Noah Toly

Noah Toly

Degree: 2006, M.A. and Ph.D.

Job Title: Provost, Calvin University

​Dr. Noah Toly (Ph.D. ’06, M.A. ’05) is Provost at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He joined the Calvin administration in the summer of 2021, after fifteen years on the faculty at Wheaton College (IL), where was also founder and Executive Director of the Center for Urban Engagement, founder and director of the Aequitas Program, and chair of Urban Studies.

Toly has published numerous articles and books on cities, urban life, and the environment and has given invited lectures at colleges and universities and for municipal administrations, public officials, and industry groups. His work has appeared in Books & Culture, Capital Commentary, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Comment, Next City, The Hedgehog Review, Quartz, and Sightings among other publications.

In 2011, Toly was named an Emerging Leader by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, where he later served as Senior Fellow for Global Cities and Non-Resident Senior Fellow for Global Cities. For seven years, he taught on global cities in a graduate program for mid-career professionals at the Free University of Berlin’s Center for Global Politics. In 2012-2013, he was appointed as Senior Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion. In 2015, he was the first recipient of the Emerging Public Intellectual award given by a coalition of North American think tanks in collaboration with the Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University College. And in 2020, he was appointed as Visiting Scholar at Duke Divinity School.

Toly has served on the Steering Committee of the Thriving Cities Project, the advisory board for Together Chicago, the Interfaith Working Group on Religion & Environment at the Spertus Center for Jewish Learning & Leadership, and the boards of directors for the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies, the Evangelical Environmental Network, and Exodus World Service. His education at the Biden School, including his work at the Center for Community Research and Service and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, helped equip him for a career of scholarship and service that engages a broader public.​