Author: Micah Cronin

With the spring semester underway, Houghton College’s Vocational Opportunities and Career Advising (VOCA) center will host the Spring Career Fair on Wednesday, February 3 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“Now is the time for seniors to begin thinking about their plans for after graduation and for underclassmen to think about their plans for the summer,” VOCA director Kim Pool said.

According to Pool, there are three general guidelines for students beginning the job search. First, a significant factor for a potential employee is an online presence. Pool stated, “VOCA can help you set up your LinkedIn profile and make sure you have a professional online presence.” Aside from this service, VOCA offers resumé critiques and workshops, as well as assistance connecting current Houghton undergraduates with alumni. The VOCA center will even help prepare students for job interviews, according to Pool.

While these services are offered throughout the academic year, the Spring Career Fair will likely be the best opportunity for students to connect with potential summer or full time employers. Over 40 employers will be present at the Career Fair. “Twenty-five of the business or entities will be camps seeking college students for summer positions,” Pool said. “16 are non-camps with both internship and full-time positions”.

Students are also invited to visit the LinkedIn photo booth, which will be in the same area as the Career Fair. Students can have a professional headshot taken for their LinkedIn profile on Wednesday from 12-2 p.m. The Spring Career Fair will be held in the Van Dyk Lounge in the Campus Center.

While most of the Houghton College community retired home for holiday celebration over Thanksgiving Break last week, senior physics students Thomas Eckert and August Gula, and associate dean of natural sciences and mathematics Professor Mark Yuly travelled to Savannah, Georgia. The trio, together with faculty and students from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Geneseo attended the American Physical Society’s (APS) fifty-seventh annual meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics. Eckert and Gula presented their research, which they had worked on under Yuly, to hundreds of attendees, many of them distinguished scholars and physicists.

Eckert explained the students’ research was “part of a much larger project that spans over 20 years.” He said the goal of the project was the development of an efficient, time-and-cost-effective way to measure the areal density of an Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) reaction. The areal density is a parameter of ICF that must be above a certain threshold to have a reaction that releases more energy than is put in. “As one of the key goals of studying ICF is to have net-positive energy output which would allow us to use the reaction as a source of electrical power,” Eckert said. “Overcoming this threshold is important. While this value can be measured today, current measurement techniques lack the efficiency of our system.”

This research will likely impact efforts to creating clean, sustainable energy. It also may have applications in astronomy. “An ICF reaction is quite similar to the Gravitational Confinement Fusion that occurs in the core of a star,” Eckert said.

Eckert and Gula’s findings were presented in a poster presentation at the conference. A “poster presentation” is fairly self-explanatory: researchers, using visual aids, present their research to other professionals. There are usually many presenters gathered at a poster presentation, explaining and dialoguing with attendees as they pass by.

Aside from the honor of having their research selected for presentation, Gula and Eckert were recognized for an “Exceptional Undergraduate Poster Presentation” at the conference. Eckert said, “It was a big deal that we received that honor out of hundreds of submitted posters. We were given tickets to a banquet and we were asked to stand and be recognized for our accomplishment. It was a shining moment for both of us.”

Notable attendees to the conference included Masaaki Yamada, recipient of the APS Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics. His pioneering contributions to the field of laboratory plasma astrophysics, according to the APS website. Another well-regarded member of the physics community, Richard Rhodes, was in attendance. Rhodes is the author of the acclaimed work, The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

Besides these distinguished scholars, Eckert said there were “loads” of other interesting and brilliant scientists at the conference. He expressed his enthusiasm over the networking opportunities he took advantage of. “This conference was one of the most rewarding experiences  

of my time as an undergraduate,” he said, noting how the contacts he made will likely impact his career for many years to come.

Eckert stated, “For me, I am weaker in mathematical and theoretical knowledge, but I find my strength is in experimentation and presentation of my work. For that reason, showing a poster at a research conference is something I feel right at home doing.” He continued, “One of the great things about Houghton Physics, however, is that no matter where your strengths lay, you are able to pursue opportunities tailored to your aptitude.”

“When we refer to ‘the biblical approach to economics’ or the biblical response to politics’ or ‘biblical womanhood,’ we’re using the Bible as a weapon disguised as an adjective,” writes author Rachel Held Evans in her book, Faith Unraveled: How A Girl Who Knew All The Answers Learned To Ask The Questions. Evans, following the release of her third book, Searching for Sunday, recently traveled from her hometown in Dayton, Tennessee to Eastern University (EU) in St. Davids, PA to deliver two lectures on October 29 and 30. Three Houghton students, Annetta Snell ’18, Mary Cronin ’17, and Melissa Bell ’17 trekked to the Philadelphia suburb to attend. The trio was hosted by sophomore Resident Assistant Alyssa Welty.

Held Evan’s invitation was prompted by the university’s ongoing conversation regarding human sexuality and gender, according to Amy Perez, EU’s Director of Advising and First-Year Programs. Perez added that she pushed for this year’s freshman class to read Faith Unraveled, which details Held Evans’ encounter with doubts regarding conservative evangelicalism. This struggle resonates with many Christians in their thirties or younger. Welty said that when she read Faith Unraveled, she “felt right at home.” Describing herself as a Christian often “stuck at the crossroads,” she stated that she felt privileged to hear Held Evans speak.

The Thursday evening lecture was titled “The Misuse of Power in Gender Relations”, and focused on patriarchal movements within evangelicalism that have silenced movements. During her lecture, Held Evans described an occurrence in her childhood, when she was told it was too bad she was a girl, as she could have been a good preacher. Held Evans deconstructed this and other claims, focusing on biblical heroines like Ruth and Deborah who “broke rules”. She also focused on Proverbs chapter 31, which is used by many evangelicals to define “biblical womanhood,” of which, according to Held Evans, there is no such thing.

The second lecture on Friday morning was attended by community members as well as the entire EU class of 2019. This lecture focused on Held Evan’s broader experience with doubt, and asked the question of whether doubt is good for a Christian, or the first step down a slippery slope. Bell said after hearing the lecture, “Held Evans emphasized that it was okay to doubt. Her writing and lectures really resonated with me, because as a theology major I am presented with different thoughts on God and theology all the time. It was comforting to hear from one of my role models that doubting is not just allowed, but beneficial to my spiritual growth.”

Snell, a longtime fan of Held Evans’ work, first “stumbled onto” her writing in high school. Snell said she held doubts similar to Evans,’ and found it “incredible to find

someone who was honest and brave enough to talk about her journey, welcoming other people to join her in conversation about life and Christianity.” Snell would encourage all who have the chance to read her books or her blog (rachelheldevans.com). “Just do it,” she urges.

Dorm life at Houghton has changed since last semester. The student body has felt the impact of extended open hours on the weekends, yet an old open-hours standby has seen its last days. 5Bites, a student operation run through Houghton Student Enterprises (HSE), is now officially out of business.

The snack shop, previously located at the front desk of each dorm, sold items such as chips, popcorn, Poptarts, ramen, soda, and other soft drinks. Desk proctors employed by the college  acted as cashiers for 5Bites. Marc Smithers, Assistant Dean of Students, stated, “The ‘desk’ has been an institution at Houghton for the last 15 or 20 years. It wasn’t till a few years after that started that we began selling things at the desk because we realized that we were paying these students to just sit there, when we could also provide another service to the students,” as well as earn money, which originally went toward hall programming. “The desk” at first existed to provide security for the dormitories. Before the swipe card system, dorms were open all day and only locked after 11 P.M., according to Smithers. “With the swipe card system, the dorms were locked all day, and ‘the desk’ began to make less and less sense,” Smithers remarked.

The closing of 5Bites was “strictly budgetary”, Smithers said. 5Bites did not cover the wages of the desk proctors, who were mostly paid through work study hours. Smithers contacted Professor Ken Bates, faculty advisor for HSE, over the summer to inform him the Student Life department would no longer employ desk proctors. Unfortunately for 5Bites, no arrangements could be made to continue selling its products.

When asked if HSE had any plans to resurrect 5Bites, Bates stated “5Bites would love to continue doing stores in residence halls, but without desk proctors, it just isn’t going to happen. If they had to hire students to man the desk, they’d pretty much be losing money.” Bates did note that HSE is beginning to expand its operations to concessions for athletic events at the Kerr-Pegula Field House.

Ashlee Duttweiler ’16 was hired to be the head desk proctor in Gillette Hall. Responding to questions of the rationale behind the suspension of the desk proctor jobs, she confirmed the issue of inadequate funding. “What concerns me the most, is that desk proctors didn’t just sell 5Bites. They also were dorm security. They were the ones signing people in for open hours,” she said. “From what I’ve heard, it’s kind of sketchy, as far as people just coming in and no one really knowing who’s in the building. I feel like there was more control over what was happening when people were at the desk and you had to leave your I.D. [with the desk proctor]. As far as safety goes, I feel like that was just better.”

Student response to the closing of 5Bites, as well as the removal of the desk proctors, as been mixed. Sophomore Bethany Schoonover observed “It’s smart for the college to have taken it [desk proctor employment] away, but that also means that students have fewer jobs.” Schoonover did not feel that the presence of the desk proctors “was stopping anything” nefarious, but rather thought that responsibility fell more onto the RAs of the residence halls.

Fellow sophomore Benjamin Eby concurred. “They [the desk proctors] didn’t really do anything. The rules keep honest people honest. At least people no longer feel patronized.”

While there is disagreement over whether the security the desk proctors may have added was necessary, the current situation will remain as is for at least the rest of the academic year.