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At the annual ceremony on Saturday, December 13, 2014, the Trinity community celebrated the commencement of 84 baccalaureate, Adult Studies, and graduate students.
The Counseling Psychology Graduate Studies program recognized its first graduating class with eight students receiving their master of arts degrees.
“I have long imagined and prayed for this day, and I am so very proud of each of these eight students, their professors, administrators, and staff who took this vision and made it a reality,” said Dr. Michael DeVries ’74, long-time Trinity professor and director of the Counseling Psychology graduate program in his Commencement address. “This is a great moment in Trinity’s history and a highlight of my career as a Trinity professor.”
Families and friends of all the graduates gathered in the Ozinga Chapel Auditorium to witness the presentation of the diplomas. The invocation was delivered by Rick Riddering, director of Adult Studies Business.
The song of response was sung by the Gospel Choir with solos performed by Ciara Deal and Elizabeth Jones, accompanied by Tre Davis and Otis Bowden.
The Commencement litany was led by Bonnie Rauch ’14, an Adult Studies Business graduate.
Alumni greetings were offered by Bill DeRuiter ’09, director of alumni relations, and the benediction was given by Rev. Willis Van Groningen, Ph. D.
Don’t Leave Trinity without Your Imagination
Commencement, December 15, 2014
Dr. Michael DeVries ’74
Trinity Christian College
Thank you Provost Robbert for that gracious introduction. Board of Trustees, President Rudenga, Colleagues, Family and Friends, I am honored to stand before you today at this Commencement Ceremony. And to the students graduating today I say–Congratulations on your achievement! You have run the race, you have finished the course. Praise God!
Graduation is always a special time. I am grateful I am able to share this wonderful celebration with you. I am especially thankful for the opportunity to see a dream come true—the first class of graduate students in the Counseling Psychology program will be awarded master’s degrees here today. Congratulations to this great group of students at this historic moment. I have long imagined and prayed for this day, and I am so very proud of each of these eight students, their professors, administrators, and staff who took this vision and made it a reality. This is a great moment in Trinity’s history and a highlight of my career as a Trinity professor.
On a lighter note. I am also thrilled along with others here today to have one time this semester I can dress up in academic garb like Pastor Bill does every day here at Trinity. I have not noticed others picking up the fashion, but I applaud the effort to raise awareness of our academic identity. Right on Pastor Bill!
Before I share with you a few remarks this morning, I want to be mindful of the importance of keeping my speech short. In all my years attending Commencement ceremonies I have yet to hear anyone say I wish the Commencement speaker had gone on longer. But it is important to begin with a little background of my time here at Trinity. I will skip over the first 25 years of my life, eventful as they were, and start with the year I first began my teaching career at Trinity. It was 1977, and each year was something special, so let’s take the time to review year by year up to the present. Let’s see, after 1977 there was 1978. Oh, that was a great year. And then 1979 came along and 1980. Wow this may go on for a while. Reviewing my 38 years ago may take longer than one of those three or four-hour Adult Studies classes. Well, just summarizing then…
It has been a long strange and wonderful journey these last 38 years and four years as a student. So much has changed at Trinity. I have met and worked with so many wonderful colleagues and students. I have grown up here, taught much, learned much and really loved the journey. There have been great joys but also a few tragedies and heartaches as well. Like a long-term marriage (which I am also blessed with), my love for Trinity has evolved and deepened through the good times, the struggles, and the successes. But this day is really about looking forward with hope and vision for the future-your future as graduates, beginning your journey into greater participation in our society and greater responsibility. With that in mind, I want to make just a few remarks on a theme I hope you will find inspiring as you look back and as you look ahead toward your future.
To set the stage I do want to tell you one Lake Wobegon-like story of a Trinity long ago—unlike Garrison Keillor’s stories this one actually happened. The events of this story took place before 1977 to when I was a student here at Trinity in the early 70s. Back in the early seventies Trinity was caught in a financial squeeze and a philosophical crisis. Enrollment was down, inflation was rampant, money was scarce and students and faculty were uncertain about the “direction” the college should take as a Christian institution of higher learning. There was considerable tension between administration, faculty and students. Being president of Trinity has never been an easy job, but it has probably never been more difficult than during that time.
Needless to say there were strong opinions and strong personalities on campus during this time. We were a much smaller community, and students as well as faculty were often frustrated by the gap between their expectations and the reality of this fragile flower of a liberal arts college. Back then, it was a college custom at the beginning of the academic year to have a campus-wide picnic. It was a casual affair, an opportunity to mix and mingle held up on the hill above the creek behind what is now Tibstra Hall. Soon after the picnic began, the president of the college arrived in his best suit, looking stiff and out of place in the crowd who were dressed in flannels and jeans. At some point during the festivities, the president wandered a little too close to the creek. Maybe you can guess what happened next. As the president turned his back, a swarm of male students snuck up behind him, picked him up by his limbs and proceeded to throw him into the creek, polished suit and all. I will never forget the look of shock on his face as he sunk into the shallow and muddy waters of the creek. The crowd turned to the source of the ruckus and roared its approval. The president was not pleased, in fact he was downright angry as he climbed dripping wet out of the creek looking like drenched cat. He stormed off. Unfortunately, his inability to take the prank in good humor and laugh at himself did not endear him with the students and it was not long after he left the college.
Now we are in the process of looking for a new President here at Trinity, but something tells me the Search Committee will not share this story as they interview potential candidates for the position of Trinity’s next president.
So why tell this story? As a warning to future presidents not to go near the creek dressed in your best suit and tie? Not really, but the story may show something I hope, graduates, you will take with you. When you leave Trinity with your degree, remember to take your imagination with you. It took imagination for students to seize the moment and execute a symbolic action that revealed the character of the president and his staid and aloof relationship to the college community. Who wears a suit and a tie to a picnic anyway? Now graduating students you may not have done anything quite so extreme as throw your president into the creek, but I hope you have experienced the power of imagination here at Trinity. Let me share with you why imagination and education are so closely linked and so vitally important for the world we live in today.
What is imagination? Simply put, imagination is our capacity to link perceptions and thoughts in meaningful ways. Imagination is productive not merely fanciful. Images are the outcomes of that capacity–some of which are purely psychological as in dreams, and others take on material form as in symbols or actions. There is much talk today in and out of Christian academic circles about imagination, symbols and images. One can turn to philosopher Charles Taylor and his concept of the social imaginary. Christian philosopher, Jamie Smith, speaks of Imagining the Kingdom of God. Walter Brueggemann, Reformed theologian, has highlighted the value of a “prophetic imagination”.
All of these thinkers regard imagination as central to our humanity and to our vocation as followers of Christ. Images gather and compress meanings in ways that extended discourse, sermons, lectures, and the like seem to miss. Today we find ourselves awash in a world of information, but it is images that capture the meaning of our lives. We rely on images when propositional notions of truth often described in terms of principles, rules and procedures fail us. As Jamie Smith has pointed out, the formative power of images shapes how we think and act pre-intellectually, pre-rationally. Images keep us close to the emotional and spiritual heart of things. You will forget much soon after leaving Trinity, but your education at Trinity has been successful if you have been deeply formed by a Christian imagination, expressed in foundational stories, legends and images taken from Scripture, the history of the church and the lives of the saints.
We here at Trinity, in the Protestant wing of Christianity, have been suspicious of visual images of our faith, but once in a while we get it right. Stop and look carefully perhaps for the last time at the stained glass images in this chapel. They tell the story of a world and its creatures, revealed in the images of Creation, Fall, Redemption and New Creation. Don’t leave Trinity without inscribing these images within your heart. Furthermore, keep in your memory the images of professors who go with you as a cloud of witnesses inspiring and guiding you. Hang onto to the vision of a faith that can move mountains of despair, injustice and corruption. Cling to the image of a servant Christ who invites you to be co-workers with him–busy forming and re-forming this world until he comes again.
Finally, let me charge you to go forth today from Trinity and imagine a world where all children have enough to eat, imagine a world in which unarmed black men need not fear white policemen, imagine a world where gay, bisexual and transgendered persons feel loved and accepted in our churches and schools, imagine a world in which women can walk the streets alone without fear of assault, imagine a world where drones deliver mail and not missiles, imagine a world where the gifts of women and girls flower into leadership roles in the church and state, imagine a world where every prisoner, terrorist or not, is treated with human dignity, imagine a world in which the old and the sick can die in peace, imagine a world in which workers make a liveable wage, imagine a world where every pregnancy is celebrated and every child loved, and finally imagine a world without concussions due to violence of football. I had to throw that in there. Sorry football fans.
Graduates–take the images of God the Father, the risen Christ your Redeemer and the Holy Spirit with you and imagine a new heaven and new earth promised to us by a God who cares for this very earth and its starry firmament. On this day you deserve to rejoice at what you have accomplished. You have earned your diploma, but I say to you new graduates: don’t leave Trinity without your imagination. Go, imagine and dream. And may all your dreams of Shalom come true.
Thank you and God bless.
The primary focus of Scott Vanderzee’s internship in the financial reporting department at Jackson National Asset Management in Chicago was helping his group produce the annual report for Jackson’s 100+ funds. Several of Vanderzee’s classmates interned for the company, which offers this benefit to students through a healthy internship partnership with the College.
Shortly after his internship, Vanderzee, a 2012 graduate of the accounting program, was offered a position as a corporate accountant in the corporate finance department.
Each month, he helps close the books for the company and prepares financial reports. He also assists with preparing expense information for the funds’ prospectus and the annual budget. Other tasks include managing cash accounts, processing wire transfers, and accounts payable. Preparing reports for quarterly board meetings and serving on fund launch teams are also areas of involvement.
“My job has a lot of variety, which is one of the reasons I enjoy it so much,” said Vanderzee.
After three-and-half years in the army and combat in Iraq, Scott Meves ’15 of Arlington Heights, Illinois, could no longer view his future through the sight of a .50 caliber machine gun. He finished his service in the Army in 2008, realizing he was not meant for a military career and facing difficult times of adjustment, including the decision about what to do next with this life
Hoping for a smoother transition from active service into a career at home, Meves pursued an education in fire science and some training as an emergency medical technician. He first became aware of Trinity because his wife Carolyn works at nearby Elim Christian Services. Attracted by the location and the College’s Christian perspective, Meves decided to transfer into Trinity’s nursing program.
“Serving in the infantry put me in violent situations. That kind of work isn’t fulfilling,” Meves said. “But in nursing, I can choose to help.”
Meves has done clinicals at various area hospitals including Ingalls and Hope, where he worked in the pediatric unit along with fellow nursing student Michael Ippel ’15. He also works as a tech in the ER at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and plans to pursue a career as an emergency room nurse.
“I feel like God worked it out right,” said Meves.
Meves is attending Trinity, a 2015 Military Friendly School, through the Yellow Ribbon program, which provides financial assistance to veterans. He has also met with fellow students who have served in the armed forces to participate in initial discussions about starting a veteran’s group on campus.
Owned and operated by the Chicago Bulls and White Sox, the Bulls/Sox Academy is a state-of-the-art training facility. It attracts young athletes who desire advanced professional instruction. Assistant Marketing Manager Sara Connolly ’11, a graduate of Trinity’s exercise science program, performs all the digital marketing duties. They include online advertising, website/social media updates and e-blasts. She also writes and distributes press releases to drive media coverage, and attends community outreach events to create brand awareness throughout the Chicagoland area.
Internship to career: “I was offered internships at three different companies, but I knew right away my first choice was the academy. Since the job market leaves a lot to be desired, I knew having a competitive edge was critical to my success after college, so I took my internship very seriously and considered it a great opportunity. I worked hard at building a reputation that would help me advance within the company. It’s important to realize that success does not stop once you get the job. It is a continuous journey. We should always strive for excellence, regardless of which career we choose.”
Prepared to serve youth: “My Trinity educationgrounded me intellectually and spiritually. It was very instrumental in preparing me to serve young athletes in an atmosphere that I love. I feel blessed to be able to apply the knowledge I gained in my major, while following Christ’s calling to assist others. I also credit my years at Trinity and Shari Jurgens ’92, assistant professor of physical education, with teaching me the art of multi-tasking.”
Kailyn Baum ’11 of Hudsonville, Michigan, has taken advantage of Trinity’s proximity to Chicago this semester by working as an intern with The Chicago Lighthouse for People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired.
The Lighthouse is a prominent non-profit organization that, for more than 100 years, has been providing services and programming opportunities for blind or visually impaired people. Baum became connected to the Lighthouse through Professor of History Dr. Robert Rice, a member of the Lighthouse.
At the start of her internship, Baum’s efforts were focused on the Lighthouse’s September 24-25 Flair Fashion Show and Sale, one of the organization’s biggest annual fundraising events.
“Working with the Flair event was really rewarding,” said Baum. “I was meeting new people every day, either those who worked on the Flair committee, or people who I volunteered with during the event. I met individuals with lives very different from my own, and getting to know them was an exciting experience.”
Recently, Baum put her English major to work, writing and distributing press releases highlighting 49 students who are legally blind or visually impaired or have multi-disabilities and who have been granted scholarships for higher education through the Lighthouse.
“My English major has helped me prepare for this internship through the writing I’ve done at Trinity,” she said.
Baum said responses she receives from the media encourage her in her work.
“Not only are press release pitches creating interest in the various outlets, but they add to the Lighthouse’s network,” she said. “This also means that the scholarship recipients are getting much-deserved recognition from their communities for their hard work and achievements, regardless of their disabilities.”
In all of her work with the Lighthouse, Baum says that her experience so far has prompted her to think differently about her future.
“I never thought I would be working in event planning, but that is essentially what I’ve been doing at the Lighthouse, and I really enjoy it,” she said. “I can see myself being a part of similar processes, conceptualizing and planning events where I can learn new skills while benefitting others in my community.”
Jocelyn (Black) Morris ’05 said that the liberal arts education at Trinity provided the fertile learning environment for a student with myriad interests. And through a switch in majors, varied internship experiences, and eventual career changes, Morris said she continued to “pull” from what she learned in her Trinity courses, philosophy, psychology, and sociology core courses.
Her internship experiences–the first as a public relations intern at Chicago’s Mayor’s Office of Special Events and the second as a stringer in Washington, D.C. for the SouthtownStar–gave Morris the “learn on the job” experience her communication arts professor stressed.
Morris graduated with “a very impressive portfolio,” which included an article in the SouthtownStar about a local resident who participated in President Ronald Reagan’s funeral ceremony, an event that occurred while Morris was interning in D.C.
Soon after graduating Trinity, Morris continued her communications studies at Medill School of Journalism—Northwestern University, continuing to work in media and in government. Morris, whose experience ranges from public relations to policy research, manages a team of 15 staff at the Social Security Administration in Chicago, where she has been employed since 2009.
Junior Fred Walls said it is definitely a “God thing.” Walls, a marketing major and communication arts minor, is not only thankful for God’s obvious hand in opening the door to attending Trinity but to a new internship opportunity on campus.
Walls serves in the newly established internship role of the Chicago visit coordinator for the admissions department’s Destination Trinity visit day. The trip to Chicago is one of the highlights for visiting students, even those who are familiar with the city. Walls is exploring more options for ways to enjoy the field trip downtown, whether by maximizing Navy Pier attractions or connecting with alumni who live and work in the city.
Walls realizes the importance of campus visits for prospective students. But a visit isn’t the only deciding factor in choosing a college, and as a high school senior, his visit to Trinity wasn’t as motivating as his father’s belief in the College’s Christian environment.
“As a high school senior, my relationship with God wasn’t where it is now,” said Walls. “My dad said he felt Trinity had something for me. I was raised in church, but my faith was transformed here.”
Although he experiences the usual peaks and valleys, Walls said he is thankful to be surrounded by people his age who are excited about Christ. In addition to growing in his faith, Walls said he has had opportunities to “grow up,” including his time as a Resident Assistant. He believes the interpersonal skills he learned as an RA are essential in his internship, and he plans to draw on those skills in order to create an even more personal experience for visiting students.
One of the words most synonymous with Chicago is “Bulls,” as in one of the greatest teams in NBA history.
Working for the franchise to help ensure that the United Center is sold out for every home game is alumnus Brandon Wright ’01, Manager of Group Ticket Sales. Wright focuses his efforts on groups of 100 or more, working with Fortune 500 companies, high schools and colleges, dance groups, churches and non-profit organizations, and Special Olympics teams. His goal is to help the team keep one of its stellar records, although not one as well-known as its record of 72 wins in a single season: #1 in NBA home attendance.
Wright, a sports junkie, born and raised in Chicago, majored in communication arts and minored in business at Trinity while also playing baseball all four years of college. Last year, he welcomed students from Professor Kyle Harkema’s business marketing class.
Talking to students is something Wright enjoys, recalling how his own Trinity education proved to be pivotal in his success. “The courses I took at Trinity were invaluable. They not only prepared me for what I do in my role at the Bulls today, but also confirmed that this was the career path I wanted to take,” said Wright.
He said former Trinity professor David Ribbens played an integral role in connecting him with a summer internship with the Chicago Blackhawks. After his graduation in 2001, Wright then interned with the Bulls, an opportunity that led to his current position.
Wright said he was being considered for full-time employment along with other college graduates, many of whom attended schools in the Big Ten and had to prove himself to the organization. Wright got the job.
“It made me proud knowing that you don’t have to graduate from the biggest school in order to work in this industry, and I know I wouldn’t be where I am today without the education and experiences I had at Trinity.”
The College is pleased to announce the publication of the new book Bad Luck, Hot Rocks by Ryan Thompson, assistant professor of art and design, and the wonderful review of the book in the Los Angeles Times.
Thompson’s book, co-authored by Phil Orr, is a collection of photos of petrified “rocks” from the Petrified Forest in the Painted Desert of Northeast Arizona, and facsimiles of some of the hundreds of “conscience letters” people have left over the years after returning the pieces of wood they had taken, a common practice but prohibited under national park regulations.
Read a short introduction to the book.
Ryan explained that due to the unknown provenance of the pieces of returned petrified wood, they can’t be scattered back in the park since doing so would spoil those sites for research purposes.
“They are instead added to the park’s ‘conscience pile,’ which sits alongside a private gravel service road,” explained Thompson, who recently shared more about the process of writing the book.
Where did the idea for the book originate?
“I first encountered the ‘conscience letters’ on a research trip in Arizona during the summer of 2011. There was a small display of the letters at the visitors’ center and I was immediately taken by the letters because of their humor, heartbreak, and humility. The content dovetailed nicely with some of my other research interests, and I knew that I wanted to work with the archive and the returned rocks in some capacity.
“The following summer I returned to the park with my good friend and collaborator, Phil Orr, to work with the conscience letter collection and to photograph some of the returned rocks from the park’s ‘conscience pile.’ The book features facsimiles of letters, photos of returned rocks, and an interview with the park’s museum curator, Matthew Smith.”
Do you have a favorite letter, and if so, why?
“I really like the ‘sad face’ letter. The way the circles are traced and the carefulness with which the tears are drawn gets me every time.
I also really like the letter that reads, ‘They are beautiful, but I can’t enjoy them—they weigh like a ton of bricks on my conscience. Sorry.’ It’s beautifully concise and poetic.
Explain the “Department of Natural History.”
“When I was in graduate school, one of my professors mentioned that my work was like a natural history museum—in the sense that I seemed interested in re-presenting information in new and aesthetic ways. Soon after that conversation, I bought the domain name for my portfolio website: departmentofnaturalhistory.com.
“Since then, the Department of Natural History moniker has been a filter through which all my work passes. For better or worse, my research interests take me in lots of different directions (like a crow living in a chrome-plated world) and the ‘Department’ helps me make decisions about how and where I should spend my time and energy in the studio. It’s also a way of branding (for lack of a better word) my studio practice so gallerists, curators, and publishers have a framework with which to understand what I do.”
This semester, Dr. Mike Vander Weele ’73, professor of English, approached colleague Dr. Rick Hamilton, professor of business, with an idea that would encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration and allow students to put their classroom experience into practice in a professional setting.
Vander Weele planned to teach a “writing for non-profits” section in his Advanced Writing course and enlisted the support of Hamilton, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career to non-profits.
Hamilton suggested a collaboration between the students in the writing course and students in his Organizational Consulting course to work with the “client,” Chicago Semester, in improving their online communication and marketing efforts, especially important during the program’s 40th anniversary year.
The Advanced Writing students worked as writing consultants for one of the Organizational Consulting business teams. The students worked together to consider how to best represent the client’s history and legacy through shaped interviews and to develop stories that would fit Chicago Semester’s communication needs.
“It is a wonderful experiment in process,” Hamilton said, adding that the departments will apply what is learned from the project to future endeavors.
Vander Weele agrees that cross-disciplinary collaborations help students to experience lessons they can carry into the future.
“This fits nicely with my sense of what the English department can do to help non-profits get their stories out while also making rich writing experiences available to our students,” Vander Weele said.
Both English and business students found it to be a rich learning experience.
Business student and team leader Adam Suwyn ’15 of Ada, Michigan, saw partnering with English students as a way to expand the scope of what his team could do for its client, Chicago Semester.
“The biggest thing [Advanced Writing students] bring is a unique and fresh perspective to our work,” Suwyn said. “Our group has been accounting and finance focused, so the writers helped us to step back and see the organization from a very relational perspective.”
Advanced Writing student Kayla VanWyk ’16 of Pella, Iowa, served as consultant to Suwyn’s team and appreciated the opportunity to understand how her skills could be used in business.
“It’s great to see how work as a writer can translate into the business world,” VanWyk said.
Other Collaborations
With the assistance of Tabitha Matthews, coordinator for Community Services and Pre-College Programs, Advanced Writing students also worked with Faith and Action, a non-profit that believes in impacting communities through demonstrating God’s love in practical ways. The class wrote shaped interviews to enhance the story of the organization through its website.
Vander Weele also reached out to Trinity’s marketing and communications office. A staff member answered students’ questions about choosing people to interview, conducting interviews, and writing content, as well as the time involved in creating a major publication, from first contact through print.
The business department has also pursued collaborative opportunities with other academic departments, such as computer science, art and design, and church and ministry leadership.