The Witness editor sat down with Calvin Troup just days after his inauguration as Geneva’s 20th president to discuss his long history with Geneva and his hopes for the future. For some background on Dr. Troup, you can hear his testimony on the Geneva.edu web site by searching for his Feb. 17, 2016, message, “Learning Christ’s Faithfulness in a Hard Way.”

What are some of your cherished memories of being a student at Geneva?

Dr. Troup: It’s interesting to think about that question in terms of how you would answer it 5 years out and 10 years out. It has been a long time since I was a student. In the classroom, some of my most cherished memories are sitting under the teaching of Dr. Willard McMillan. I also really got to know Dr. David Carson, both in his poli-sci class and then as he helped me prepare for the American Studies program in Washington, D.C. I had directed readings with him for a semester before I went to D.C., and that was really rich—I didn’t understand how rich at the time.

I have a lot of fond memories of humanities. I value them more now after going to graduate school, because I was incredibly well prepared for graduate studies. There are a lot of places that are saying “we need to be more inter-disciplinary,” and we were already learning in a much more rigorous and robust way than is happening in many places through humanities; so I’m really thankful for that.

Of course, I also have a lot of good memories of time in Young Hall with my roommates—from the Bible study that we had together all four years to football and Genevans and late nights putting the Cabinet to bed.

How has your opinion of Geneva changed from when you were a student, to a young adult in the workplace, to a corporator, and now as president?

Dr. Troup: When I was in the American Studies program, even before I was out of college, the professors in that program and directors commented on how much they relied on having Geneva students in the program because of the high level of biblical literacy that they consistently brought to the program. I don’t think we realized we were getting that. We just assumed if you were in a Christian college, that’s the way it was.

When I walked into Washington, D.C., doing work on Capitol Hill and other places, I never once thought, “I wish I would have gone there instead, because I’m missing something.” I was so well prepared. This became particularly obvious in graduate school. The grounding that I had gotten at Geneva really helped me to engage. I had learned how to write. I had a great love for primary texts—which is instrumental in graduate school. I loved the classroom; so when I had to teach, I had great models to rely on of professors who loved the classroom. I had learned how to think from a Christian perspective; so the fact that I was in a secular context was not problematic, because I hadn’t been sheltered during my studies at Geneva. I had been invited to read difficult things, things that were not written by Christians or from a Christian perspective, and then think about them from a Christian worldview.

When I began working in academic institutions, my Geneva experience and education had prepared me for this kind of work too. I valued learning and scholarship and research, and I was prepared to put in the hard work necessary to do them well.

As you walk the campus and set foot in the various buildings, how often do you think about your father, and what thoughts come to mind?

Dr. Troup: That’s a “how many times a day?” question. My father was not in a high-visibility position, but in his work for Geneva (as Dr. Carson identifies in the history of Geneva), he played an instrumental role in the wake of and the adoption of the Foundational Concepts of Christian Education. From the public relations office in which he worked, he helped make significant connections to both the broader Reformed and evangelical communities. In large part, because we had been both in the OPC and were in the RPCES, which joined with the PCA. And with his previous work for Christian Service Brigade with churches all over the country, he had a sense for how to get Geneva connected.

We had visitors on campus from Christ College in Taiwan a couple weeks ago. I’ve been familiar with Christ’s College for a long time because my father worked with the president to get Geneva connected. Many people in our extended family were involved in missions. In many parts of the world, my dad was connected with mission organizations and knew leaders and knew about Christ’s College. The things he did for the college didn’t happen singlehandedly. He didn’t work that way. But there were a lot of places where he was the catalyst for getting Geneva advertised in magazines that extended the reach of the college and attracted people who had never heard of Geneva College, for example. We did many things together on campus—going to sporting events, going to activities. The things he loved about Geneva College are evident all over the place.

Becoming college president wasn’t a career move you sought. What convinced you to accept that call?

Dr. Troup: I was invited to apply for an academic, administrative position at a different institution a few years prior to being considered for the presidency at Geneva. The people at that institution asked why I would want to become an administrator there. My response was that I wasn’t all that interested in higher education administration as a career path. It’s not something I envisioned, and it’s not something you can tell by my record that I’ve prepared for in traditional or typical ways.

My understanding of leadership in the church and for the church is tied to the mission of institutions. That institution had a mission where I thought I might be able to help. I said, “There aren’t probably 10 colleges or universities in the United States, where I would be so closely related to the mission that I’d want to be in a position of leadership. I don’t think about this position first as a position of management or administrative work, but one of leadership. It’s about people, and it’s about an institution that’s made up of people needing to go in a direction to follow the Lord.”

I really love Geneva College; I really believe in the mission of the college and want to see the college grow. I have been working with a general call to Geneva College for many, many years as a trustee and corporator. For this particular role, we didn’t know as we began the process whether the Lord was really calling us or not; but as we moved through the process and worked on issues with the search committee and the boards, the Lord really confirmed that sense of calling. Since I was elected, that sense of calling has deepened. So no matter what happens in a day, I have the sense that right now this is where God wants me to be.

Looking back, what helped prepare you?

Dr. Troup: God used people to equip me to do the work of higher education in scholarship and service. I was equipped in ways that would enable me to work with a faculty and a staff at a school like Geneva. Some of that happened directly through faithful preaching and teaching in church contexts. That is the richest single source of how I think God works in our lives—through His Word being taught, applied, and lived out by people in front of us, showing us how it’s done in generations ahead of us. The church is one of the only remaining intergenerational institutions in society where you can see people a couple generations older than you walking the Christian life well in context. I’ve been blessed by being led by really godly Christian people. I’ve had amazing learning experiences both professionally and academically.

I’ll give you one example. When I was working as a press aid, a lowly staffer, on Capitol Hill, I started to get the sense that I was being called into higher education. This happened through a conversation with someone who was in a Bible study in our home. We were two young men with young families having lunch, and he asked, “Have you ever thought about being a college professor?” I said I had never thought about it. I started to ask other people and they looked at me and said, “Of course you should be a professor!”

We weren’t quite ready to be able to make the move to graduate school. We couldn’t reach financially yet. So I talked to my dad. He said, “You should work for three more years. If you do that, you will be more valuable to every student you teach and every institution in which you serve.”

I went to work for a national trade association and taught leadership communication—I taught how to run boards and how to manage meetings. I learned how to teach adults. And I had to learn how to speak in public to do keynote addresses and things like that. When I went to graduate school, I already knew the basics of how to teach and how to speak and how to do things that really made graduate school a wonderful experience. The Lord provided financially through consulting work during my time in graduate school that I would never have been able to do if I hadn’t had those three years of work.

What are some goals you have set for yourself as president?

Dr. Troup: The president of a college like Geneva needs to understand his role as dealing with people—supporting people, leading people, inspiring people, guiding people and the institution. Students are so important. We have students for such a short amount of time, and there is so much our faculty and staff understand about where students are going and what they’re going to need. Students think, “I need a job.” And of course they need a job, and of course we want them to receive the kind of education that prepares them for a first job; but education is not, at the end of the day, about job training. Education is about training hearts and minds for what we don’t know that’s going to happen in 5 years, in 10 years, in 15, in 20. It is to equip people with a kind of practical knowledge and wisdom in the faith to be able to navigate a changing world and their changing roles.

As a ministry of education, we have to do everything we can to help. Especially with traditional-age students, we help them grow in their hearts and minds as young adults. With our graduate students and adult students, we’re trusting the Lord to do work in them that is also transformative, that helps them become better equipped for the work they are doing, maybe become equipped for work they aspire to do but aren’t yet able to do, to make transitions or to gain greater depth in service within their employment, within their churches and communities, within their households. It’s people work. All the other stuff is supportive of that work, so presence becomes a very important thing. Meeting with people, interacting with people, helping people understand the direction and the mission of the college and how that works out and how they can participate—because the challenges facing higher education are real and we need people to be participating with us.

How have you begun working toward some of those goals?

Dr. Troup: The president’s job has internal dimensions—getting to know faculty and staff, working with them, supporting their work, showing up for things, being available and accessible when I’m here, and encouraging people in their work. I also work with the cabinet to maintain the initiatives we’re working on, move the college forward, and help it grow.

It also has a very strong external dimension. I need to be on the road, and I need to be involved and engaged with alumni and with donors and in other educational contexts. For instance, I’m going to China next month because of an initiative started by interim president Bill Edgar for recruiting students in China who want a Geneva College education. I represent Geneva College in the presence of others who are not on campus.

As president you’re in the center of many constituencies whose goals and needs converge but don’t completely overlap—students, faculty, administrators, alumni, community, boards, denomination. How are you prepared to work through the inevitable tensions?

Dr. Troup: What you just described might easily describe a family—at holiday time. Some people in the family think you ought to get up early, and some think you ought to be able to sleep late. They have different priorities about eating and who is going to travel when. All those dimensions that make family life interesting and memorable. College is not any different.

This is why the central question is, Who are we together? This is why I’ve been putting so much emphasis on the college seal. When I speak with students about the seal and I introduce them to it—freshmen and transfers—we look at the seal together and I say, “How do you become a Geneva College student? You understand and embrace the basic truths and principles of the seal, and then follow them wherever they take you.”

So first of all, we’re for Christ. If you really want to be a Geneva person, you have to be for Christ. You have to be willing to consider being for Christ, if you’re not yet or not yet fully, because that is first and foremost what we’re about. We are also for country, but not in a simplistic patriotic way, but rather consistent with how our Scots heritage understood what Christ and country mean in terms of an order: Christ over country, Christ is the king of all nations. And also country as not being a political arrangement but a gathering of people, which puts us right in the heart of the two great commandments: love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength before Christ; love your neighbor as yourself for country. Do that under the Scriptures. The holy Bible open at the center of the seal means that we conduct everything under the Scriptures. We have many other books we study from many places and many perspectives, but all of them we study under the Scriptures. And we never place ourselves over the Scriptures; we are always under them.

We can have our family quarrels and we can have our intramurals, and we can have discussions even with people across denominations. Within our basic commitments, we can have really meaningful family conversations.

You were on the front lines of a recent, significant revision of the college’s bylaws that strengthened the RPCNA’s bond with its college. Tell us about that.

Dr. Troup: To talk about the process is boring stuff. Here’s why it matters, and why it is a perfect example of the significance of the linkage between the college and the Synod, and therefore the whole church in a very direct way.

First, there is the Supreme Court brief that was submitted in the case in which the college was seeking relief from the Obamacare regulation requiring abortive agents to be provided to employees through the health care plan. That Supreme Court brief quotes directly from the Westminster Confession of Faith, because it is part of our chartered commitment as a college that is connected directly to the RPCNA. Our founding confessional documents are older than the United States Constitution. They provide a denominational anchor in an actual church, and the courts treat churches much differently than they treat independent statements of faith. In addition, it provides a historical anchor to show this is not a conviction where the church or the college has varied. The society and culture have changed around us, but we have had this deep and abiding commitment from the Scriptures for a long time.

Moving forward, there are the sexual-orientation and gender-identity regulations that are being considered at the state level and by the NCAA and by other associations and societies with which the college has relationships. Here too the church’s stand directly becomes the college’s stand and puts us in a very different place from other schools. Some of our sister institutions who are deeply Christian colleges, but are non-denominational or are now independent of denominational roots they once had, have to rely on their own statements of faith and other policy documents; so pressure groups can come and say, “You just generated these in 19-whatever and everything’s under your board of trustees. Why can’t you just get your board of trustees to change them?”

When they pressure us, we can say, first of all, that the college is committed to these principles. Second, the president is committed to these principles. Third, we have two boards, and they’re both wholeheartedly committed to these principles. And they are tied directly to the Synod of the RPCNA, so if we varied in some way we would be corrected, because the church is deeply committed to these principles.

That doesn’t mean that we won’t be persecuted, that doesn’t mean that we might not be sued, that doesn’t mean we’ll inevitably win. But it means that we have a place to stand on Christ that is sure, because it is His church, it is His Word. We’re just trying to be faithful to that.

You’ve been a student and a faculty member at a wide variety of learning institutions. How would you counsel Reformed Presbyterian high school students as they consider their options?

Dr. Troup: Whether to go to college and where to go to college are important questions that should be engaged in reference to your sense of God’s call on your life. That is not necessarily the same as having a 5-year or 10-year career path in mind. You need to be thinking about what God might be preparing you to do. It is important to get counsel and to work directly with your parents—not to tell them what you want, but to ask for their counsel about how to proceed. Get good counsel from people in your church, especially those who are involved in education in various ways. Be thoughtful about talking with other people in your church and in your family whom you trust, who will have good input on how to think about further education, especially in reference to calling.

As the president of Geneva College, here are two specifics. On the one hand, we should never think about attending Geneva College as a loyalty test for Reformed Presbyterians, either for attending here or working here. That is not what Geneva is or what it stands for. I don’t think it’s what the denomination thinks our business is.

On the other hand, I would encourage every Reformed Presbyterian who is thinking about higher education to give Geneva serious consideration and to think about whether God might be calling them to serve here. It helps the college when we have people who want to come to Geneva and who want to be educated here and who have a heart of service to make the college a place where the gospel is advanced and the kingdom of Christ is advanced.

There are some good reasons why someone might not want to or be able to come to Geneva College. They might have a pretty clear calling into an area in which we don’t offer education. For instance, if you want to be an aeronautical engineer, we don’t have that kind of engineering. If you believe you are being called to major in a foreign language we don’t have, you might need to apply elsewhere. We don’t have a nursing program at Geneva College. Some people have attended a few years at Geneva and then transferred into another college context to get a nursing degree.

A second reason is that we counsel people to be careful about debt. We’ve become much more active in trying to provide students with counsel about what kind of debt is prudent and how to minimize debt so that people are not leaving college with incredible burdens. For some people, because Geneva is a private institution, it’s possible that Geneva could be too expensive. If people are concerned about finances and they’d like to be at Geneva, I encourage them to come and visit and think about how that might be managed resourcefully, not by piling on huge amounts of debt but by thinking about ways a number of people have gone through Geneva really well. Sometimes bringing credits in from community colleges or early college can reduce the timetable here, which cuts the cost. There are many ways we can help people, but it won’t work for everyone. Part of the whole calling question is financial capability.

In the end, what I have seen for decades is that Geneva offers something unique. Geneva might not be the only place where this happens, but it is one of the few and it is one of the places where it happens in the clearest sense. When people come to Geneva, the college doesn’t try to change people or fix people. We all work together to try to put people in position for lives to be transformed by Christ. And Christ faithfully does that here. Some come to Geneva and they’re not believers, whether they think they are or not when they get here, but they leave and their testimony is, “I met Christ at Geneva College.” There are many of us—and I would include myself in this—who came to Geneva from good, solid Christian homes who were well positioned as Christian high schoolers, but who came to understand the faith of our fathers as our own and to embrace it fully and to grow in it at Geneva College. It is very difficult for that to happen at many other institutions with the level of intensity that it happens at Geneva.