Lisa Bouma Garvelink

Associate Professor of English

B.A. (Calvin College, 1979), M.A. (Michigan State University, 1987), Ph.D. (Western Michigan University, 2005)

LGarvelink@kuyper.edu • 616.988.3685

Professor Lisa Bouma Garvelink began at Kuyper in the fall of 2005, after finishing her Ph.D. in American literature and a doctoral fellowship which funded a year of archival work on the letters of novelist Willa Cather.  She is currently working on finding a publisher for her book on Cather’s novels.  She began her career by teaching English and German at Creston High School, taught composition part-time at Calvin College while being mostly a stay-at-home mother, and taught literature at Western Michigan University while earning her Ph.D.  In her first year at Kuyper, Professor Garvelink taught Introduction to Literature, Children’s Literature, American Literature, World Literature, and Composition.  She looks forward to teaching these courses again, as well as adding other literature classes.  Her other academic work is research writing for presentations at academic conferences and for publication in academic journals.  Whether working on Willa Cather or other writers, Professor Garvelink finds her own academic writing to be an energizing intellectual activity, which brings additional knowledge and enthusiasm to her classroom.

“I love challenging students to see the power of literature to enrich their lives through a keener understanding of the experiences and thinking of people around them. Since God has sent us into the world as his ambassadors, I need to equip my students to see people around them with clarity, especially those quite different from themselves. What I find most exciting about teaching at Kuyper College is the keen faith commitment of my students and their eagerness to apply that to the study of literature. Our discussions both in and out of the classroom reveal an understanding of the insights they can gain through literature and a realization of how much this understanding can add to their future work—whether as a teacher, social worker, pastor or any other career to which God calls them."

Professor Garvelink was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, while her father was studying there, and then lived primarily in Alberta, California, and Washington with her home-missionary parents.  She met her husband Steve at a singles Bible study at Brookside Christian Reformed Church, which has been their family church ever since.  She and her husband have three daughters—Katherine, Julia, and Stephanie—who all share their parents’ passions for reading and travel.  Professor Garvelink also enjoys gardening, cooking, and baking, for which she never seems to have quite enough time.