Tag: featured

In a Class of Their Own

For more than 150 years, Hope College has been preparing a good portion of its students to become future teachers. Pastors and teachers — those were Hope’s first two career placements. Today, approximately 4,050 Hope graduates teach in public or private K-12 schools. But for the past decade or so, the career that creates all… Continue Reading →

Any is too Many

Hope doesn’t wait for national Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April to build awareness of the issue. Hope’s prevention programming instead begins with resident assistant training and New Student Orientation each August, continuing with multiple large-scale and smaller events across the fall and spring semesters. The national statistics show why. As reported by the National… Continue Reading →

Asking Big Questions at the Nuclear Level

The research being conducted by the faculty and students of the Nuclear Group at Hope might be considered ambitious. They are, after all, trying to figure out how the universe works, and supernovas are in the mix. Admittedly, there are many directions that such big questions could go. The work at Hope is focused, in… Continue Reading →

600 and Counting

Only five years after his graduation, he began crafting a remarkable legacy when he took the helm as the head coach of Hope College women’s basketball in 1996. Now after his 24th season at his alma mater, Morehouse is not only the 2020 U.S. Marines/WBCA Coach of the Year for NCAA Division III (an award… Continue Reading →

Walking the Emmaus Road

The Emmaus Scholars Program “combines practices of intentional Christian community with academic and practical explorations of the intersection of faith and justice,” said Dr. Matt Jantzen, the program’s director. Jantzen, who did his doctoral work in Christian theology, race and politics at Duke University, has been directing the program since fall 2018. Emmaus is one… Continue Reading →

In, Out, and Back to Africa

The master’s degree thesis written by Catherine Namwezi ’17 — with its massive assemblage of theoretical jargon, statistical data and story-telling mechanisms — is, at its deepest root, a sophisticated love letter. Though most love letters aren’t 124 pages long, this one had to be. Nor do they have hundreds of citations, or a 13-page… Continue Reading →

Leading Hope with Hope

With the nation and world facing some of the largest challenges of the past several decades, it would be easy to hunker down and despair. One of the most important things to know about President Matthew A. Scogin ’02, who has just completed his first year leading Hope and is eagerly anticipating his second, is… Continue Reading →

Seeking a Better Way

Editor’s Note: The nationwide calls for racial justice in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans have reached Holland and Hope as well. Local events have included a peaceful march and demonstration in the city attended by more than 2,000 people. At Hope, the summer has seen even more faculty,… Continue Reading →

#KeepingHope in the Time of COVID-19

Removed from Hope’s campus and from each other when the college went to remote operations after March 11 due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, people of Hope quickly resolved to do one common thing from their various points of distant teaching, working and learning. Though separated, the campus community was determined to stay together by… Continue Reading →

Remote Learning the Hope Way

How do you move a dance class online, especially when your students have gone home to five different time zones? Which videoconferencing app has better break-out rooms? Does starting class at noon on Thursdays matter anymore? In March, Hope College faculty had 11 days to power through those questions as they reworked courses they typically… Continue Reading →

Where There’s a Will There’s a Hemenway

Last November, when Dr. Stephen I. Hemenway was honored for 48 years of creativity as an English professor at Hope by being named the first recipient of the college’s Betty Roelofs ’53 Miller Endowed Professorship, he delivered a five-minute acceptance speech. In rhymed couplets. “Arriving at Hope, I was labeled weird: Single, Irish Catholic, donning… Continue Reading →

Remembering a Leader

Dr. Gordon Van Wylen of Holland, Michigan, who served as Hope’s ninth president from 1972 until retiring in 1987 and was also actively involved in the Holland community both during and following his time at Hope, died on Thursday, Nov. 5, after a determined fight with COVID-19. He was 100. Van Wylen is remembered at… Continue Reading →

New Home for Center for Diversity and Inclusion is a Dream Come True

A prominent campus landmark with a storied history is providing a spacious new home that not only enhances Hope’s efforts to foster a diverse, welcoming community but is itself inviting. The college’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion and multicultural student organizations (MSOs) moved to the Keppel House on 10th Street between College and Columbia avenues… Continue Reading →

Hope’s Battle Plan for Besting the Novel Coronavirus … So Far

To fight an invisible opponent like the novel coronavirus in 2020, Hope College determined that the best battle plan was one that prioritized and relied upon transparency and science. During the fall semester, those attributes carried the campus community through 13 weeks of in-person, on-campus operations in the midst of a global pandemic. (Final exam… Continue Reading →

Water-Quality Expertise Helped the Semester Happen

Among all the firsts that 2020 brought, here’s something no one saw coming: Hope College staffers parked in campus intersections, opening maintenance holes to get to the sewage below. Six mornings a week, rain or shine. They are the front-line workers in the college’s wastewater surveillance program, which since August has kept tabs on COVID-19… Continue Reading →

Setting the Pace

Quite by coincidence — or happy accident — two seminars offered as part of Hope College’s Interdisciplinary Studies Program happen to mirror the Hope experience. Students walk onto campus their first year eager but apprehensive, ready to learn and become a part of something bigger but knowing they are works in progress. Years later they… Continue Reading →

The Show Must Go On

Statewide size restrictions on gatherings to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 have presented interesting challenges for Hope, which annually hosts hundreds of events not only for the campus and alumni but the general public. The situation has been a particular predicament for the college’s arts programs, for which exhibitions, concerts and plays are not only… Continue Reading →

The Year of Living Ep!cally

To call 2020 the perfect year to accomplish anything noteworthy, one has to either be the world’s biggest optimist, or a master of determination. It turns out, Jon Ornée ’03 — the proclaimer of such an ironic compliment about the year 2020 — is a bit of both. To pull off a monumental, relay-style swim… Continue Reading →