Category: Summer 2023

Distinctive Hope: Gold Stars

Hope has earned a STARS Gold rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. While achieving the standard in the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System is the headline, the college’s journey from aspiration, to Bronze (2012), to Silver (2017), to Gold reflects something more significant. It is the result of… Continue Reading →

From the President: Matthew A. Scogin ʼ02

Dear Friends and Family of Hope College, Earlier this summer, a new Gallup poll reported that confidence in higher education has sunk to a historic low. Only about a third of Americans express confidence in the nation’s colleges and universities. Public confidence decreased by more than 20 percentage points in the past eight years alone… Continue Reading →

Quote Unquote: Final Lessons

As the members of the Class of 2023 concluded their journey as undergraduates on Sunday, May 7, they received encouragement and advice from two recently retired or soon-to-retire mentors whose combined service to Hope totals more than 80 years. The day opened with the college’s 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. Baccalaureate services in Dimnent Memorial… Continue Reading →

Campus Scene

BEGINNING OF SCHOOL The college is on the eve of its 162nd academic year, with the members of the incoming Class of 2027 arriving on Friday, Aug. 25, for the start of New Student Orientation that evening. The rest of the students will begin to return on Sunday, Aug. 27. The Opening Convocation marking the… Continue Reading →

Revisionist History podcast Praises Hope Forward

Hope earns praise on best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell’s newest Revisionist History podcast for taking a revolutionary approach to removing tuition as a barrier for access to college while building generosity and community along the way. Titled “A Good Circle” and released to the general public on Thursday, June 29, for listening with no charge, the… Continue Reading →

“What a Four Years It’s Been”

As he made the introductory remarks during the Baccalaureate service in Dimnent Memorial Chapel on Sunday, May 7, President Matthew A. Scogin ’02 admitted to becoming a bit choked up. He explained that the day’s celebration of the graduating Class of 2023 was bittersweet. He and the members of the class had arrived at the… Continue Reading →

Major Software Gift Spurs Geophysics Expansion

A monumental grant of sophisticated geophysics software packages will provide Hope College’s students with opportunities that only a handful graduate programs can offer. The global technology company SLB has donated a total of 40 licenses, 10 each of the complete suites of Petrel, PetroMod, Techlog and GeoX state-of-the-art geophysical software packages for teaching and research… Continue Reading →

Leading with Excellence

Hope Athletics delivered excellence inside and outside of the classroom this spring — earning a league-record 39th MIAA Commissioner’s Cup trophy as well as 15 MIAA Team GPA Award recipients and 265 individual selections to the MIAA Academic Honor Roll. Five teams saw student-athletes compete in NCAA Division III Championships: men’s golf, women’s lacrosse, women’s… Continue Reading →

Aspiring to Give Zimbabweans a Voice

Danai Mandebvu would like to return to Zimbabwe one day and use her Hope education as a double major in theatre and global studies, with a concentration in global societies and cultures, to impact her community by cultivating a culture of transparency and agency through theatre. Rising junior Danai Mandebvu’s dream to start a theater… Continue Reading →

Hope Theatre Prof and Students Earn Trio of National Awards

Danai Mandebvu, who was selected to participate in April’s national Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival event following regional competition in February and March, was one of three outstanding members of the Hope theatre family who ultimately received recognition in conjunction with the festival. Please follow the links below for stories celebrating the others’ awards,… Continue Reading →

AI and the Liberal Arts: Embracing the Power, Preserving Humanity

Artificial intelligence has captivated our collective imagination. With groundbreaking models like ChatGPT and visual AI generators, the boundaries of what is possible have been shattered. Yet, amid our fascination, a twinge of fear lingers — a fear of the unknown, of a future shaped by artificial intelligence. From automating tasks to transforming academic integrity, AI… Continue Reading →

Imaging What Can’t Be Seen

There’s a paradox in Leekyung Kang’s art: She focuses on things we cannot see. Opaque holes hover in some recent work. What do murky swaths of spray paint cover up? We see a brick foundation, but of what? Kang finds unseen spaces intriguing. It dates to her childhood in Seoul, South Korea. From her apartment… Continue Reading →

Ideas and the Test of Time

Tracing and analyzing how texts have been interpreted over time is Dr. David DeJong’s niche in biblical studies. The relatively new field is called “reception history” — reception meaning how a text was “received” by those who heard it or, in later eras, read it. What public discourse took place? What nuanced understanding developed? How… Continue Reading →

Sisters for a Lifetime

This is the most remarkable story you will read in this issue of News from Hope College. Or most any other magazine, for that matter. It’s about two women, both Hope College alums, born in the same hospital — the now-assimilated Blodgett in Grand Rapids — two years apart. Improbably, both mothers named their infant… Continue Reading →

Graves Pond

You may recognize this photograph from the cover of the issue. To illustrate this issue’s story about artificial intelligence, we decided to put Adobe Photoshop beta’s Generative Fill to a test with simple narrative commands to add a pond in front of Graves Hall — and make the lighting more dramatic, too. The seamless result,… Continue Reading →