Tag: Spera

Think back to 2020, when COVID-19 was turning the world upside down. If there are kids in your household, what’s your take: Was that time stressful? As a broad-reaching shutdown took effect, Dr. Elizabeth Schofield ’02 Sharda, LMSW, assistant professor of social work, quickly grasped how complicated life was about to get. As a social… Continue Reading →

Given Dr. Zachary Williams’ hometown heritage and mathematical proclivity, studying physics may have always been a bygone conclusion — much to his relish, and Hope’s. Williams grew up on Florida’s “space coast” near the Kennedy Space Center. “Everyone in my hometown was, at most, one or two degrees removed from a NASA affiliation,” he says.… Continue Reading →

As COVID-19 disrupted health the world over, Dr. Vicki Voskuil was tuned into one of its hidden, insidious effects: an ancillary pandemic that was particularly pernicious among the United States’ youth. “Especially during the pandemic, it became obvious that we also have this other pandemic of inactivity that’s across all ages,” she says. She has… Continue Reading →

Dr. Alyssa Cheadle is a Christian and a psychologist. In the United States, it’s an unlikely combination; according to Cheadle, psychologists are among the least religious academics. As a health psychologist, she develops insights into many aspects of physical health that are affected by mental health, and vice versa, in her prolific research output. But… Continue Reading →

Dr. Aaron Franzen has been curious for years about the “hidden curriculum” of medical schools — the undercurrent of norms and expectations for behavior that medical students learn outside their official curriculum. “It’s the social water in which all of them swim, so it matters — whether they recognize it or not,” he says. Until… Continue Reading →

Conceptually, the changes Professor Nancy Cook and Dr. Susan Brondyk engineered in Hope College’s student teaching model seem straightforward: More mentoring. More teamwork. A new tool to guide student teachers and seasoned professionals in a collaborative process of goal-setting, strategizing and regular assessment of each student teacher’s growth. But leading organizational change is anything but… Continue Reading →

Dr. Sarah Kornfield likens the cultural effects of television to a distorted reflection from a funhouse mirror, and she doesn’t mean it in an amusing way. When she thinks about TV’s reflective light, she does so as a rhetorician who studies the portrayals of gender in mass media. Using that lens to look closely at… Continue Reading →

Lisa Walcott can’t recall just what the item was. A blouse, perhaps? But she can picture the open drawer and the garment tossed across it. She was struck by the fabric’s fluidity — how much, draped there, it looked like liquid. But why would water trickle down the front of a bureau drawer? Why, indeed?… Continue Reading →

Before the swirling coats were contemplated, before he resolved how 18 roiling bodies would storm across a stage without colliding, before his reimagined storyline took shape, Professor Matthew Farmer spent a year filling his head with Igor Stravinsky. In his car, on his phone in the breaks between classes and appointments and choreographing other pieces,… Continue Reading →

The Rev. Dr. Lynn Japinga has spent years telling the stories of the women of the Bible and, in many cases, doing her level best to redeem the reputations with which she feels they’ve been unfairly saddled over the centuries. “I joke that stories about women are always about either sex, violence, or sex and… Continue Reading →

As a Marine veteran and military historian, Dr. Fred L. Johnson III is regrettably too familiar with the atrocities of war. As a college professor, he has not tucked away that horrific knowledge, but instead is adding a new perspective to it. Johnson recently gravitated toward extraordinary stories of friendship and forgiveness during times of… Continue Reading →

Teaching is foundational for professors at Hope. In Dr. Darin Stephenson’s case, he’s teaching not only students, but also computers. And they speak a different language. From the binary language of dune topography (0 = on the ground, 1 = not on the ground) to a birdsong sound wave turned visual, Stephenson is fluent in… Continue Reading →

Life — in all its varied forms and interactions — is one of the Earth’s most studied mysteries, one that scientists have spent centuries unraveling. Among them is botanist Dr. Jianhua Li, who is ranging through continents and (thanks to the insights of DNA) through time to uncover the branching trees of life of various,… Continue Reading →

Dr. Jennifer Hampton is captivated by interesting materials — especially those in the electrifying world of electrochemistry. She’s currently studying iron hexacyanoferrate, better known as Prussian blue. This name, unsurprisingly, comes from the compound’s striking hue. Prussian blue has been used as a colorant in numerous applications, from the paint of van Gogh’s “Starry Night”… Continue Reading →