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Throughout history, painted portraits have been reserved for the wealthy and powerful. In today’s disposable society, selfies can be instantly snapped and posted.

For John Bakker, professor of art and design, socially engaged art can combat both those trends. As an artist, Bakker’s preferred medium is painting portraits of members of different communities. “The act of painting someone’s portrait is demonstrating that they have value and dignity,” he said.

Last fall, Bakker served as artist in residence at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. While there he launched the Galesburg Portrait Project, where he began capturing images of 399 residents on 310 wooden panels. The panels can be stacked into a large arrangement. The project is designed to be reconfigured and moved so it can travel to different parts of Galesburg.

For Galesburg, which was economically hard hit after several factories closed, the project is a way of saying its residents matter, Bakker said.

Tracking down 399 different pictures to represent about 1% of the city’s population was not an easy task. Bakker based his portraits from pictures that people took of themselves, so he needed willing subjects to submit their own photos to someone they didn’t know. He was also determined to find a cross-section of city. Bakker also had to actively seek out veterans, farmers, and one-time workers at Galesburg’s now-shuttered Maytag plant to ensure those groups were included.

Back at Trinity, Bakker is finishing up the last of his panels. He is also planning to print subjects’ names and stories on each of the panels. Eventually, he would like to post individual images online so that those in Galesburg can share and comment on them.

To see the nearly completed project and learn more about Bakker and his work, visit http://www.johnbakker.info/

^{Updated on January 28, 2016}

The dean’s list is Trinity Christian College’s highest academic honor. Only full-time students who have earned a 3.5 grade point average for the semester merit this distinction. Congratulations to the students who have achieved this status in fall 2015:

Eleven Trinity students engaged in research on campus have been accepted to present their work at the prestigious National Conference for Undergraduate Research at the University of North Carolina Asheville on April 7-9.

The students represent the work of seven faculty and four departments. Several are doing a VanderVelde Research Fellowship, one is pursuing Honors work, and others are conducting research for the pure love of it.

“This is an exciting development and a testament to the growing culture of research at Trinity,” said Dr. Clayton Carlson, associate professor of biology. “Our acceptance rate is much higher than the conference average. What an opportunity for our students!

The mission of the Council on Undergraduate Research is to support and promote high-quality undergraduate student-faculty collaborative research and scholarship.

Students invited to present their work are:

• Hannah Dykstra ‘16, Beaver Dam, Wis. (VanderVelde Research Fellow), “Composer. Soviet. Coward. Survivor. (Shostakovich: a Pictorial Study)”
• Derek Frejd ‘16, Lockport, Ill. (VanderVelde Research Fellow) “The Genetic and Morphological Effects of Bisphenol A on Arabidopsis Thaliana”
• Megan Hanafee-Major ‘16, New Richmond, Wis., “Are We Antigone?: Analysis of Gilligan’s Moral Development Theory through Dramatic Texts”
• Valerie Jochems ‘16, Pella, Iowa & Anna Spotts ‘16, Hamilton, Mich. (co-VanderVelde Research Fellows), “Effect of Laminin, Fibronection and Serum on Mesenchymal Stem Cells”
• Lauren Kuipers ‘16, Orland Park, Ill. (VanderVelde Research Fellow), “Assessing Plant Biodiversity at Trinity Christian College”
• Eric Los ‘16, Hudsonville, Mich., “Biodiversity Survey of Navajo Creek Corridor”
• Alyssa Milosz ‘18, Elgin, Ill. & Sarah Roddy ‘18, Waupun, Wis., “Exploring College Students’ Academic Success and the Influence of Identity Factors”
• Josiah Rosario ‘18, Woodridge, Ill. & Loretta Findysz, Worth, Ill., “Do I Belong?: A Qualitative Study of Perceived Fit in Relationship to College Identity, Racial and Ethnic Identity, and Spiritual Identity for Students on a Christian College Campus”

Faculty involved with the conference include:

• Dr. William Boerman-Cornell, associate professor of education
• Dr. Robert A. Boomsma ‘77, professor of biology
• Dr. Clayton Carlson, associate professor of biology
• Dr. Jessica Clevering, associate professor of psychology
• Dr. Abbie Schrotenboer, assistant professor of biology
• Ryan Thompson , associate professor of art and design
• Dr. Kara Wolff, assistant professor of psychology

Congratulations to our students and faculty whose work has been accepted to the conference!

Trinity Christian College has been ranked one of the 2016 Best Colleges in Illinois by Niche. The rankings are based on a blend of statistics and student reviews.

“The Best Colleges ranking provides a comprehensive assessment of total quality of the education and experience provided by the college. This grade takes into account key factors such as the strength of the academic program, the aptitude of professors, the quality of campus amenities, the general character of student life, as well as student reviews in an attempt to measure the overall excellence of the college experience,” Niche says on its website. The analysis is based on records for 1,713 public and private, traditional four-year colleges and universities across the United States.

The latest report follows several other rankings that have highlighted Trinity, including recognition by The Economist, U.S. News & World Report, and MONEY.

Through prayer, song, spoken word, monologues, reflections, gospel music, and interpretive dance, Trinity Christian College celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream in the Ozinga Chapel on Jan. 18.

President Kurt D. Dykstra welcomed the hundreds of people of all ages who took part in the celebration. Dykstra shared one of King’s last prayers before his assassination on April 4, 1968: “God grant that we will be participants in this newness and this magnificent development. If we will but do it, we will bring about a new day of justice and brotherhood and peace. And that day the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy.”

Professor of History Dr. David Brodnax, Sr., reflected on King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. “We often focus on the end, but the beginning is not nearly as well known,” Brodnax said. King began his famous speech with a remembrance of Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, 100 years before King delivered his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. King then discussed the state of affairs in 1963. “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free,” King said then.

Brodnax urged the audience to think about what King would find if he were alive today, where chain gangs have been replaced by school-to-prison pipelines and lynch mobs have been replaced by a mass murderer in a Charleston, S.C., church. Brodnax urged everyone to honor King’s legacy and continue his work.

Along with celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Student Union also recognized Assistant Professor of Psychology and Director of Adult Studies Psychology Program Tiffany R. King for her support.

Anyone who has watched all seven of the Star Wars films knows that the three prequels are “terrible,” Trinity Christian College President Kurt D. Dykstra told those at Chapel on Jan. 13. While the movies are terrible on many levels, the most egregious problem is the failure to convincingly demonstrate how Anakin Skywalker turned from the light side of the Force to the dark side to become Darth Vader—a villain so dastardly, he has been reproduced among the grotesques at the Washington National Cathedral. “It’s not a natural progression,” he told students, faculty, staff, and members of the Trinity community. “They failed to get to the point for two and a half movies, and then rushed in the last movie to make it work.”

According to Dykstra, that’s not a mistake the Psalmist makes in Psalms 1, which describes how the ways of the righteous and the wicked differ. Dykstra encouraged everyone to use the Psalms to guide their prayers. “Read the Psalms, pray the Psalms and make the Psalms your own,” he urged.  “Grab hold of the Psalms and pray them.”

Dykstra also delved in to the Lord’s Prayer, and how the disciples may have reacted when hearing it for the first time. When considering the Lord’s Prayer, many often turn to the slightly longer version that appears in Matthew 6. Dykstra focused instead on the version that appears in Luke 11.

While the Matthew version appears as part of the Sermon on the Mount, Luke’s version follows a request by the disciples to Jesus to teach them to pray. “Luke gives us context,” Dykstra said. Yet the prayer Jesus taught his disciples would have a familiar ring to it—the sections of praise, petition, and thanks closely follow the structure of the Hebrew prayer Shemoneh Esrei, which Jesus’ followers would have heard their entire lives, said Dykstra.

Dykstra closed his meditation by performing a solo version of the Lord’s Prayer. He called it part of his own New Year’s resolution to sing more, and encouraged the Trinity community to expand on what they are, and can be, in 2016.

Chapel is held every Wednesday and Friday at 10am in the Auditorium at Ozinga Chapel.

Despite all our human intelligence, we have a desire for a higher entity. Associate Professor of Art and Design and Department Chair Ryan Thompson is expressing that desire through his piece “Hot Rocks,” which is part a German art gallery exhibit that opens on Jan. 14. The exhibit, “Echo of untouched matter,” is at the Lothringer13 Halle in Munich. “Echo of untouched matter tells of the curious human urge to act, to know, and to create,” according to the institution’s website. “It pursues ideas of friendly and humble co-existence. Two American, two Japanese, and two Munich artists act with a curious, respectful, or puzzled view of our relationships with other and unfamiliar life forms.”

Thompson takes seriously his responsibility as a Christian to promote renewal in work and life, bear witness to God’s grace, and encourage the exploration of belief, knowledge, and the physical world. As he says on his faculty homepage, “As an artist and educator, I continually seek out ways to promote renewal in the world, both in my personal practice and in my interactions with students.”

Thompson has visited the theme of “hot rocks” before. In 2014, he co-authored a book with Phil Orr called “Bad Luck, Hot Rocks: Conscience Letters and Photographs from the Petrified Forest.” The book brings together so-called conscience letters — the correspondences that former visitors to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona send when they return stolen, and notoriously unlucky, rocks. In a review, “Los Angeles Times” book critic David L. Ulin described “Bad Luck, Hot Rocks” as “my favorite sort of book: a collection of detritus, overlooked and long forgotten, that adds up to an unexpected narrative.”

Along with Thompson’s piece, the exhibit includes works by Atsushi Wada, Jason Fulford, Katrin Petroschkat, Shimabuku, and Ulrich Gebert. “Echo of untouched matter” is scheduled to run through March 20. Lothringer13 Halle is an institution for international, contemporary art run by Jörg Koopmann and Dana Weschke and funded by the city of Munich.

For the Trinity Christian College community, 2015 was a year full of learning, growing, serving, and fun student activities.

We welcomed a new president and rejoiced in the beginning of a new era for the College. Students experienced learning outside the classroom throughout the Chicagoland area, some visited the great cathedrals of Europe, and many performed service work. Trinity Christian College was recognized as one of the top 25 regional baccalaureate colleges by U.S. News and World Report. Our Nursing program graduates celebrated an exceptional NCLEX-RN passing rate of 100%. We expanded our academics through new majors in bioinformatics, environmental science, and music production; we also enhanced our athletics by debuting intercollegiate men’s volleyball and women’s golf teams. We cheered proudly as our baseball, men’s golf, women’s volleyball, and women’s soccer teams, as well as individual cross country and track runners, advanced to national championships. Our students organized and played in a charitable dodgeball tournament, participated in a real-life version of Shark Tank, rocked out at the annual Black Light Dance, and did much, much more.

Here are just some of the highlights from 2015.

In its first-ever list of college rankings, The Economist magazine has placed Trinity Christian College among the top 15 colleges in Illinois for value.

Leveraging information from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard website for four-year non-vocational colleges, The Economist created its rankings based on the premise that the “economic value of a university is equal to the gap between how much money its students subsequently earn, and how much they might have made had they studied elsewhere.”

The Economist analyzed the class of 2001’s median income 10 years after graduation. It considered a variety of factors, including gender, race, the size of the college, average SAT scores and the number of students receiving Pell Grants for working-class students.

Based on multiple factors and analysis, The Economist found Trinity Christian College provides one of the best values in Illinois.

When George Edwin Taylor ran for president in 1904, fewer than 2,000 people voted for him. But as the first African American to run for the nation’s highest office, his bid was an historic one–even if it is little remembered. Professor of History Dr. David Brodnax, Sr., recently helped bring Taylor’s story to a wider audience during a discussion with NPR’s Linton Weeks.

Taylor ran for president as the candidate of the National Negro Liberty Party, sometimes known as the National Liberty Party. According to Brodnax, neither of the major parties would have considered nominating an African American candidate at that time. “Taylor, who had first been a Republican and then a Democrat, was the first to run for president because he was the first black politician who (1) no longer cared about what either major party thought of him and (2) was able to find allies among progressive whites who took the incredibly bold step of nominating him,” Brodnax told Weeks.

Yet despite Taylor’s ground-breaking candidacy, Brodnax said his story demonstrates that little has changed since then. “Today, African Americans overwhelmingly vote for a party that has been accused of taking their votes for granted while the other party seems to not at all support issues that matter to them. Most African Americans will not cast ballots for a third party, even when it nominates black candidates; for instance, the Green Party ticket of Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente in 2008, although to be fair in that campaign, black voters had the unprecedented choice of two different parties that had nominated a black person for president.”