Chair of the theology department at Whitworth College, Jerry Sittser is the author of several books including A Grace Disguised, A Grace Revealed, The Will of God as a Way of Life and Water from a Deep Well. He holds a master of divinity degree from Fuller Theological Seminary and a doctorate in history from the University of Chicago. During his presentation he will weave in some of his own personal story of loss as he focuses on how adversity in general and suffering in particular can be formative in the Christian life.

Paul Marshall is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington DC, a distinguished senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of Religion at Baylor University, a senior fellow at the Leimena Institute in Jakarta, Indonesia, and is a visiting professor at the graduate school of the State Islamic University, also in Jakarta. He is the author and editor of over twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom. According to the Pew Research Center, Newsweek and the Economist, among others, Christians are the world’s most widely persecuted religious group and yet many Westerners are unaware that so many followers of Christ live under governments and among people who are often openly hostile to their faith. They think martyrdom became a rarity long ago. Dr. Marshall will offer a glimpse at the modern-day life of Christians worldwide and provide insight on this global pattern of increasing violence.

Professor Louters is one of Calvin’s most-beloved professors, becoming one of four Calvin profs to be listed in The Princeton Review’s Top 300 Professors and earning both the college’s Professor of the Year award and the Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching. To Calvin students he’s known as a caring teacher and a wonderful research mentor, leading research projects relevant to diabetes and cancer with up to five students each summer. He has initiated and continues to direct summer Chemistry Camps for middle school students and local fifth graders who visit his annual spring “Chem Demos Program” and know him as the crazy science guy who blows things up and makes test tubes glow in the dark. Prof. Louters will use chemical demonstrations to illustrate the wonders of chemistry and share how his passion for his work has strengthened his faith through the years.

A graduate of Wheaton College and Princeton Theological Seminary, where she received her master of divinity degree, Ms. Dias is a correspondent for TIME Magazine covering religion and politics. She has written cover stories on Pope Francis, Trayvon Martin and American Christianity—including The Latino Reformation and Barbara Brown Taylor. She will share with us what is involved in being a correspondent for a major news magazine, what it is like covering Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama, how politics affect religious stories, and what she anticipates will be the future stories.

Director and co-founder of the Yale Prevention Research Center, Dr. Katz is recognized as one of America’s top physicians in preventative medicine by the Consumers’ Research Council of America and is the recipient of many awards for his contributions to public health and medical education. He is a prominent voice in health and medicine in the media, serving as ABC News’ medical consultant. He speaks routinely at conferences and meetings throughout the US and around the world. He is a recognized thought leader in nutrition, chronic disease prevention/health promotion, weight management and integrative medicine. He is the principal inventor of the Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI) used in the NuVal Nutritional guidance System. As an expert health consultant, Dr. Katz addresses the challenges in our “obesigenic” environment, and describes the blend of public politics and personal empowerment needed to take us toward a healthier future.

As a jazz advocate and promoter, Alyce Claerbaut served as the president of the Northeastern Illinois University Jazz Society and was co-founder of the Skokie Valley Jazz Ensemble in the 1980s. She has been involved in the arts scene primarily in Chicago with membership on grants panels for the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and as a panel member for the Illinois Arts Council. She served the Chicago Jazz Orchestra from 2003–2010, two years as Director of Public Relations and five years as Executive Director. Ms. Claerbaut’s formal music training includes concentration in applied voice. She has sung professionally in many types of settings—jazz, classical, art song and popular song—with a specialty in choral repertoire. She is the niece of the famed Billy Strayhorn—contemporary to Duke Ellington—and is currently the president of Billy Strayhorn Songs, Inc., a family-owned music publishing company. In this role she interacts with music publishers, producers and educators, particularly in jazz. Ms. Claerbaut is a Calvin alumna and was instrumental in helping to bring Duke Ellington to perform in the Calvin Fieldhouse in 1967. Billy Strayhorn’s only solo recording during the Ellington years was a record called “The Peaceful Side” which features him on the piano playing the titles that he considered his favorites. Calvin welcomes Ms. Claerbaut back to campus as she helps us explore Strayhorn's life through those songs as his expression of who he was.

James Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is professor of communication and professor of political science. He is also director of Stanford’s Center for Deliberative Democracy and chair of the department of communication. He is the author of a number of books and is best known for developing Deliberative Polling, a practice of public consultation that employs random samples of the citizenry to explore how opinions would change if they were more informed. Professor Fishkin and his collaborators have conducted Deliberative Polls in the US, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Bulgaria, China, Greece and other countries as well as in locations across the United States.

Venture capitalist, tech entrepreneur, New York Times bestselling author of Disciplined Dreaming and The Road to Reinvention, and a top-rated innovation keynote speaker. As Founding Partner of Detroit Venture Partners, he helps startups disrupt the old guard while helping to rebuild his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Josh is on a mission to drive innovation, creativity and reinvention in individual lives, businesses and cities. And he also plays a mean jazz guitar.

The number reads A27633 and it’s been tattooed on her forearm for over 70 years. Tova Friedman is one of the youngest known survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. She entered the camp with her mother and father at the age of 5 and, despite being led into the gas chambers, she miraculously survived. She was one of the 7,000 prisoners found alive during the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army in January 1945—this January marks the 70th anniversary of their liberation. She and two other women among the children liberated were interviewed by Holland, Michigan, author Milton Nieuwsma for the 1998 book “Kinderlager: An Oral History of Young Holocaust Survivors” which was made into a PBS documentary in 2005. Friedman’s parents also survived and the family eventually immigrated to New York in 1950. Friedman went on to attend the City College of New York and to receive a masters of social work at Rutgers University. She has spent a great deal of her life working for the Jewish community. Friedman lived in Israel from 1967 to 1977 with her husband and four children, and she taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is the retired director of Jewish Family Service for Somerset County in New Jersey.

We wake up to our iPhones and sign off to Facebook. In between, we’re texting, downloading and streaming—inundated with information from Google, Hulu and iTunes. How do we filter all our media to discern what matters? Craig Detweiler, who has his PhD from Fuller Theological Seminary, is a professor of communication and director of the Center for Entertainment, Media, and Culture at Pepperdine University where they are asking these kinds of questions. He is also an author, award-winning filmmaker and cultural commentator who has been featured on CNN, NPR and in The New York Times. In his book “iGods” he interacts with major symbols of our distracted age—like Apple, Amazon, YouTube and Twitter—to investigate the impact of the technologies and cultural phenomena that drives us.