Tag: featured

We Flipped for these 10 Under 10

Taking their liberal arts education to new heights and impacting the world in big ways. With nearly 35,000 Hope alumni around the world, the challenge is not finding someone to honor for excellence and impact, but choosing who to honor. The new “10 Under 10 Awards,” which succeed the Young Alumni Award program of 2007-17,… Continue Reading →

On the Way to His True North

If not for a simple, hand-drawn map, Danny Kosiba ’17 would not be where he is today, nor where he was six months ago, nor where he was a year before that. Spare though neatly illustrated, the map would not only guide him to a physical destination in the Cook Islands, but it led to… Continue Reading →

“The Perfect Leader for Hope’s Next Chapter”

Matthew A. Scogin ’02 named 14th president President-Elect Matthew A. Scogin ’02 It is telling that when Matthew A. Scogin ’02 spoke to the college’s staff in November as a presidential candidate, the crowd that packed the room seemed ready to stand up and cheer. His heartfelt understanding of, and appreciation for, Hope had that… Continue Reading →

20 Years of Building Community

Caryn Dannah pulled up to Scott Hall last fall ready to launch into something really new. Not only was she moving away from home for the first time — she’d opted into a living situation unlike anything that she’d experienced growing up in Grand Rapids. As a Phelps Scholar, Caryn “does life” with 95 other… 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 →

The Secret is Persistence

Matthew Baker ’08 dreamed of becoming a professional writer since the fourth grade, when he entered a “When I Grow Up” speech competition. “My speech was all about how I wanted to be Brian Jacques, the British guy who wrote the Redwall books,” Baker recalls. He wrote throughout high school in Grand Rapids but readily… Continue Reading →

The Athletic Ability of And

This fall, a long-awaited friend will return to DeVos Fieldhouse. Its presence will be warmly welcomed, even affectionately embraced, and then it will be shown to its preferred place of honor, right alongside 36 other “colleagues” who also live in the rafters. In traditional Hope orange and blue, a 37th banner — that friend whose… Continue Reading →

The Epitome of Selfless Service

Bookended by Alumni Weekend and Commencement, the closing week of the school year was the natural time for the Hope family to thank the husband-and-wife team that stepped up and stepped in to help the college in a time of transition by serving a two-year term as Hope’s first couple. The Hope College Alumni Association… Continue Reading →

A Passion for Interfaith Dialogue

Allison LoPrete ’19 opens with a greeting given by the risen Christ himself: “Peace be with you.” It’s the opening of a liturgy that one might expect to find in Sunday morning worship services around the world — or perhaps in Hope’s own Dimnent Memorial Chapel four times a week. “And also with you,” the… Continue Reading →

Hope’s Deep Dive in Cozumel

Twenty-five feet below the surface in the Caribbean Sea’s show-off turquoise water that rolled and swelled beneath an equally-gaudy cobalt sky, Anne Sangliana ’19 discovered something she hoped she’d find. A fanciful creature with an orange-splotched body had perched itself on a vibrant coral reef. As flamboyant as it was, the little animal was actually… 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 →

Two MVPs and the Coach In-Between

Of the many qualities of water, its ability to represent the flowing movement of time is perhaps its most preternatural. For a story about swimming greatness, that metaphor could go something like this: February, 1987. Rob Peel — a tall, slender Spring Lake, Michigan-native, obsessed with going fast in the freestyle — has smashed Hope… 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 →

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 →