Dr. Steven Hoogerwerf of the Hope College religion faculty has been presented a Michigan Campus Compact (MCC) Faculty/Staff Community Service-Learning Award.
The award recognizes outstanding community service and service-learning by faculty and staff at the colleges and universities that are members of MCC. Recipients are honored for engaging or influencing students to be involved in community service or service-learning through modeling, influence or instruction. The award recipients are nominated by peers at their institutions.
Hoogerwerf was honored on February 8 as part of MCC's 11th annual Institute, "Service Learning and Civic Engagement."
Hoogerwerf is an associate professor of religion at Hope, where he has taught since 1992. He has been focusing in his work with students on service-learning and issues of vocation.
For several years he has accompanied Hope students participating in the college's annual spring break mission trips. For the past three years he has also co-led a training session for leaders of the Hope trips, and he is currently completing a resource to help guide students participating in the trips to learn from them as well as give of themselves during them.
In addition, in May he will be leading a four-week service-learning May Term course on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
He was a member of the Hope committee that drafted the grant proposal for the CrossRoads Project, funded with support from the Lilly Endowment Inc. The program, which began with the 2003-04 academic year, is designed to help students think theologically about the role of calling or vocation in their lives.
His scholarship focuses on ethics, medical ethics, and religion and society. During the current school year he has been teaching the college's Senior Seminar on "Vocation and Health Care" as well as the courses "Religion and Atrocity," and "Introduction to Theology: Christian Love."
Hoogerwerf has also served as an adjunct member of the faculty of Western Theological Seminary since 1996. Other appointments through the years have included serving as director of adult ministries at Second Reformed Church in Zeeland; spiritual care coordinator with Hospice of Holland Inc.; interim associate minister at Olin Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, N.C.; associate minister of United Reformed Church in Somerville, N.J.; and staff associate with the office of social witness of the Reformed Church in America.
His current community involvements include serving on the ethics committees of Holland Community Hospital, and as an ethics consultant to North Ottawa Community Hospital and Resthaven Patrons Inc.
Hoogerwerf graduated from Hope in 1977 with majors in religion and philosophy. He completed his Master of Divinity degree at Western Theological Seminary in 1981 and his doctorate, in theology and ethics, at Duke University in 1991.
Michigan Campus Compact is a state-level, non-profit organization that promotes the education and commitment of Michigan college students to be civically engaged citizens, through creating and expanding academic, co-curricular and campus-wide opportunities for community service, service-learning and civic engagement. Some 42 Michigan colleges and universities are members of MCC.