowledge and Understanding, and Cross-Disciplinary Integrations. A capstone course during senior year is meant to draw together themes from across the curriculum. Some capstones are major-specific; others, like Ethics, can be taken by students in any field.

The Persistence of a Vision

Calvin University exists because a small denomination of Dutch Reformed immigrants believed that education should be comprehensive. Not just vocational training. Not just Bible study. The whole picture: science and art and philosophy and language, all examined through the lens of Christian faith.

That vision has proven both resilient and costly. The commitment to broad liberal arts education runs headlong into the economics of modern higher education, where students increasingly demand career-focused programs and smaller institutions struggle to sustain departments that don't generate enough enrollment.

The story of Calvin is in some ways the story of American Christian higher education writ small: the tension between intellectual ambition and financial reality, between denominational identity and cultural engagement, between tradition and adaptation.

Those seven students in the rented room on Spring Street couldn't have imagined what their little school would become—or the challenges it would face. But the questions they were grappling with in 1876 are the same questions Calvin still wrestles with today: What does it mean to educate the whole person? How do faith and learning relate? And how do you sustain an institution built on ideals when the bills come due?

The answers keep changing. The questions endure.