Author: Jordan Trautwein

Professor Linda Mills-Woolsey will be offering her thoughts on the importance of creative arts in a her valedictory lecture, entitled  “Dangerous Arts: Reading and Imagination in a Post-Literate Era”.  The lecture will take place in room 323 of the library on  November 30 at 04:25 p.m.

“I’ve been in school for 60 years.  I went to first grad and I never looked back.  Surely I learned something in that time,” announced Professor Mills-Woolsey.  “The main challenge of the lecture is to not make it a rant.”  The intention of valedictory lectures, according to Mills-Woolsey, is to reflect back on one’s career or present a piece of SCHOLARSHIP.  She noted that she is not entirely doing either exactly, but rather focusing on the question “Why right now is there both so much dismissal of and suspicion of the more imaginative kinds of intellectual work?”

In her initial proposal for the lecture, she includes also a focus on “the decline of serious reading, the weakening of spiritual commitment, and the distrust of science”.  She precedes her proposal with a quote by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: “Bea says the art of reading is slowly dying, that it is an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we carry inside us… and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.  Every month we receive offers to turn our bookshop into a store selling television, girdles, or rope-soled shoes.” In looking at the impact of a decreased interest in the imaginative arts, particularly reading, she mentioned there may also be connections to how we view truth, faith, and science.

Professor Mills-Woolsey admitted that a heavy focus of her lecture will reflect the focus of her career, literature.  She explained her concerns that some people hold the perspective that they will believe not what they actually think to be correct, but rather what they prefer to think is correct. She commented, “You would think that a society where people are proudly saying ‘Oh, I don’t read fiction’ would be more attuned to truth and yet this is the era of fake news.”

She later explained that finding truth allows us all to work towards “being what God called us to be- how dare we neglect it- on the individual level, but also on the social level.”  When explaining her inspiration for her lecture topic, she referenced a survey from the PEW Research center that found more Americans view higher education with suspicion, even thinking it a danger to society.  She commented there may be reason to believe the weakening of faith and science may parallel the decreased interest in imagination.

“So how do we live the fullest human life?  That’s what I’m most interested in.”  She continued,  “People want education that will lead to money and you don’t have people saying ‘I want the best life I can have.  I think in the age of the robot we need to be thinking about what that best life means.  And what are the skills that, at least for your generation, the robots can’t replace?”  Professor Mills-Woolsey went on to explain that students rob themselves by only focusing on the skills they deem immediately marketable.  There is evidence that not everyone is satisfied only studying bits and pieces; they want to commit themselves to longer works, as well.

“It’s easy to see things in terms of declension, that things are getting worse and worse and worse, and I think it’s much more complicated than that,” commented Mills-Woolsey.  “I think our society is in some intellectual and moral danger, but I think we have the tools to confront that danger if we want to use them.”

During the next few days, Greatbatch School of Music will present two very different concerts.  

Tonight, Nov. 10, the Houghton Symphony Orchestra will perform at 7:30. The Jazz Ensemble will take the stage at 7 p.m. next Tuesday, Nov. 14.  Both groups will perform works from a variety of composers, both new and old.

“Notably, we are doing music by Hank Mobley, Randy Brecker, Duke Ellington, Cedar Walton, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea and Curtis Fuller,” Dr. Ken Crane, Director of Jazz Activities, explained of his ensemble’s concert. “Each of these composers are big-name jazz artists who influenced generations of jazz musicians—including us.”

In addition to the works of well-known composers, the ensemble will also feature the work of one of its own students. “In recent years we have been blessed to have great young jazz composers in our midst,” said Crane.  “There will be an original composition of Marc LeGrand, senior guitar player.”

“I get inspired by these young composers, so I brought out one of my own favorite compositions, specially modified for our small-big-band.” Crane continued,  “Other than the homegrown features, I always try to have our students and our audiences exposed to compositions by great, historically important jazz artists.”

The Symphony Orchestra is also committed to an eclectic mix of old and new composers.  Jeffrey Zane Hansen ‘18, a music composition major, commented, “I greatly appreciate the Houghton Symphony Orchestra’s willingness to perform music by people who happen not to be dead, which can be a surprisingly rare thing for an orchestra, especially considering that a lot of current composers are writing music that both has intellectual merit and is fairly accessible.”

Kira Browning, graduate conductor for the orchestra, gave more insight into the process of choosing concert music. “The theme for this week’s concert is Autumn Magic, as several of our selections reference magic. For example, we will be playing the ‘Overture to The Magic Flute’ by Mozart and ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ by Dukas.”  She later added, “The subtitle for this concert is ‘A Journey in Musical Colors,’ and the program will take the audience through a number of pieces which vary in style, or colors, much like the leaves in autumn.”

“Our concert has a really wide audience; it is both relatable for younger audiences, like in the concert earlier in the week, and also for more mature audiences as well,” remarked Hansen.  “This concert has a really wide variety of music, some of it familiar like Paul Dukas’s ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’, which many know because of the Disney Cartoon, as well as pieces by living composers like Brian Balmages’s ‘Summer Dances’ and ‘Swamp Thang’ by Richard Meyer.”

The Orchestra will also reprise two pieces from their Collage concert:  ‘Summer Dances’ and ‘The Girl in 14G,’ featuring Professor Amanda Cox. “Of the pieces programmed, the string players are especially excited to play ‘Swamp Thang’ by Richard Meyer,” Browning said. “It is a strings-only piece with exciting rhythms and sassy melodies.”

When speaking on the impact and importance of music, Hansen commented, “I am reminded of some of the passages in 1 Chronicles about the role of musicians in ancient Israel. In 1 Chronicles 25, it speaks of how the musicians were employed in prophecy through their skilled music-making. While this is not perfectly analogous to the Houghton Symphony Orchestra, I think that we can still say something about what is true and what is beautiful using the music that we create, and think that this is true, at least in part, with the music we are going to be presenting during this concert.”

The Symphony Orchestra will be introducing local children to classical music on Thursday, November 9th at a “Klassics 4 Kids” event.  

“Klassics for Kids is actually a brand new outreach program designed to give middle and high school students the opportunity to hear a more advanced level of music than they might be accustomed to,” said Kira Browning ‘18, a graduate assistant for the Orchestra.

Its event description for the school calendar explained, “It will provide them with the opportunity to hear an orchestra perform in an informal setting and will also include things like instrument demonstrations and some dialogue between the host and audience about historical or general fun facts about the pieces.”

“The Houghton Symphony Orchestra (HSO) is providing the music for this first event and we hope to have more ensembles participate in the future,”  added Browning.  “The HSO will be playing selections from the concert on the following night including Mozart’s ‘Overture to The Magic Flute’ and an exciting piece for strings called ‘Swamp Thang’ by Richard Meyer.”  According to the event description, “The works will be a preview of the Houghton Symphony Orchestra’s concert on the following night. The hope is that this event will engage the students and inspire them in their own music making.”

Monica Fargolia ‘19 recalled her early interactions with classical music and how she became familiar with it.  “I was introduced to classical music when I decided to play an instrument,” she commented.  “My music teacher liked to encourage us to practice by having us listen to the sounds we could potentially produce and educate us on the pieces we were playing.”

Browning emphasized the event’s intention to work with the kids in helping them to also appreciate and understand the music.  In addition to hearing the concert preview, “the students will be given some relevant background to the piece along with instrument demonstrations,highlighting the possibly unfamiliar instruments and important things to listen for during the piece.”  The visiting kids will have the opportunity to observe and learn from the college students.

“This program is inspired by educational performances put on by orchestras like the St. Louis Symphony, where students from all around come and hear the orchestra in an interactive concert setting… This sort of concert-going experience was inspiring when I was a student and our hope is that it will be the same for those who attend on the 9th,” concluded Browning.

Long awaited renovations to Paine may be coming soon after visiting architects presented plans to the Board of Trustees for Phase 2 of updates.  According to promotional material released by the Office of Advancement, Phase Two contains five separate projects.  The projects focus on the addition of a fifth floor, remodeling space on the first and second floors for “engineering classrooms, laboratories and offices as well as intentionally designed space for Science Honors”, remodeling the Chemistry and Biology labs to allow for teaching laboratories, and creating new spaces for Computer and Data science.

“It’s been in the works for years,” explained  Karl Sisson, Vice President for Advancement and External Relations.  “We’ve been driven by two things:  we’ve had the need, but do we have the finances, from fundraising, to do it?  And the move into engineering precipitates expansion.”  The Board of Trustees recently decided Houghton would take on no new capital projects with new capital debt.  All of the money for the new updates, then, must come from gifts and grants.  To complete all aspects of Phase Two, Houghton would need $8.5 million.  We currently have about $2.9 million in gifts and commitments.

Also inspiring the new changes is Houghton’s hope to gain state approval for a new engineering major.  “This is the one area that has consistently grown as far as attracting number of students.  The number one most desired major that we don’t have currently,” explained Karl Sisson.  “We know there’s an incredible history of the sciences.  We know that it’s very stable and that it’s a distinguishable strength of ours, and there is a potential for growth.  And that is why it rose to the surface as a priority for the campaign overall and for the college.”

“Engineering will allow us to prepare students for one of the most practical areas of service to our world,” said President Mullen.  “Just as Houghton graduates have been prepared for generations to serve in the professions of medicine, law, teaching, clergy—so it would be natural for us to be preparing engineers for service in both this country and around the world.”

If approval does come through to add an engineering major, the plan is to add a fifth floor onto Paine.  The math department would move to the new top floor, leaving the second for engineering.  The expectation is to hear back from the state on approval in early December of this year.  If the state does grant approval, plans will continue for the full, $8.5 million project including adding a new floor.  If not, work can start sooner on simply renovations, which would come in at about $5.5 million.

“The upgrades to the Bio and Chemistry area upgrade to the way our faculty wants to teach,” explained Chief Business Officer Dale Wright.  “Our professors have been involved all along the way and it creates a lot of what we call ‘teaching laboratories’.”  An informational brochure explained, “Science and math at Houghton use an experience-based approach to develop talented young people dedicated to using their God-give gifts to actively think about and solve problems with real-world applications.”  President Mullen commented, “This investment will communicate even more intentionally Houghton’s ongoing commitment to excellence in the sciences.”

She went on to add, “Houghton College has been a leader in Christian higher education in preparing graduates in the natural sciences since early in the 20th century.   In this moment, when there are more opportunities than ever for scientists to make a difference in our world for both good and ill, we want to ensure that Houghton continues to provide an excellent context for the sciences to flourish.“

When it comes to student retention rates, Houghton is choosing to focus less on the numbers and more on how many students choose to return to campus.

“Percentage of students withdrawing has gone up, but you have to check that in relation to enrollment” noted  Rob Pool, Vice President of Student Life. According to the data distribution site College Factual, Houghton College has freshman retention rates above the national average of 71.2%. In February, Houghton reported its retention rate for 2017 at a little over 86%, 15% higher than the national average. While this does still show a slight dip from the numbers reported for the period between 2012 to 2015, which ranged from 87-88%, this metric is up from 86 percent in the 2016 academic year.

Pool’s focus, however, has fixed on examining how Houghton kept students coming back.  “We had a pretty good rift last semester,” explained Pool at a recent SGA discussion forum on current retention rates.  “We had a lot of students who were concerned about how the college was responding to, developing, supporting all of our students, certainly our students from underrepresented populations.  How are we helping those students navigate, find support, feel integrated into the entire student population, and welcomed?  These are questions that we’ve been working with pretty intensely since last spring.”

Last semester, Houghton began considering changes that, according to Pool, were “much more programmatically based.  How are we allocating our resources?  How are we shaping our policy?  What do we need to be doing to make all of our students, especially students of color, feel more welcome?”

One of the answers was renovating the basement of the campus center to include an intercultural campus center.  “You’ll see programming down there.  You’ll see a rotation of faculty and staff holding office hours in that space,” explained Pool.  “It’ll be decorated differently—we’ll actually have furniture that people can lounge it.  Student organizations can have some meetings, do some planning, even some programming down there with small discussion groups.”

Outside of the events that student groups will be able to host in the new space, administration already has plans for special programming to celebrate the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  There will be no classes, but a full day’s worth of activities, speakers, and possibly social events will be incorporated.

Institutional policies will also undergo adjustments in the hopes of establishing a more welcoming campus environment. “The college is in the process of approving and adopting a new diversity statement,” said Pool. “We actually haven’t articulated yet what we want mean by diversity, what we want to include in that statement, and how we want to come together as a community around that.  So a pretty substantial diversity statement has been drafted.  Right now it’s in the Student Life Council. Then it’ll go to the Student Government and the faculty on to the Board of Trustees this year.”

Pool said he often hears students asking, “Why is it so important?  Why it so important that we have program space, faculty, staff, trainings?” In reply, he answered that issues of acceptance become “a compounding problem for our students from diverse backgrounds when we have a lack of faculty or staff who have innate common experiences and who have the life experience to provide and some council.”  He mentions that the administration’s newest initiative is to attract and retain faculty from a diverse background, despite the challenges of finding candidates for a position in s rural an area.

College Factual reportsed that the median cost to recruit a student is “$2,433 for private colleges and $457 for public colleges.” Each time Houghton loses a student, the college loses its return on investment simply because of the amount spent on recruiting them.

Another consequence of frequent dropouts is the affect it has on a school’s graduation rates and, subsequently, funding.  Despite the percentage of students who do not remain past their first year, the College Factual report confirmed that “Both the on-time (two or four years depending on the degree) graduation rate of 66.0% and the overall rate of 72.7% rank Houghton College among the best in the country.”  The majority of students who do not graduate chose to drop out.

Compared to expected national trends, students at Houghton “are graduating at a rate that is 15.3% higher. Therefore, Houghton College is among the highest performing schools nationwide in graduating students when their anticipated academic achievement is factored in.”

In recent months, Houghton has reported recognition already received from outside organizations. “Houghton College was recently ranked as having the fifth-best freshman retention rate for rural, four-year private nonprofit institutions, according to the Chronicle for Higher Education,” the college announced. Additionally, “Of the 118 member schools of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), Houghton ranked first among the 10 rural institutions included.”

A concert by The King’s Brass this past Friday kicked off this semester’s Artist Series, a collection of world-class concerts by visiting performers.

Ian Riley, Graduate Assistant, said that the series began “by the desire from our faculty to bring world-class musicians to Houghton to expose our students to various artists.”  He went on to add that “the Greatbatch School of Music is purposeful to provide a wide variety of styles, size, and instrumentation; by hosting these distinguished artists from a vast array of musical backgrounds, we are able to present unique, aesthetically satisfying music experiences to the greater Houghton community.”

The most recent artist series event, The King’s Brass, was an example of a large instrumental group. According to the group’s webpage, “For more than twenty years, The King’s Brass have performed over one hundred concerts each season with three trumpets, three trombones, a tuba, keyboards, and percussion.”

“In general, our distinguished artists fall into a few specific categories: large ensemble, chamber ensemble, or solo performance, with consideration given every year to the possibility of hosting an alumni artist,” Riley explained. “Again, the intention here is to represent the diversity of excellence in musical performance; vocal and instrumental, large and small, classical and contemporary, sacred and vernacular.”

This diverse selection of concerts has traditionally struck a popular chord with audiences. “The Artist Series concerts are currently attended by a fairly wide range of people,” reported Jessica Jennings, Constituent Programming and Event Specialist at Houghton. “A good number of community members purchase season tickets for Artist Series, as well as retired and current faculty and staff. Sometimes, depending on the concert, area churches or schools bring groups of adults and/or kids, and various concerts have attracted people from as far as Buffalo and Rochester.”

Jennings also noted that “Typically at least one of the concerts in the Artist Series schedule includes a Houghton grad.”  This year, Bethany Brooks ’01, a collaborative pianist who continued her education at the Royal Academy of Music in London, will perform at the Brooks-Nebyu Duo concert in February.

“Artist are selected first and foremost based on the excellence of their performance, their professional experience, and the caliber of the performance repertoire,” Riley said. He later added that the School of Music has always attempted to solicit “A diversity of performing groups who have achieved the highest level of performance” and “world-class musicians from at home and abroad, each of whom adds to the rich and varied harmony of musical life at Houghton College.”

Artist series scheduled for this semester also include the Martin-Meliton Piano Duo and Otis Murphy. The former specializes in Spanish two-piano pieces, and has earned rave reviews for their immaculate synchronization and Martin’s bold, original transcriptions. Otis Murphy, a professor of the saxophone, has performed as a soloist and taught clinics across the globe.

The concerts have long been a respected and cherished part of Houghton history. “When our older alumni return to campus, their stories always include these concerts,” Jennings said.  “For example, in the 60’s a large majority of the students attended each concert, and it was a popular date night option for budding romances.”

Tickets, which are typically $16 for adults aged nineteen or older, are free for students when they pick them up at the welcome desk during the week of the concert.