When this edition of the Calvin Spark arrives in your home, I hope you welcome the magazine as warmly as you have previously—some of you for many years before.

When the very first issue of Spark arrived in alumni homes in 1954, the slim 16-page production had taken the place of an “Alumni Letter” that reached graduates a few times a year.

Over the ensuing decades, the magazine grew larger and numerous design changes were revealed every six or seven years.

This time around, in a return to the “olden days,” the magazine is again being designed entirely in-house. Many thanks to Amanda Impens and Joy’l Ver Heul for their creative efforts.

But the new Spark is anything but old—we intend for Spark to be more accessible to younger alumni in both the magazine and web forms. We’d like each issue to hang around your living spaces longer. In addition, we’re interested in expanding our readership beyond alumni, parents and friends of the college. Perhaps Spark can show up in coffee shops, conference rooms and other public places.

By emphasizing visual images as well as the written word, we are trying to tell the current Calvin College story in a fresh way, that of a vibrant Christ-centered community that continually seeks to discover new aspects of God’s creation and brings an amazing array of skills and energies toward renewing many corners of the Kingdom.

That Calvin community extends into the lives of our alumni and the “” and “” will continue to note the activities of our graduates as persons who “think deeply, act justly and live wholeheartedly.” By sharing their stories and updates, we concretely show how Calvin has prepared its graduates to make a global difference as Christ’s ambassadors.

I’m eager to hear what you think of the new presentation of Spark. I imagine there will be tweaks and adjustments in the first few issues as we establish a new format. Your observations will be most helpful in that process.

Spark was so-named because of a line in the Calvin “Friendship Song,” which predated the Calvin alma mater as gathering music at college and alumni events.

The song goes:
From classroom and from college halls
Arises one refrain
The Calvin spark we once have caught
Shall never die again

Hila Vanden Bosch Russel of the Class of 1925 wrote the song. Her idea of a “Calvin spark” is still an apt picture of what Calvin aims to leave in each of its graduates—a thoughtful desire to serve that transcends vocation and location.

This magazine has always and will continue to underscore the essence of that spark—as shown in Calvin students, faculty and staff, and more than 60,000 alumni on every continent in the world.