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17c�� awarded $488K to connect virtue formation and community-engaged learning

msk23@calvin.edu — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 11:35:00 +0000

17c�� awarded $488K to connect virtue formation and community-engaged learning msk23@calvin.edu Fri, 07/11/2025 - 07:35

Ask 17c�� graduates about their education and one word seems synonymous: formative. If you look at the institution’s foundational documents, it’s not hard to figure out why. From the Expanded Statement of Mission to the Educational Framework, 17c�� is clear about how it is intentionally preparing learners.

“When we talk about education, we are talking about forming the whole person,” said Noah Toly, provost. “If we stop with what we know or what we can do—it doesn’t matter what anyone’s job is after that or how much they earn, if we stop at that metric, we’ve failed. The education we offer is about who we are.”

Awarded a prestigious grant

On July 11, 2025, the Educating Character Initiative at the Program for Leadership and Character awarded 17c�� an ECI Institutional Impact Grant in the amount of $488,000 for its proposal: Forming Virtue through Community-Engaged Learning: A Proposal for Educating Character at 17c��. This three-year project provides 17c�� the opportunity to take what’s deeply rooted in its ethos of virtue formation and connect it more intentionally to strengthen both longstanding and emerging programs.

“Through scholarship, curricular and co-curricular experiences, and commitment to fostering relationships, 17c�� has been a leader in the thought and practice of character and virtue formation in Christian higher education,” said Kevin den Dulk, associate provost. “This grant now facilitates a more intentional approach to connecting the dots between what we teach and write about and what we do in practice.”

Working toward desired outcomes

According to the proposal, the primary aims of the grant are two-fold: first, to build a critical mass of 17c�� faculty and staff with competence in a community-engaged approach to character education; and second, to engage various interested publics—both in the community and across academic networks—in opportunities for mutual learning about the approach.

How this will happen is through funding faculty and staff learning, developing courses and co-curricular opportunities, providing faculty time to reflect on and disseminate their work in ways they haven’t been able to do in the past, and nurturing community partnerships.

Strengthening longstanding and emerging partnerships

A few of the exemplars of a community-engaged approach that will be focused on are community nursing, 17c��’s most mature area for community-engaged learning; sustainability efforts through Plaster Creek Stewards, another long-standing initiative that encompasses multiple disciplines and perspectives; and, most recently, the Wayfinder program, an undergraduate experience for barrier-facing adult learners who explore concepts of calling and civic life through the study of the humanities.

“By connecting community-engaged learning with character formation, this grant helps us to enhance each and make that good work legible to the rest of the world,” said Toly. “We are also looking forward to learning with and from our community partners, to co-creating opportunities for character education, and to joining the broader conversation that the ECI network will bring together.”

Learning and sharing

Beginning in August 2025, the grant’s focus will be on building institutional capacity through establishing learning opportunities and an Office of Community Partnerships. In 2026, the aim is to provide more opportunities for faculty and staff to begin workshopping ideas for community-engaged learning.

Both Toly and den Dulk also emphasize that while there will be a lot of learning happening on campus and alongside community partners, this grant also has a focus on providing 17c�� faculty and staff the space to disseminate best practices in virtue formation more broadly.

“We have an opportunity through this grant to give Mary Doornbos and Gail Zandee time to write and engage with the broader publics around the work they’ve been doing all these years in the community nursing program,” said den Dulk. “We’ve been doing this work for a long time, but it’s been hidden under a bushel.”

Friday, July 11, 2025 - 12:00

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17c�� began its community nursing program in 2001.

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Wayfinder Program opens the doors to endless opportunities

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 15:02:27 +0000

Wayfinder Program opens the doors to endless opportunities msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 02/12/2025 - 10:02

“It was like I was in a world full of so many opportunities, but I didn’t have the key to open the door for those opportunities,” said Lexie Zuno. “And the opportunities were through a glass door. You see them and you hear about them, but you think ‘is it not for me?’”

Feeling stuck

After graduating from high school, Zuno felt stuck. “I grew up not knowing what life had for me. Going to school and seeing all of my peers circle on standardized testing that their parents have higher than a high school diploma, some bachelor’s degrees, some master’s degrees, I would always sit and look and say, ‘what’s below a high school diploma?’ My parents didn’t have that.”

Zuno was entering unchartered waters and while working in an aid position at a local school she met a woman named Anna who asked her a simple question that would change the trajectory of her life.

Invited to dream

“She was like, ‘hey, what are you doing school-wise?’ said Zuno. “I looked at her like she was crazy. I’m like ‘I can’t afford that. I can’t do that. I’m scraping by as it is. I don’t know where to start. My parents didn’t go to college. My parents didn’t graduate high school. What’s the big hype?’”

Anna then told Zuno about a program she heard was starting up at 17c��. She said, “I think you’d be great for this program,” recalls Zuno.

So Anna brought Zuno to 17c��’s campus.

“I had never been on a college campus before and it was almost a surreal feeling,” said Zuno. “She [Anna] was like ‘you know, this could be you, you know going to classes.’ I was like ‘No. 17c��? That’s crazy.’”

Shortly after her visit, Zuno met with Abbie Lipsker, director of continuing studies at 17c��, who told her about an application that was about to be sent out for the university’s Wayfinder program. The program is the state of Michigan’s first Clemente Course in the humanities, which is a transformative educational experience for adults facing economic and social barriers to higher education. It is offered off-campus in a neighboring zip code to the university in direct partnership with several community organizations. 

Taking a bold step

Zuno applied. And a couple of months later, she received a letter.

“That anticipation was quite agonizing,” said Zuno. “I ran home and showed my parents, and I’m like ‘I made it into 17c��’s program.’ My mom cried. My dad was ecstatic for me.”

In June, Zuno started in the inaugural cohort of the Wayfinder program.

“These women I’m studying alongside, each of their individualized stories leaves me breathless,” said Zuno. “All of us were dealt our own cards, kind of a hard hand to play with I’d say. But the perseverance in the room and the courage and the will to want to keep moving forward and break all of these generational curses down is so inspiring, and it makes you not want to stop. Everyone is rooting for each other and all these women are going to do amazing things.”

Access to endless opportunity

For Zuno, she’s no longer looking at opportunities through glass doors.

“Those doors are open now and I can pick what I want,” said Zuno. “It’s so crazy, once you get through that door you see all these opportunities and now you have a new problem, you don’t know what you want to do. There are so many options.”

Zuno is no longer stuck. She’s dreaming.

I am thinking ‘what option do I want?’ And they [17c�� professors] tell you that you can layer on options, it’s okay. And you find all these paths and all these jobs that you didn’t know existed,” said Zuno.

Inspiring future generations

While Zuno begins dreaming, she is keenly aware that her journey will have ripple effects.

“I hope to continue my education here at 17c�� and one day be able to help someone like me, you know, be an inspiration,” said Zuno. “I want to show adults that it’s never too late. You don’t have to follow the timeline that you need to graduate high school, go to college, get married, have kids. Everyone’s timeline is different. You want to start school when you’re 25, 35, 45, you know the door can be opened.”

And she knows she is paving a way for her family as well.

“Everyone that comes after me will have someone to look up to,” said Zuno about her being a first-generation college student. “To be able to be that trailblazer almost is inspiring, it makes me not want to stop, it makes me want to reach my hand out to everyone all around who has similar stories, similar struggles, and be like, ‘hey, come with me, we got this, we are going to learn together and grow and we are going to make this world a better place.’”

While Zuno credits the Wayfinder program for setting a spark in her, she knows who set her on this path.

“Without God instilled in me I feel like I would have felt like I’m doomed, like there’s no hope. And he instills this faith and hope in me that this [Wayfinder program] is for me,” said Zuno.” And from the beginning he had this great plan set out for me that he was going to open those doors. He was the one who lit the light to these glass doors and is right here with me all along the way. On days that it seems difficult and easy to want to give up, a quick prayer to the man upstairs and all of a sudden, I feel better.”

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 - 12:00

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No Longer on the Outside Looking In

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 16:18:00 +0000

No Longer on the Outside Looking In msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 10/16/2024 - 12:18

For Carol Sterling, 17c�� was always in sight, but seemingly out of reach. She had been on campus before, but as a visitor, taking her kids trick or treating when they were young. But her view of campus came mostly from a distance. “I loved looking over there and I loved seeing all the students moving around, but I never thought I’d be a student there,” said Sterling.

For Sterling, getting into 17c��, affording it, and finding her fit all seemed to be barriers to entry.

So, more than 30 years after earning her GED, associate’s degree, and experiencing a lot of life, including becoming a mom as a teenager, Sterling was sitting in a waiting area at a local organization in her neighborhood. She saw a brochure on a table with the 17c�� logo on it. Her first thought: “I can’t get into 17c��.”

Starting a Journey

But, she picked it up. “I like to sit and look at papers when I sit around late at night,” said Sterling. “I literally had the brochure with me, and I hadn’t looked at it for maybe two weeks, and one night I picked it up and looked at it and it said, ‘go online if you were interested,’” said Sterling, “and the journey started there.”

“It caught me off guard, but I felt the Spirit lead me,” said Sterling. “I thought ‘this is you, Lord,’ because there were a few other things that had been leading up to it and everything had just been falling into place.”

Sterling applied and was accepted into the inaugural cohort of the Wayfinder Program, the state of Michigan’s first Clemente Course in the Humanities, which is a transformative jumpstart higher educational experience for adults facing economic and social barriers to higher education.

Taking 17c�� Classes

Now, on Wednesday evenings from 6-9 p.m., she is among the 20 women who are meeting in the upstairs room in the Women’s Resource Center, taking 17c�� classes right in her neighborhood.

"Now when I look at this building it means something to me. We have something that’s helping us grow right within the community, a little hidden secret,” said Sterling.

“The staff and the professors, they are great. They’re not lenient. We’re in college, we are in university and the way they are teaching us we are learning a lot fast, and I didn’t know I’d be able to grasp on,” said Sterling. “And I’m excited about everything that I’m learning. I’m in my 50s and I’m still able to learn, and I’m happy and excited.”

Dreaming Bigger

For Sterling, the Wayfinder Program has opened up a door to a brighter future.

“After finishing the Wayfinder Program I want to continue on at 17c�� and earn a degree in social work/sociology,” said Sterling. “That’s my next goal. Pray for me that I get there.”

And her “why” for wanting this is not for “her,” but for the generations that come after.

Helping Others Dream Bigger Too

“I want to receive information so that I am able to talk young people, young mothers into wanting what I am receiving,” said Sterling. “I do see a lot of people give up, young people, especially in the community where I’m from, because they don’t have a why, and they don’t think that there is a why,” said Sterling. “I want to be able to go out and reach others so that I’m not the last and others can feel what I’m feeling. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Now when Sterling drives by the entrance to 17c�� off Burton Street she has a different perspective; she no longer sees herself as just a visitor looking in.

“I’m honored. I drive past and I tell my grandkids, I’m enrolled there,” said Sterling.
“They say, ‘really Grandma?!’ My grandson was very excited, and that humbled me to see the expression on his face. So, it gives me great honor to know we can be there.”

Interested in receiving more information about the program or want to apply to be part of a future cohort? Learn more about the Wayfinder program.

Wednesday, October 16, 2024 - 12:00

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Discovering A Different Path to the Same Destination

msk23@calvin.edu — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 12:59:23 +0000

Discovering A Different Path to the Same Destination msk23@calvin.edu Tue, 10/01/2024 - 08:59

When Nohemi Arreola was in her senior year of high school, she had her sights set on college.

“I had plans to come to 17c��,” said Arreola. “I was really wanting to get to that step, but life and my choices took me down a different path.”

Fast forward eight years and you’ll find Arreola on a Wednesday evening sitting with a group of 20 other women in an upstairs room of the Women’s Resource Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They’re taking a class through 17c��.

“Back then I was just young and trying to find a job that made money to live. It was a selfish mentality, which is common [at that time of life],” said Arreola. “So now coming back to 17c�� as a 26-year-old woman, I’m coming in with different goals, coming in with a different mentality, and just this drive.”

In that eight-year gap since high school a lot of life happened, which would ultimately shape Arreola’s “why” for college, making it drastically different and far deeper.

Feeling stuck, unworthy, and alone

She had her first child a few months after graduating high school, ended up splitting from her baby’s father shortly after, leaving her homeless for a time, which caused her to almost lose custody. While all of this was happening, Arreola was working through layers of baggage and trauma from her childhood, growing up in a home where she never felt good enough. Her life was spiraling, and she turned to substance abuse and self-harm, attempting suicide multiple times.

“I truly don’t think I’m supposed to be here,” said Arreola. “Year after year I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I couldn’t even make goals because I didn’t feel like I could do the work. I felt so stuck, so unworthy.”

She recalls waking up from comas alone in hospital rooms, with no parents or friends in sight. It was in those moments, she was reminded “at the end of the day it’s me and God and God’s love, and I feel God with me every night,” said Arreola.

Experiencing freedom, love, and community

“So now that I’m here and have defeated those odds I want to use my power, my drive, and my voice for the voiceless for those hurting out there who I know just need a little encouragement and love, which is what Wayfinder did for me,” said Arreola.

The Wayfinder Program, which Arreola is a part of is the state of Michigan’s first Clemente Course in the Humanities, which is a transformative educational experience for adults facing economic and social barriers to higher education. The program is offered off-campus in a neighboring zip code to the university in direct partnership with several community organizations. Arreola is discovering just how formative and life-giving of an experience it is being a part of this community of learners.

“We’re loved here, there’s no doubt about it. We feel the love,” said Arreola. “We are showered with gifts, we’re showered with affirmations, we’re given that oomph that souls so desperately need.”

“I don’t feel tired coming here after a long day of work, after teaching my son all day,” said Arreola, who homeschools her son and who now has three children. “I’m so excited to get here and see these women because I know that they have also led their lives with false beliefs and other people’s opinions about them that they’ve let drive them for so many years. And I feel like we’re all on the same page here and we’re waking up to this truth and this light in us that this world so desperately needs.”

Dreaming bigger

Arreola is now dreaming bigger, aiming higher, and going beyond her previously held limiting beliefs about herself and her future.

“I’m ready to challenge the status quo in every area of our community,” said Arreola. “And if I can’t do it, then I’ll at least speak the ideas or write them down for professors to read so I can be led in the right direction.”

When Arreola completes the eight 17c��-credit Wayfinder Program, she thinks her next step is the one she hoped to take eight years earlier.

“I’m the first in my family to graduate high school, and now I’m going to college. I want to complete that too. My next step will be hopefully through this program to find a mentor because I really don’t know where to go with all this passion that I have, and I think there are many different degrees that I could get,” said Arreola. “The experience here at Wayfinder is giving me the support and confidence that I need to keep going. I’m just so grateful for that. It’s what I needed.”

Interested in receiving more information about the program or want to apply to be part of a future cohort? Learn more about the Wayfinder program.

Tuesday, October 1, 2024 - 12:00

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Nohemi Arreola (right) and her younger sister Perla (left) are part of the first cohort of the Wayfinder Program at 17c��.

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