On the evening of Friday, June 3, the ICS community gathered to celebrate the Convocation of our Junior Members for the first time since 2019. We also had the opportunity to grant Dr. Barbara Carvill the degree Doctor of Letters (honoris causa).
Dr. Carvill delivered this year's Convocation Address, expounding upon the deep, ethical importance of Christian education to enriching the “how” of teaching and learning to those gathered in person and through our livestream. In her address, Dr. Carvill took us on a journey through the pedagogical work of Clarence Joldersma and David Smith and their contributions to distinctly Christian education, and into an imaginative exposition of a 15th-century vision for how to lead a godly life in our work, study, and community.
After this address there followed a litany of joyful and heartfelt celebrations of the successfully completed projects of our Junior Members over the past two years. Project topics ranged from improving Bible education and classroom dynamics in K-12 schools, to an investigation into a contemporary spirit of malaise; from an honest inquiry into some of the unintended but baked-in destructive characteristics of Christianity, to a Biblical exposition of the difficult question of redemptive violence; from a consideration of Indigenous ecologies on philosophies of education, to textual studies of figures like Heidegger, Irigaray, Seerveld, Goudzwaard, Aquinas, Ricoeur, and Kierkegaard. The array of work put forward by our Junior Members is inspiring, both deeply and honestly grappling with a host of today's difficult and pressing questions.
Congratulations to our Graduates!
Karin Boonstra (MA, 2022)
Grace Carhart (MA, 2022)
David Grills (MA, 2022)
Abbigail Hofstede (MA, 2022)
Theoren Tolsma (MA, 2022)
Fred VanderBerg (MA, 2022)
Danielle Yett (MA, 2020)
Jon Andreas (ICS PhD, 2021)
Benjamin Shank (ICS PhD, 2021)
Shane Cudney (ICS/VUA PhD, 2021)
Dean Dettloff (ICS/VUA PhD, 2021)
Josh Harris (ICS/VUA PhD, 2020)
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A video of the full ceremony, including Convocation Address, may be watched below and on ICS's Youtube Channel.
