Greg Elzinga was announced as Calvin’s 13th president on Thursday, Oct. 21. Elzinga was unanimously approved by the Board of Trustees (BOT) after a unanimous recommendation by the presidential search committee.
Last spring — following the resignation of former president Wiebe Boer — the board appointed trustees Niala Boodhoo, Anthony Brookhouse, Gene Miyamoto and Carolyn Van Allen to the search committee along with Perrin Rynders as chair. According to Rynders, the search committee was finalized and began meeting by July.
In the wake of Boer’s departure, the search committee carefully considered the “headwinds” the university was facing at that time, Rynders said. With those considerations in mind, the process of recommending presidential candidates for board approval looked different than in the past.
The standard search process across higher education typically involves the sitting president of a university informing its board of plans to leave or retire in the coming months or years. A downside of Boer’s unexpected departure was the “much shorter runway” from which to launch the next presidential search, Rynders said.
Julie Yonker, professor of psychology and public health, was a faculty representative on the search committee. Yonker told Chimes that a desire for continuity was a key consideration. “Since our previous president had only been with us a short time, we were also just thinking about change and the upheaval that can create when you just have lots of changes at the top,” Yonker said.
Then-interim president Elzinga had already entered the role of president and had plans to continue working at Calvin. This opened up a unique set of possibilities. “We had to consider the possibility that the interim president was somebody that was there for a reason, and we shouldn’t be blind to that possibility,” Rynders said.
Albert Boerema, professor of education and a member of the search committee, told Chimes several members of the committee expressed “feeling the Spirit leading us, that this was the direction we should be going.” After several sessions of prayer and deliberation, Boerema said, the committee “did not go down the pathway of putting out a call for applications.”
In October, the search committee presented its unanimous recommendation to the BOT that Elzinga take on the role of president. The BOT unanimously voted to confirm this recommendation.
Before his time as interim president, Elzinga served as Calvin’s vice president for advancement, and had an extensive career in nonprofit work with the organization Partners Worldwide.
“What I have been appreciative of about President Elzinga is that he so clearly articulates the important role that Calvin University is playing in the higher ed landscape and in the world,” Boerema said.
