Exclusive interview: Dr. Krygsman

This past month I had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Krygsman and ask him a few questions about the interview process and his dreams for the work he will be doing here.
Ellens: Congratulations. It’s exciting to have you here. We were wondering about the interview process and how you fit in among the other candidates.  Last time there was a bit of an uproar about Dr. Cooper being chosen over Dr. Botha because it seemed that Redeemer was sticking with the old instead of embracing the new…we were wondering how you see yourself fitting into that spectrum, of course you’re new but…

Krygsman: Inevitably I am a new face because I am new to Redeemer and also, over the next five years, there will be significant changes in Redeemer’s leadership because all of the VPs will be retiring.  At the same time I am deeply committed to what Redeemer’s vision is, what its stance is in terms of biblical holistic Christian higher education and so there won’t be a revolution; but it may be that coming from a different institution with some different experiences that we will make some changes incrementally over time as we get a new administrative team.  So that becomes an opportunity to make adjustments to the structure as needed.  But, having a new face will open the prospects for just a different tone, perhaps, different personalities and that’s inevitable, especially for someone coming from the outside.  Now I do come from a sister institution, and Dordt and Redeemer have many things in common in terms of not only its Christian perspective, but in terms of size and how we seek to serve our students.
E: And so, do you have anything specifically in mind as to changes you’d like to make or things you’d like to add to the atmosphere here?
K: Well, first of all, there are some things already at Redeemer that I think are very strong that I would keep—I would like to see continue, put it that way—and that’s not up to me entirely either, I mean we’re a whole community (and that’s important) and a single person isn’t going to change that.  Things like Redeemer’s strong commitment to holistic Christian higher education; strong commitment to engagement with the community; to its very strong reputation for scholarship, high quality scholarship; its diversity in terms of different Christian denominations. Those are things about Redeemer that I think are great strengths to continue to cultivate. The board developed a strategic plan with a number of what they call great goals, four great goals, and those have to do with, for example, getting better integration or collaboration between student life and development and the academic side of student life: so finding programs and building structured connections to make that collaboration happen so that we see our educational life also growing out of our spiritual life.  For example, as we saw in chapel today—emphasizing education of the whole person…that’s the kind of work that I’ve been heavily involved in at Dordt and those are some emphases that the board has, that Redeemer is trying to develop and that I have some experience to, so it’s a good fit that way.
E: When Dr. Cooper was in office he mentioned that one of his goals had been to develop the international areas of Redeemer’s outlook?
K: That’s another one, global…there’s different ways of thinking about that…Redeemer to my knowledge, and maybe I’m mistaken about this, but to my knowledge it’s pretty much centered in Canada.  That is, most, pretty well all, students are Canadian or some are American, I know that.  It’s programs are largely internal to Canada, so we don’t send a lot of students overseas for a semester abroad.  So when we talk about internationalizing or globalizing the campus, we’re talking about a number of ways to equip our students to live as kingdom servants in what’s now a global community. How do we do that? One of the ways to do that is with new academic programs like international studies or international relations, which I think we need. But there are other ways as well, developing off campus programs or developing ways that our students can participate in semester abroad programs, so that our students have that experience; and then thirdly, seeking opportunities to bring international students to Redeemer to study here. At Dordt, I’m director of the Andreas Centre, which has a pot of funds that is used to enable both students and faculty to engage global culture from a Christian perspective. So I’ve been involved in helping to develop plans and programs for students to go and shoot film in the Philippines, and Kenya, and so on as a part of a journalism project or graphic arts digital media project, to send our faculty to teach at a sister institution in Zambia, Africa.  All those things and those experiences I hope that we can develop at Redeemer as well.  They’re fantastic, they’re life-changing experiences. I teach history of the Muslim world and I’ve been a contact person for one of the study abroad programs that we’re part of at Dordt and I’ve been sending students, you know three or four students, to study for a semester in the Middle East and those are life changing experiences, amazing, and in turn they prepare our students for all kinds of fascinating roles.  So I hope that we can do some of that.
E: What challenges does someone in your position face?
K: Well there’s a fairly wide range and most of the challenges are sort of on-going. They’re constant, so you could hear some of them in Dr. Cooper’s comments this morning.  Those challenges include things like continuing to cultivate constituency support and student enrollment, and trying to broaden Redeemer’s appeal, to get wider support to grow the number of students we have so that we can expand our offerings and programs. So that’s one set of challenges.  Another set of challenges has to do with maintaining close relations with the community—the greater Hamilton community, but also the province of Ontario, the AUCC, both the legislative and university bodies, so that we can continue to remain accredited and grant degrees and the like.  That’s very important and we’ve had some challenges there with members of the larger Canadian community of universities who questioned the possibility of Christian education. So we have work to do there.  And then building an internal community that, amid its diversity of both students and faculty and also supporters, shares a common and a deep Christian vision for higher education and what that’s about. So those are a number of strands, and then, you know, simple things, simple (ha!), budgets, you know, maintaining balanced budgets, working within tight resource constraints.  There’s a number of things like that.
E: Just one final question I guess, coming back to diversity.  Often diversity is a great thing, but there’s often pressure to conform to the diversity or the pluralistic society that we’re in. How do you approach maintaining our otherness but also a world outreach?
K: Yeah, I don’t know if you’re familiar with a book by Griffioen and Mouw…I forget the title of it right now…pluralism…it’s on pluralism anyway and they argue that in the public sphere you need to have pluralism, that is: different people with different convictions need to have a certain amount of space in the public square to make their case and contribute to the public well being.  So in that sense, you have to be an advocate of plurality and pluralism.  We can and we need to take opportunities to learn from each other.  So that’s true about the broader world that redeemer is part of.  It’s also true within Redeemer when we think of different denominations and the gifts that they have to share; but at the same time, as Griffioen and Mouw rightly point out, when it comes to fundamental faith commitments those are cosmic claims that cannot be say, relativistic.  So I think you can, you need and can have pluralism at certain levels and within certain constraints, but at a place like redeemer, we need also to have a common faith commitment and common biblical vision and that’s a challenge—to find where those different levels are—what we share in common and where we have, say, opportunity and need for differences. So.
E: Great. Do you have anything you would like to say or note for the students?
K: Well, just I’m very excited to come back; I’m chomping at the bit to begin my work at Redeemer.  I see all kinds of opportunities for growth and development, good things to do with the community. I’m very excited and pleased about the spirit at Redeemer; it’s a pretty deep faith commitment that is very intentionally cultivated and I think that that is the absolute necessity for Christian education.  So, if you have that, then we can do all kinds of other things.  If you have faith you can move mountains, right? And so I’m just terrifically excited about the possibilities for that.  We’ll grow programs, we’ll struggle, and tussle over budgets and things like that, but there’s a lot of good and there’s a terrific need and opportunity for Christians to, first of all get a Christian education, now, while you’re young—now I remember a speaker came to Dordt College and said “Sort out your perspective and your worldview now ‘cause when you get beyond your college life you won’t have time and that’s when you’ll need it.”  So take your education very seriously, ask those big questions, now, and Redeemer’s the place you can do that.  So I want to encourage students to do that.

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