Nearly 900 students participated in Calvin’s 94th annual Commencement ceremony on May 24, 2014, in Van Noord Arena. The graduates represented 60 majors within the arts and humanities, social and natural sciences, and professional programs. According to the college’s most recent annual employment and graduate school report, 96 percent of Calvin College graduates are professionally employed or in graduate school within nine months of graduation.

This year’s class seemed to be no different. Students have found jobs around the corner and across the globe, doing mechanical engineering for GE Aviation in Grand Rapids; working as a financial specialist for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in Cincinnati, Ohio; and teaching English as a second language through the prestigious Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme in schools across Japan, to name a few.

Internships have served as a springboard for a number of Calvin students. Eighty-two percent of Calvin students report doing at least one internship while in college. Claudia Beversluis, the college’s outgoing provost, delivered the Commencement address. Beversluis has served as provost since 2006. She began her tenure at Calvin in 1990.

In her message, “The Memory in the Seed,” Beversluis compared the graduates to seeds that have a past and carry memory into a new life.

“They carry something of the history of how they were made,” she said, “and then seeds can take a shared history into a scattered, dispersed future.” Her metaphor served as a depiction of the vision Calvin has for shaping graduates into Christ’s agents of renewal in a broken world.

Calvin Alumni Association President Jessica Westra then welcomed the graduates to the college’s alumni association.