Hope College’s Baccalaureate and Commencement for the Class of 2022 are scheduled for Sunday, May 8.
Commencement will take place at 3 p.m. at Ray and Sue Smith Stadium, and Baccalaureate at 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. in Dimnent Memorial Chapel. More than 700 graduating seniors will be participating.
The 9:30 a.m. Baccalaureate ceremony and the Commencement ceremony will both be livestreamed at hope.edu/live and via the Hope College YouTube channel.
Check out all the Commencement events and information
In the event of rain, Commencement will be held at the Richard and Helen DeVos Fieldhouse. Admission to Baccalaureate, and Commencement if indoors, is by ticket only.
The Commencement speaker will be Dr. Marcus Fila, associate professor of management.
The Baccalaureate speaker will be Rev. Paul Boersma, who is the Leonard and Marjorie
Maas Endowed Senior Chaplain.
Fila has been a member of the Hope faculty since 2013. He teaches courses in principles of management, human resource management, management in the British economy, and marketing management, as well as a management senior seminar designed to help equip students to transition to being successful, balanced and accountable professionals. He is also the director of Hope’s leadership minor program.
His primary area of research is the relationship between people and their work in the context of occupational health psychology and, specifically, stress at work. His interest in the topic was initially formed prior to his academic role, during almost a decade of work in executive recruitment and other business development positions in both the U.S. and U.K.
He has written or co-authored multiple articles published in professional journals and book chapters. During the college’s Winter Happening event in 2019, he presented the seminar “Got Work Stress? Creating Healthier and More Productive Workplaces.”
Originally from the United Kingdom, he moved to the United States in 1999. He holds a Diploma in management studies with distinction from Greenwich School of Management (2003); MBA with commendation, in personal development, marketing and strategy from Kingston Business School, (2005); an M.Sc. in industrial/organizational psychology from Ohio University (2013); and a Ph.D. in organizational leadership and analysis from Western Michigan University (2016).
Boersma has been a chaplain at the college since 1994. He will retire at the end of the 2021-22 school year as the longest-serving chaplain in Hope’s history.
He joined the staff during the summer of 1994. His main responsibilities have included supervising the Campus Ministries team, providing pastoral care, preaching and encouraging others in what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.
He was appointed to the college’s Leonard and Marjorie Maas Endowed Chaplaincy in 2001, and delivered the college’s Commencement address in 2005. Prior to coming to Hope, he was pastor of youth and education at Community Reformed Church in Holland, where he had been employed since 1983.
Boersma graduated from Hope in 1982, and holds a Master of Divinity degree from Western Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Melody, who is a 1983 Hope graduate, have three grown children, all of whom are Hope graduates as well: Aaron (2010), Joel (2012) and Emily (2013). His parents, the late Max and Connie (Hinga) Boersma, were also Hope alumni, and established the college’s Hinga-Boersma chapel deanship in 1993.