Author: News from Hope College

Distinctive Hope: Where Ideas Begin

Hope’s emphasis on serving not only its students but the community is exemplified in the NEA Big Read Lakeshore that the college has organized each fall since 2014. The program invites all ages across the area to read a specific novel and then get together to discuss it and the issues it explores. Winning funding… Continue Reading →

From the President: Matthew A. Scogin ʼ02

Dear Friends and Family of Hope College, In just a few weeks, we will welcome the members of Hope’s Class of 2022 to their new home-away-from-home. If you are an alumnus of Hope College, you may remember the feeling of arriving on campus as a student for the first time. I certainly do! Twenty-one years… Continue Reading →

Quote, Unquote: Commencement 2019

As the 713 members of the Class of 2019 prepared to cross the stage during Commencement at Ray and Sue Smith Stadium on Sunday, May 5, featured speaker Dr. Kristen Gray reflected on ways that their lessons had prepared them to travel from the campus community to living in the larger neighborhood of the global… Continue Reading →

Hope is … welcoming

Hospitality is a hallmark of the Christian faith. Hope seeks to be a community that affirms the dignity of all persons as bearers of God’s image. We are a community where all come together to offer their gifts of understanding to one another. Students of all faiths — or no faith at all — are… Continue Reading →

Campus Scene

from blogs.hope.edu “Part of the college experience is exploring things you may not have had the opportunity to do before. Try it out and if you don’t like it, if it doesn’t fit in your schedule, or if it simply isn’t for you, don’t be afraid to step away from it. That’s okay.” Featuring student… Continue Reading →

Happiness is Research about Happiness

A smile — that universal expression of happiness — usually needs no translation. Upturned corners of a mouth mean “gladness”; add teeth and you have jubilation. Yet, as with most things in human life, it’s not always that simple. What makes one person put on a happy face might make another express ambivalence at best.… Continue Reading →

Window to Hope’s History: Beanies for All!

Being a new student was just a bit different five-and-more decades ago, with all freshmen of those distant days provided green beanies to wear during the fall semester. Born in an era when one’s school-year identity perhaps mattered more and Hope was much smaller, the student-organized practice, as is typical of such traditions, was intended… Continue Reading →

Closing Look: There’s No Place Like Hope

With apologies to one of American film’s most famous lines, there’s no place like Hope’s hometown of Holland and the college together, each enhanced by the other’s presence in an outstanding town-gown relationship that is the envy of many other communities and schools. For example, Ali Jesky of the groundskeeping staff is a member of… Continue Reading →

Distinctive Hope: The Pull

The Black River has been an iconic part of the Pull tug-of-war for longer than living memory, but there can be too much of a good thing. In fact, Lake Michigan’s near-record level, which had a corresponding impact on the event’s long-time Black River site, and plentiful rain leading up to the Pull prompted a… Continue Reading →

From the President: Matthew A. Scogin ʼ02

Dear Friends and Family of Hope College, As I write this message, I am approaching the end of my fifth month as president of Hope College. These months have gone quickly! Each day as I experience the beauty of the Pine Grove, walking from our home to my office, I am reminded that God is… Continue Reading →

Quote, Unquote: Ira Flatow

Acclaimed NPR Science Friday host Ira Flatow has been sharing his enthusiasm for science with the public for more than 40 years, including previously on the Emmy-winning Newton’s Apple on PBS. On Tuesday, Oct. 15, he addressed a likewise enthusiastic audience at Hope, presenting “Catalysts of Creation” to a crowd of hundreds — students, faculty… Continue Reading →

Hope is … transformational

Hope was established as a college in the Reformed tradition, which affirms the centrality of Scripture and the importance of learning. We are committed to freedom of inquiry in the pursuit of truth and knowledge in every field of study, confident that all truth is God’s truth. We also affirm that knowledge is not an… Continue Reading →

Campus Scene

from blogs.hope.edu “So significant are each of these books that they have themselves been the subject of a number of books and articles.” Of course, the Van Wylen Library increases its collection every year with hundreds of new books across the spectrum of the liberal arts to enlighten scholarship and learning. Some really old books… Continue Reading →

A Bold Vision for a New Era

Fully funded tuition among top priorities in inaugural address President Matthew A. Scogin ’02 shared a bold vision for Hope during his inauguration just a few weeks into the semester: fully funded tuition. “My objective is to raise enough scholarship and aid money in our endowment so that one day Hope College would not need… Continue Reading →

Toward Convergence: An Arts Collaboration

All of the arts at Hope worked together to present a one-of-a-kind jazz concert built of both sound and sight on Monday, Oct. 21, in the John and Dede Howard Recital Hall of the Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts. Framed by the music of the college’s Jazz Arts Collective, the event also featured… Continue Reading →

A New Way of Looking at Solar Energy

You may find Dr. Jeffrey Christians in his office in VanderWerf Hall, or else in his Schaap Science Center lab, or perhaps at a renewable energy conference across the country; he’s a scientist, engineer and solar energy researcher, linking fields — and the students studying them — in his quest for sustainable energy at a… Continue Reading →

Missional Research About Missionary Work

How One Faculty-Student Project Became a Book A little more than six summers ago, Dr. Gloria Tseng sent six Hope students into the Joint Archives of Holland on a mission that was both institutionally and educationally missional: Conduct research for eight weeks and then write a scholarly paper for presentation purposes about any aspect of… Continue Reading →

Iron-Clad Education

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” Proverbs 27:17 (NIV) A nationally recognized kinetic sculptor and installation artist in her own right, Hope Assistant Professor of Art Lisa Walcott has worked in a wide range of mediums over the years. Yet as she notes, “sculpture is a field that encompasses many diverse processes.… Continue Reading →

Learning from Listening

Can a Podcast Change the World? If there was a line graph that charted student success and well-being, David Theune ’99 would’ve placed his student solidly on its upward curve. Smart and sociable, with a solid group of friends, the high school junior was liked and respected by her teachers and many of her peers.… Continue Reading →

A Beautiful Book About His Neighborhood

Long before a 2018 award-winning documentary chronicled his life and well before Tom Hanks pulled on a red cardigan for a 2019 biopic that does the same, Shea Tuttle ’06 boarded Mister Rogers’ neighborhood trolley in her childhood as an adoring devotee and rode it into her adulthood as a talented writer. As her new… Continue Reading →