Calvin College

Since 1964, the Calvin College Service-Learning Center has placed student volunteers in the Grand Rapids community and has been a consistent, thoughtful participant in the on-going work of service and learning in the Grand Rapids non-profit, educational, healthcare, and social justice communities. The Center began as a student group known as KIDS (Kindling Intellectual Desire in Students) not only during the turbulent years of Civil Rights, Vietnam War, and feminist movements, but also when the College migrated from a small, landlocked urban campus to a sprawling suburban estate campus. In 1980, as a response to the expansion of the KIDS program beyond its original roots as a tutoring program in core city public schools, the KIDS program became Student Volunteer Services and was enfolded into the administrative structure of the Student Affairs Division of the College. A little over a decade later, after attending a Campus Compact seminar at Brown University, a small yet influential cadre of faculty members agitated for a further expansion for this office, suggesting a practice they called “academic-based service,” something that would extend the reach of SVS into the realm of classroom teaching. The adoption of academic-based service prompted another re-naming of the office, and, in 1993, SVS became the Service-Learning Center. Of note is that with each change in the Center’s identity, its former emphases were not eliminated but rather were expanded. As result, the current context in which the Center finds itself is a complex one with remarkable depth and breadth, and with reach that includes the disparate spheres of student service and leadership, faculty scholarship, community engagement initiatives, and international service and learning. The catch-phrase “Serving to Learn, Learning to Serve” has long been a succinct motto summarizing the reciprocity involved in the activities of the Service-Learning Center.