Archives: News Stories
–By Faith Lorenz ’17
If you never thought that attending an anime convention would be a requirement for an English class, then you haven’t read the syllabus for English 356: Manga and Anime.
On Sept. 23-25, Trinity students from this unique cross-cultural studies (CCS) class trooped out to the Radisson Holiday Star Plaza in Merrillville, Ind., to attend Ramencon 2016, a convention where anime fans gather to share their mutual love for the genre through panels, screenings, and cosplay. With all the gaming, vendors, autographs, artists, and photo ops available, Ramencon is a condensed experience of Japanese visual culture that asks students to stretch their normal modes of thinking.
Dr. Mark Jones, professor of English and a self-proclaimed fan of anime and manga as well as their cons, started this class in 2012 as an addition to the Trinity Honors Program. But interest in the class spread quickly. What began as a first-year writing class is now an upper-level literature class open to all interested students regardless of year or major.
As part of the foundational CCS courses, the goal of the class is getting students to engage with narrative across different cultures and various media, and it seems to be doing just that. “Classroom discussions are always rich and full of insight from students,” said Jones. “Sometimes I find it hard to know when I should start talking again.”
Ramencon won’t be the class’s only expedition. Next on the docket is a trip to the Japanese-American commercial center Mitsuwa Marketplace in Arlington Heights, Ill., where students will immerse themselves in a pocket of Japanese culture with a wide selection of Japanese food, fashion, and clientele. “Part of the responsibility of teaching a course like this is to find ways for students not only to pursue the study of other cultures, but to engage meaningfully with members of other cultures,” said Jones. “That’s one reason why the experience outside the classroom is so important.”
Four Trinity alumni recently published a scientific paper based on work and research they began during their time at the College. Derek Frejd ’16, Kiera Dunnaway ’14, Jennifer Hill ’12, and Jesse Van Maanen ’12, along with Dr. Clay Carlson, associate professor of biology, co-authored “The Genomic and Morphological Effects of Bisphenol A on Arabidopsis thaliana,” which appeared in the journal PLOS One.
According to Carlson, the work was started by Hill and Van Maanen in a Genetics course during the spring of 2012 and then completed by Frejd and Dunnaway, who received Vander Velde Research Scholarships for their work.
The paper explores the effect that environmental toxin bisphenol A (BPA) has on the plant known by its scientific name Arabidopsis thaliana or more common name thale cress. “I came into it primarily as an ecologist, so I didn’t want to end up doing a project that felt very abstract or purely molecular,” said Hill, who was a Founders’ Scholar at Trinity. “Dr. Carlson suggested the beginnings of this study because environmental pollutants affecting plants was something I could get much more excited about.”
Hill and Van Maanen, who is doing his residency at Sanford School for Medicine at the University of South Dakota, designed the parameters of the original project and began growing the plant under different conditions. “We found that BPA was disrupting the plants’ ability to respond to normal hormonal signals, which can hinder their flowering and proper development,” she said. Hill and Van Maanen received results just in time for OPUS, but they could only do a preliminary analysis before graduation.
Frejd and Dunnaway took up the project and conducted more experiments to confirm and expand the original findings. Dunnaway, who is currently attending Veterinary School at Ross University, first presented her work at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research (NCUR) in 2014. Frejd presented his work at the same conference in April 2016.
Carlson’s genetics class ended up being formative for Hill. “Not just because the research resulted in my first scientific publication–although I’m so elated that it did. It was also the first time I was exposed to genetics in a way that made me feel excited and curious,” she said. “I realized that most of the ecological questions I was interested in could be best addressed using genetic techniques.”
That led her to receive a master’s degree in ecological genetics at Western Washington University. Currently, she is working on her Ph.D. at the University of New Hampshire.
Movies are many things—escapist experiences, historical artifacts, business ventures, and artistic expressions. Movies are also prayers, according to Josh Larsen ’96, guest lecturer for the 2016 Freshmen Lecture, which took place Oct. 3 in Ozinga Chapel Auditorium. “What might movies say to God?” Larsen, editor of Think Christian, asked the audience. “Those who are not Christians do pray, although their prayers are different than how Christians pray.”
Using clips from movies as diverse as “Toy Story” and “Godzilla: King of the Monsters!” Larsen outlined categories of prayer that movies can fall into such as lamentation, yearning, joy, and confession. For example, he pointed to many science fiction films like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” as a type of yearning prayer. “Why bother to yearn, if there is no object to yearn to?” he asked.
Before joining Think Christian in 2011, Larsen spent 16 years in the newspaper business and served as a film critic for Chicago-based Sun-Times Media. The co-host of Filmspotting, Larsen’s first book, Movies Are Prayers, is scheduled to be published next spring.
The Freshmen Lecture began with a greeting and prayer from Dr. Karen Dieleman, English department chair.
The annual Freshman Lecture enriches the core experience for freshmen by engaging them in a challenging but enjoyable learning opportunity outside the classroom setting. Though organized by the English department and contextualized in the Composition or Introduction to Literature classroom, the Freshman Lecture aims to be interdisciplinary and perspectival. It offers listeners new avenues of reflection on such topics as cultural engagement, learning, communication, and personhood.
Students. Authors. Thanks to their experiences in Trinity’s English classes, several students and recent alumni have seen their worked developed into a blog, Getting to Know Us: Our Foods, Our Cultures, and a book, Voices of Redemption, that has recently been released in an electronic version.
Getting to Know Us was written in English 103 last fall, according to Dr. Michael Vander Weele ’73, professor of English. The essays, currently available online, feature recipes, reflections, and photos by students.
Getting to Know Us was inspired by Nina Mukerjee Furstena’s Biting through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America’s Heartland. “I liked the idea of a first-semester student having to contact a parent or grandparent for a recipe and realized that writing about diverse foods could also lead us to appreciate diverse cultures,” Vander Weele said.
The students’ first drafts focused on capturing a recipe and an occasion. “It became more difficult, by draft three, to include the cultural aspect of food. The first essay to do so really made us sit up and listen,” he said. “As a class, we suddenly knew that not only would it be possible but also valuable–and interesting. The second step was when I knew that more than half of the class’s essays could bear the weight of public notice and be both important and enjoyable for a larger public. Then the editing process, by both students and me, got serious,” he said.
According to Vander Weele, the essays in the blog and the book went through multiple rounds of edits.
Bethany (Kerr) Eizenga ’11 and Monica Brands ’11, wrote Voices of Redemption. Originally published in 2012, it was recently released as an e-book. The book began as an English internship and evolved into a series of shaped interviews. It tells the personal stories of some of the people served by Roseland Christian Ministries and Roseland Christian Reformed Church in Chicago.
Vander Weele served as the publisher for the books. Graphic designer (and Vander Weele’s son in law) Schuyler Roozeboom ’04 created the cover, along with the publishing company for the book. Vander Weele is now the publisher for the company, Publishing for Community.
The Voices of Redemption eBook is available in several electronic formats. Hard copies are also available at the Bootsma Bookstore Café:
- iBooks Store – for iBooks on iPad, iPhone and Mac
- Kindle Store – for Kindle devices and Kindle app
- Barnes & Noble – for Nook devices and Nook app
Moving up five spots from 2016, Trinity Christian College has been ranked 19th among Regional Colleges—Midwest by U.S. News & World Report in “Best Colleges” for 2017.
The annual report ranked 1,374 colleges and universities across a range of categories, including regional liberal arts colleges and national universities and liberal arts colleges. Across the entire Regional category, 334 colleges are ranked in this year’s survey.
“Trinity Christian College provides a rigorous and relevant education, one that embraces both the liberal arts and professional preparation,” said President Kurt D. Dykstra, J.D. “We are pleased that a Trinity education has been recognized once again by U.S. News & World Report.”
The U.S. News rankings are based on qualitative and quantitative information in several categories, including peer and counselor assessment, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, and alumni giving.
Trinity stands among other institutions in the Regional Colleges category that offer a wide range of degree programs in the liberal arts and in fields such as business, education, and nursing.
Each year the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) recognizes excellence in character-driven intercollegiate athletics programs with the Champions of Character Five-Star Institution award. Trinity was among the 171 NAIA institutions that received the Five-Star designation for 2015-16.
The Five-Star award is a part of the NAIA’s Champions of Character initiative that measures each institution’s commitment to the five core values of character training, conduct in competition, academic focus, character recognition, and character promotion. Institutions also earn points based on exceptional student-athlete grade point averages and by having minimal to no ejections during competition throughout the course of the academic year. Based on the scorecard system, Trinity received the Bronze award.
Throughout the 2015-16 school year Trinity’s athletics program was involved in various activities that promoted the Champions of Character values. Coaches and student-athletes received training in and promoted Christ-like conduct on and off the playing field. Teams participated in outreach activities such as conducting clinics and camps, organizing food drives, promoting cancer awareness events, participating in community service projects, and serving the underprivileged. In addition the teams were academically focused and maintained a high grade point average.
For more information and a complete list of Five-Star institutions visit: www.naia.org.
Carnegie Hall is a world famous music venue, and music major Sierra Hernandez ’17 got the chance to sing there this summer.
“I was exhilarated and excited,” said Hernandez, who went as part of the Allegro Music & Dance Academy, where she is a teacher. Along with her own performance, she also worked with her elementary-school-age music students on their pieces. “My students were so good, and I was so proud of them,” she said.
Hernandez plays a variety of instruments, including saxophone, violin, flute, and guitar. She is also taking trumpet lessons. But for her performance at Carnegie Hall, she sang while accompanied on piano and violin by fellow Allegro instructors Victoria Giachetto and Thomas Milschewski. Hernandez wrote the music for the piece, which was based on a poem by Michael McClintock, who gave Hernandez permission to use his work.
It took more than a year of preparations to get ready for both Carnegie Hall performances. That included working on her own piece, and getting her students prepared for theirs. Fifty students from Allegro, ranging in age from kindergarten through high school, participated in the public concerts on June 27.
Hernandez said she initially didn’t consider Trinity as a college choice. “I thought I wanted a big state school. But when I toured those, it was terrifying!” she said. “But when I visited Trinity, it felt fun and secure.”
For the second cohort in a row, 100% of Trinity’s graduating students from our Master of Arts in Special Education Learning Behavior Specialist II (LBS II) program have passed the Behavior Intervention Specialist Exam. By passing the exam, each student’s teaching license will include the Behavior Intervention Specialist Endorsement.
“This is Trinity’s second cohort to take the exam, and it’s the second time that all our students have passed it,” said Professor Sara Baille, assistant professor of special education. “We are proud of all our students for this remarkable achievement.”
Trinity’s Master of Arts in Special Education program was launched in fall 2014, and is the only special education master’s degree program in Illinois to combine the LBS II Behavior Intervention Specialist endorsement with the ability to take the Board Certified Behavior Analyst Examination (BCBA) after graduation.
For many people, work and studies are often characterized with a sense of burden. But there can be a spirit of joyfulness around our work, as Professor of the Year John S. Sebestyen, Ph.D., told those at Trinity’s 58th Annual Convocation. “What if we didn’t define work as the opposite of play?” he asked.
Wednesday’s convocation took place on the first day of classes for the 2016-17 academic year, welcoming back students, faculty, and staff with a worshipful beginning.
Sebestyen quoted James 3, which urges the wise and understanding to show works by their good lives. Sebestyen suggested three ways to work wisely:
1) Listening
2) Understanding
3) Acting
“There are plenty of opportunities to put these things into place,” he said.
The convocation began with the faculty procession, and Trinity President Kurt D. Dykstra, J.D., provided the welcome. Molly Hofman ’18, campus ministry prayer leader, offered the pray of invocation, and Craig Mattson, Ph.D., professor of communication arts, and Roberto Josiah Rosario ’18, led the litany.
Provost Aaron Kuecker, Ph.D., Dean of Students Mark Hanna, and Student Association President Jordan Giglia ’17, gave the prayers of thanksgiving and procession.
Rev. Willis Van Groningen, Ph.D., Trinity’s chaplain, offered the closing remarks and benediction as the Trinity community embarked on the new semester.
Kate Meyrick ‘17 is a double major in English and music, and she recently combined her interests in an article posted on Think Christian titled “Millennials, Worship, and Hillsong: Let Hope Rise.”
The article explores different styles of worship, and how people of different ages react to those styles. “In my experience, many middle-aged congregants and pastors feel the need for lights-and-fog worship, while many millennials are less enthused about it,” Meyrick wrote.
According to Meyrick, her inspiration for the article began with her transition from leading worship within the Trinity community to leading worship in local congregations. “The atmosphere of worship in church congregations is a lot different than that of the college, and exploring those nuances has been wonderfully challenging–and sometimes frustrating,” she said. “It has really put me in the headspace I need to be in as the student assistant in the Chaplain’s office and Campus Ministries Leader, so I hope that it is encouraging to leaders like me of all ages!”
Over the summer, Meyrick interned with Think Christian, part of Palos Heights, Ill.-based ReFrame Media, where she learned copy editing and publishing skills. She credited Think Christian editor Josh Larsen ‘96, with helping her publish the article on Hillsong, as well as an article on Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of “Beauty and the Beast.”
Along with her studies and work in Trinity’s Chaplain’s Office, Meyrick maintains a blog, ”Further Up, Further In.” The blog name comes from a quote by the character Reepicheep in C.S. Lewis’ ”The Chronicles of Narnia.” “He says it when the kings and queens of Narnia arrive at the gates of Aslan’s Country, urging them to keep moving forward to claim their inheritance at the Garden,” she said. “For me, it reminds me of my journey as a Christian and to constantly keep my focus on God’s call in my life–to glorify him in everything I do!”