Category: Spring 2018

Hope College Dune Research Group

When wind blasts dunes on Lake Michigan’s east coast, complicated windflows develop on the side away from the wind — producing turbulent eddies like those around Hope geologist Dr. Edward Hansen (right) and whirlwinds like the one swirling around an ultrasonic anemometer (at left, behind Hope mathematician Dr. Brian Yurk) in fall 2017 on the… Continue Reading →

Jeremiah and Lamentations Through 16th-Century Eyes

Hope College church historian Dr. Jeff Tyler has spent the past 10 years in conversation with Reformation writers. As the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation approached, he combed through books, lectures, sermons and other texts by nearly 50 Reformation thinkers to assemble an anthology of Protestant Reformers’ comments on the Old Testament books of… Continue Reading →

One Archbishop, Two Funerals

In the years following Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses, a wave of Protestant conversion swept through many German cities. Why, then, did the residents of Cologne remain predominantly Catholic? To this day, this remains a mystery to historians, including Dr. Janis Gibbs, who has pursued the answer for years. Long after completing her… Continue Reading →

On the Eve of Shakespeare

How might the playwrights of the Reformation and pre-Reformation eras — even the great Bard of Avon himself, William Shakespeare — have reacted to seeing their works dissected and reviewed online? Dr. John Cox doesn’t know, of course — but he could make an educated guess. An internationally respected Shakespeare scholar and former president of… Continue Reading →

Student-Faculty Research

Honored repeatedly in 2017 for the quality of its undergraduate research program, Hope College is a magnet for students who want to dive into genuine scholarly work as undergraduates. Mentored collaborative research happens year-round — during the fall and spring semesters, in specialized May Term and June Term courses, and during the summer. Hope’s program… Continue Reading →

21st-Century Graffiti, with a 19th-Century Twist

Dr. Heidi Kraus remembers precisely the moment it happened. “When I was a young kid, I traveled to France,” recalls Kraus. “I remember walking into the Grand Gallery in the Louvre, where all the large-format paintings are. There was one painting in particular, ‘The Coronation of Napoleon’ by Jacques-Louis David. It’s basically life-sized and it… Continue Reading →

Performing Debussy as a Scholarly Pursuit

Dr. Andrew “Drew” Le completed his second CD in October 2017, performing all 12 piano études by French composer Claude Debussy, and it was an all-Hope production. The album was recorded — in one day — in the college’s gleaming new Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts, performed on the 9-foot Steinway Model D… Continue Reading →

The Play’s the Thing

Diversity and fresh starts were hallmarks of two of Professor Rich Perez’s 2017 projects. Summer took him to Chicago to direct the UrbanTheatre Company’s production of Richard Montoya’s Water & Power; Perez and Montoya updated the script to shift the gritty drama’s setting from Los Angeles to Chicago, with turns of phrase and cultural references… Continue Reading →

True North

The lone crow on the lone pole where the weathervane used to whirl insinuates my need for misdirection. He is an arrow of skittish attention, of scant intention: the cock and hop, the flick and caw toward anything on the wind. Now angling east, now south by southwest, he designates with beak then disagreeing tail… Continue Reading →

City by City, the Arts Interpret Culture

In the evening in some Buenos Aires clubs, guitars and accordions called bandoneons weave syncopated tango rhythms that draw patrons to the dance floor and echo back to the early 20th century. In Mexico City, vivid murals still transform buildings into huge canvasses, sustaining a genre born after World War I when the Mexican muralism… Continue Reading →

Microecology Close to Home

For more than 15 years, Hope faculty members have worked alongside students to research Lake Macatawa’s watershed. Decades of agricultural run-off polluted it with nutrients that can kill fish, harm plant life, lead to algal blooms, and trigger high levels of E. coli bacteria. To spark students’ interest in saving local habitats, and to monitor… Continue Reading →

Engineering Informed by Biology

Destructive earthquakes in Mexico, Chile and Russia in 2017 underscored the importance — and urgency — of the kind of innovative research Dr. Courtney Peckens is pursuing in VanderWerf Hall’s Haworth Engineering Center. Supported by a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation and a Nyenhuis Grant from Hope College, Peckens is developing and testing… Continue Reading →

At the Galaxy’s Center, a Mystery

At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, something’s going on that puzzles astrophysicists. Decades of intense research built expectations about the gamma rays that ought to emanate from that zone. Yet NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope picks up levels that exceed expectations. Why? Here’s Dr. Peter Gonthier’s take: Perhaps there’s a population of millisecond… Continue Reading →

Opening Research Doors for College Students Worldwide

On a spring Thursday morning, climb the stairs to the Schaap Science Center biochemistry lab and you’ll find a dozen detectives at work. Each pair of student researchers is analyzing a protein that scientists don’t yet understand. Interpreting 3-D images, culturing bacteria and using gel electrophoresis to assess the size and behavior of particles, they… Continue Reading →

Inviting Local Churches to Focus on Vocation

In 1998, Dr. Jonathan Hagood completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Texas with both a professional degree in architecture and a bachelor’s in Latin American Studies. After working in architecture for a few years, he started an IT consulting firm in San Francisco before answering the call to pursue graduate study in history… Continue Reading →

The Power of Immigrants’ Personal Narratives

For Canadian-born Dr. Deborah Van Duinen, the topic of immigration hits close to home. She is especially attuned to the history and shifting demographics of Hope College’s hometown, Holland, Michigan. “This is an immigrant town,” Van Duinen says. “I think sometimes we forget that.” So when the opportunity arose to collaborate with an English professor… Continue Reading →

Dance as a Learning Strategy

Imagine a Kandinsky painting coming to life on stage, each impasto brushstroke a carefully choreographed movement. Picture a Warhol screenprint animated by dance, each plane of color made kinetic. What could young audiences learn from such dance performances? The connection between movement and cognition drives Professor Nicki Flinn. It motivates her research, and it inspires… Continue Reading →