News from Hope College, Author at News from Hope College

Window to Hope’s History: Off-Track Herringbone

For everything there is a season, and while it’s easy to grouse about winter when the days grow short and the roads slick, the earth’s slumber is a crucial part of the cycle that includes gentle summer days and rich harvests. It’s also not without its own potential, as these students (likely in the 1980s)… Continue Reading →

A Legacy Reflected in Lives Touched

Treasured mentors, beloved friends and colleagues, dedicated to students, the seven current and retired faculty and staff remembered here together reached thousands across a third of the college’s history. Only a portion of each person’s life is shared here.More about all seven is available online. Dr. Jonathan Hagood, who was associate dean for teaching and… Continue Reading →

Closing Look: Photo Op

As Hope celebrated the Advent season in 2017, students enjoyed a visit from St. Nicholas, the fourth-century bishop who was the historical antecedent of Santa Claus. President Dennis Voskuil personified the venerated saint for the occasion, adding a colorful, memorable and appreciated touch to the festive gathering. Merry Christmas! Continue Reading →

What drew me to social psychology

“Psychology was the most interesting subject I studied in college, even though I had only one course in my first three years. I just thought, What more interesting subject could there be than human beings? Faith is part of my identity, and therefore it is natural for me to ask how religious ideas about human… Continue Reading →

Where Early Modern British Lit Crosses Paths with Asian Studies

“After college, I taught English in Taiwan, and years later I had the opportunity to teach in the Hope College–Meiji Gakuin University faculty exchange program in Japan. Those experiences ignited my interest in intercultural relationships. I love teaching Shakespeare, especially with a focus on Shakespeare’s view of how society imagines outsiders. Take a play like… Continue Reading →

Cultivating Purpose in Scholarly Work

Relating compassionately to students and teaching them effectively: Those are easy to recognize as meaningful expressions of a college professor’s personal faith. It can be trickier, though, to find purpose and value in one’s research. Hope College’s Continuum Scholars Faculty Development Program invites young faculty into conversations about how to integrate their vocation and their… Continue Reading →

How the Watts May Term expands our future teachers’ vision

“The Watts Learning Center in Los Angeles includes elementary and middle school charter schools. Every May, we immerse Hope students in working with children there in a culturally diverse urban setting. The first year was 2013. We’ve taken anywhere from seven to 11 students. Some of the students have very little experience with diversity, but… Continue Reading →

Standout Student-Faculty Research

How does a swimmer’s degree of balance outside the pool correlate to faster race times in backstroke and freestyle? When copper or cobalt is added to a nickel-based Prussian blue analogue film, what happens to its ability to store charge? What do In-Group/Out-Group theory and analysis of speeches reveal about whether both sides in the… Continue Reading →

The Allure of Pure Research in Nuclear Physics

“I like the mathematical aspects of physics. How circuits work. Control theory. Understanding how they put music onto a digital disc. I know the mathematics behind that. That’s cool math. I also like the big questions. How did we get the elements that we see in the universe? Why does 26O behave the way it… Continue Reading →

A Crossroad for Reflection and Academic Exploration

Finding the intersections between one’s faith and vocation needn’t be a solitary task. At a yearly conference sponsored by the Lilly Fellows Program in the Humanities and the Arts, faculty from Christian institutions work through nuanced issues together — each refining their personal sense of how their faith relates to their teaching, their scholarly work,… Continue Reading →

What drew me to Latin American politics

“My undergrad degree was in history; we focused a great deal on Indian history. My master’s was in African politics: the diaspora — the Indian people who had undergone British imperialism and therefore transferred their wages and their livelihood — living in Anglophone Africa. For my Ph.D., I wanted to pick a region of the… Continue Reading →

Distinctive Hope: Fellowship of the Spring

Held on the last Friday of April prior to semester exams, Spring Fling serves on one level as an opportunity for students to relax before the intensity of finals week. More, though, the event reflects Hope as a community. Hundreds of students fill the central campus not just for a mix of activities and a… Continue Reading →

Quote, Unquote: Presidential Family

Through the magic of the Internet, readers and viewers around the world learned mere minutes after the decision had been made on December 7 that Matthew A. Scogin ’02 had been named Hope’s next president. Members of the campus community, though, enjoyed a bonus: the opportunity to greet in person the president-elect; his spouse (and… Continue Reading →

Hope is … faithful

Hope College is a Christian community that invites all its members into a holistic and robust engagement with the historic Christian faith and a personal encounter with the living Christ through the Holy Spirit. We are guided and challenged in mutual journey by three aspirations — to be faithful, to be welcoming and to be… Continue Reading →

Campus Scene

from blogs.hope.edu “While staring at a stone, I’ve witnessed a whole culture — gossip in Latin on the walls, pleas for remembrance during a plague, a whole host of animals and faces, staves of music carefully laid out, building plans and even reminders to pray.” As she has shared in “The Accidental Archaeologist” on the… Continue Reading →

280 Years, Unquantifiable Commitment

Hope is in the final weeks of its 157th academic year. Add together the years 2018-19’s nine retiring faculty have been at the college, and they have that beat by more than a century. Their combined service, from 21 to 41, totals 280 years, representing thousands of days, countless hours and unquantifiable commitment to providing… Continue Reading →

Giving Back While Paying Forward

That old saying — “It’s not what you know but who you know” — is not only cynical: It uses the wrong conjunction. It is actually what AND who you know that make a difference in calling and career. Deep knowledge of “what” and giving connections from “whom” are the perfect combination to move a… Continue Reading →

Who was A.J. Muste?

Tell me you’ve heard of him: Abraham Johannes Muste (1885-1967), labor leader, world-renowned pacifist and probably Hope’s most famous alumnus. Born in the Netherlands, Muste immigrated to Grand Rapids with his family in 1891; he graduated from Hope College in 1905, valedictorian, captain of the basketball team, president of his fraternity (the Fraters, of course),… Continue Reading →

Window to Hope’s History: Caught in the Rain

Where is the dividing line, if indeed there is one, between cliché and timeless truth? For example, while the aphorism “April showers bring May flowers” gains no marks for originality, it at least might — in 2019 as in this moment previously depicted in the 1964 Milestone yearbook — make for a comforting mantra on… Continue Reading →

Closing Look: Civil Rights Lecture

Jewellynne Richardson of West Michigan Jewels of Africa speaks to a capacity audience in Dimnent Memorial Chapel during the group’s presentation of African culture as part of the college’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights Lecture on Jan. 21. Presented first in 1989, the annual event has grown across the decades into a large-scale… Continue Reading →