Hope College’s 148th Commencement, celebrating the graduating Class of 2013, will be held on Sunday, May 5, at 3 p.m. at Holland Municipal Stadium.
Baccalaureate will be held earlier in the day, at 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. in Dimnent Memorial Chapel.
Approximately 670 graduating seniors will be participating.
The Commencement speaker will be Dr. Stacy Jackson, who is the Kenneth J. Weller ’48 Professor of Management and chairperson of the department of economics, management and accounting. The Baccalaureate sermon will be delivered by the Rev. Jill Ver Steeg, who is a pastor at Meredith Drive Reformed Church in Des Moines, Iowa.
Jackson has been a member of the Hope faculty since 2007 and was appointed to the Weller professorship in 2011. His areas of expertise are leadership, organizational effectiveness and change, and strategy and organization design. His research focuses on leadership and strategic change, power and politics in organizations, and the role of business in society.
He began his career at NASA in Houston, Texas, as an internal organization development consultant. His subsequent consulting experience includes serving as a senior manager for Ernst & Young Management Consulting and as a practice leader for Hewitt Associates. His academic roles have included serving as assistant dean and professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin School of Business and as professor of management at Calvin College in Grand Rapids. In addition to teaching at Hope, he is currently a visiting professor of management and organizations at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
Jackson has received numerous teaching awards as well as recognition in “Business Week’s” review of outstanding faculty in top-25 business programs. His views have been citied in media sources such as “Business Week,” “MBA Jungle” and “The Wall Street Journal.” He published a variety of articles in professional journals and various book chapters, and is completing his first book.
He is active in consulting and executive education in North America, Europe and Asia regarding topics of strategy, structure, leadership, executive team development and organizational effectiveness. He works regularly with public, private and non-profit firms who manage the difficulties of focusing on strategic growth while maintaining values they consider sacrosanct. He is a frequent speaker in leadership development programs, annual officers’ meetings and academic conferences. His clients have included organizations such as AB InBev, Bunge, Emerson, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Herman Miller, Occidental, Southwest Airlines, Texas Instruments, TimeWarner & WellPoint.
Jackson graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a B.A. in 1989, and he completed his M.A. and Ph.D. at Rice University in 1993 and 1998 respectively. He and his wife, Stacey, have five children, Jacob, Jonah, Mallory, Anna and Joshua (a Hope sophomore).
Ver Steeg is a teaching pastor and oversees adult discipleship and the youth ministry staff at Meredith Drive Reformed Church, where she has served since completing her Master of Divinity degree at Western Theological Seminary in 2003. A native of Des Moines, she grew up worshiping and being discipled at Meredith Drive.
Her professional activities include serving on the Classis of Central Iowa Visioning Team and as a writer for the devotional booklet “Words of Hope.” She is also a member of the Hope College Board of Trustees and is on the Leadership Alliance Board at Vermeer Corporation.
Prior to joining Meredith Drive Reformed Church, she served as a chaplain at Hope for three years while pursuing her M.Div. at the seminary.
Ver Steeg is a 1996 graduate of Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, where she majored in religion and communication studies, and is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary. She and her husband, Shane, who is a 1998 Hope graduate, have four sons, Samuel, Will, Owen and Wesley.
In the event of rain, Commencement will be held at the Richard and Helen DeVos Fieldhouse. Admission to Baccalaureate, and to Commencement if indoors, is by ticket only.