The Van Lunen Center

In Spring of 2006 The Van Lunen Foundation approached us with a quandry: they supported Christian Schools through large (often seven figure) grants but increasingly they were questioning the efficacy of these investments. Criterion helped the foundation identify a key aspect of the problem, the overall gap in management skills of Christian school leadership. We worked with them over the next twelve months to launch an initiative to dramatically scale the management skills and talents in this sector. 

Our previous experience recruiting a head of school for Lexington Christian Academy validated the challenge educators selected to head Christian schools, who typically have a track record of extraordinary academic leadership, find in management.  The network of school leaders we tapped for that search quickly rallied to the idea of a training model other than "trial and error" or "on-the-job training".  Inviting them into the process, we rapidly designed a fellowship program, The Van Lunen Center, and identified respected charismatic faculty.  This group of advocates, in turn, promoted the idea widely among relevant school associations, turning out a strong application pool for the first class in 2007.

2008 Applicant info: http://www.calvin.edu/vanlunen/docs/2008ApplicantInfo.pdf
2008 Application: http://www.calvin.edu/vanlunen/docs/2008Application.pdf