Category: Stories In Focus

“Houghton has been a home for me and a place where I have grown and changed,” stated Emma Steele ’18 as she reflected on the past four years. As a major in business administration with minors in math, art, data science, Bible, and communication, Steele embodies what it looks like to be a passionate student-leader with a host of diverse interests.

Over the past three years Steele has been involved in her class cabinet, serving as vice president her sophomore and junior year, and the senior class president this year. She was also a Highlander leader and an EMT, running with the Houghton ambulance for the past two years.

One of Steele’s passions is student engagement on Houghton’s campus, since “there is so much more that Houghton has to offer than simply taking classes and getting a degree.” Her leadership roles also reflect her deep-seated desire to “reflect God’s love for me in the way that I interact with and help others.” These motives have manifested themselves in her leadership roles, and have led her to cultivate a deeper love for people. “Serving in these positions has fostered my love for people and desire to help them,” she said. “And, of course, working in these positions has helped me see Houghton’s needs as a campus in a much clearer light.” Her passions have “given me the drive I’ve needed in order to take on these positions and fulfill all that they require. It hasn’t always been easy with classes, friendships and life in general, but I would say that it has definitely been worth it!”

Steele considered it “an absolute joy” to serve as a Highlander leader. The role involved “working with another leader to guide a group of incoming students on a wilderness adventure in the Houghton woods and then the Adirondacks. Along the way, a Highlander leader not only needs to have the hard skills required in outdoor living, but also the soft skills required to help mentor the Highlander participants through this change in their lives. Working the ropes course and balancing decisions and viewpoints with my co-leaders were fantastic experiences for me.”

Steele would encourage underclassmen “to pursue any and all interests or passions they have energy for, and intentionally invest in the people around them. Houghton is this unbelievably cool opportunity where you can dive into areas of study that most people would never have the time to explore, and do it with the support of faculty that care deeply about their students holistic growth.” She added, “As a side note, I think all students should take a math class while at Houghton because our math faculty rock. And try to get involved in Highlander. If you missed the chance to do the actual program, take Outdoor Leadership Training from Coach Smalley!”

Following graduation, Steele will be getting married to Luke Duttweiler in May and moving into the Rochester area, where she is currently job hunting. “Even though it will be bittersweet for me to graduate, I feel confident in leaving that I am ready for what God has prepared next.”

“How do we have grace with one another in the midst of working toward creating—in the words of Dr. King—that beloved community where people respect one another?” That was the question posed by Rev. Harold Spooner, who, alongside Debbie Blue, has been conducting focus groups with international students and students of color throughout the past year.

Spooner, a Chicago native who graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary after attending Houghton, has served as Director of Diversity at the Stony Brook School on Long Island and as Vice President of Community Impact at Covenant Retirement Communities. He has helped a variety of churches and organizations develop policies and programs that are more ethnically diverse.

“As the college is attracting more students of color,” Spooner said, “the desire is to create an environment where all of the students will feel comfortable and safe, and will be able to benefit as much as possible from the Houghton experience. That being said,” he continued, “the reality is that institutions, across the board in the United States, aren’t always sensitive to the needs of people that don’t necessarily fit into the context of the majority culture.”

These talk-back sessions, according to Spooner, are born out of “the desire to both hear from the students of color, in terms of what their needs are as they relate to the Houghton: where they’ve had great experiences and where they’ve had frustrating experiences.

“What Debbie and I were asked to do was to come in, listen to these students of color (both international and domestic), and make recommendations to the institution in regards to how they can do a better job of creating an open and welcoming environment for all students. In moving both individually and collectively, the goal…is to create an environment where all of the students at Houghton College can get as much as possible out of the Houghton experience.”

“Majority culture, in general, looks at the world through their lens and says the world is supposed to work the way they see it,” he continued. “There’s no sensitivity to the possibility that there may be other views out there that don’t coincide with yours, and that certainly there are systems that do indeed work against people. They might work for you, but they don’t work for everybody else.”

While Spooner acknowledged that “there are issues of insensitivity, from both the institution and fellow students, which play into some frustrations from students of color,” he also seemed confident in the guiding ethos of a Christian liberal arts education. “When you come to a liberal arts campus, the idea is to be open to broader ideas,” he said. “You don’t have to agree with everything. That’s not the point. The point is actively listening, discussing, talking, hearing, empathy. Not discounting someone else’s experience because it’s not yours. Part of education is to hear and see what the world has to offer, engage with it, and then make your decisions based on engagement—not based on opinion without ever engaging. Our hope is that folks will be open to being educated.”

After consulting with students, Spooner and Blue submitted an action report to the Houghton administration. For the last few years, many students of color have asked administration to consider hiring a full-time Diversity Coordinator. Spooner and Blue came to the same conclusion during their conversations with students. “One of the things that we recommended was that the school look to hire a person whose specific function would be to zero in on the needs of international students and students of color,” Spooner said. “They would do that in conjunction with the Dean of Spiritual Life, because as we look at it, this is a fundamental issue of discipleship.

“To be more Biblical than that, to go to Genesis, we need to understand that all human beings are created in God’s image. You’ve got to think of all people as equal, created in God’s image, loved by God, and treated in the same way you would want to be treated,” Spooner continued. “So it is discipleship.”

Although both administration and students hope to make progress on these initiatives, Spooner expected roadblocks and obstacles in years to come. “This is a process,” he emphasized. “There will not be any point where we say ‘Oh, we’ve nailed it.’ We’ll do some things positively and make some mistakes. Students don’t have to agree on everything, but they respect each other and affirm the dignity we all have as children of God.”

He also explained how students can adopt a more nuanced perspective on complex issues: “You should critically look at the values that you’ve been taught. Don’t accept them as truth just because someone told them to you, or because you were raised like that.”

This spring, Houghton College will bid farewell to a number of retiring professors. These retirees include Carlton Fisher of the philosophy department, art professor Gary Baxter, Ronald Oakerson from the political science faculty, Linda Mills Woolsey of the English department, Judy Congden of organ and harpsichord and writing and literature professor James Zoller. After teaching generations of students, these professors shared some reflections on their experiences at Houghton College.

Linda Mills Woolsey began teaching at Houghton in 1999 and was already familiar with the institution, since both she and her husband, Dr. Stephen Woolsey, are Houghton alumni. Houghton’s commitment to learning influenced Mills Woolsey’s career as she explained, “Teaching undergraduates challenges you to keep alive intellectually, to keep growing and changing yourself, so what you offer your students is not stale, yesterday’s thinking. And it’s a good challenge because you wouldn’t want to just get stale.”

Not planning to grow stale in retirement, Mills Woolsey anticipates “the freedom to pursue some new projects and maybe learn some new things. I hope to pursue some hobbies like drawing and painting and maybe doing some volunteer work.” With all these new possibilities, she remarked with a smile, “I will not miss grading papers.”

However, Mills Woolsey expects that in her transition from Houghton she will miss “the interaction with the students without a doubt.” Mills Woolsey hopes “to be remembered as a challenging teacher but one who cares about students and tries to be fair to people, meeting them where they are.”

Likewise, Gary Baxter plans to be active in retirement. He looks forward to the opportunity “to visit family and explore this planet.” Beginning his Houghton career in 1979, Baxter has watched the evolution of his field of expertise in ceramics. He observed, “Critiques, which I believe are the essence of teaching art, used to be very difficult, yet now they are even harder with so much more information, unlimited processes and their new media, cutting edge art that has dulled in some cases, and the technology revolution.”

Despite these challenges, Baxter has continued to instruct countless students as well as to hone his own skills by annually creating a new work for the faculty art show. Over his years at Houghton, Baxter has especially enjoyed “watching students discovering and using their gifts.” He hopes to be remembered as “someone who gave himself to the students by making a serious art space where serious students could make serious work.”

Since arriving at Houghton in 1984, James Zoller has appreciated “that I can read what and as I want and then that I can shape that reading into courses that require me and students to figure out how to handle it, to determine what matters and how.” Also, Zoller values his interactions with students and faculty at Houghton. As he stated, “I have many friends here.”

In retirement, Zoller expressed that he is “looking forward to the absence of a rigid teaching schedule” which he hopes will enable him to travel and “to write new things and to pull together some of my unpublished stories, poems, articles, et cetera, into book form.” While he enjoys more freedom in his schedule, Zoller would like to be remembered “as a teacher who kept learning and who kept his attention on how his subjects and activities might improve us all as human beings.” He explained, “I think God is honored as much by how we handle our responsibilities and how we treat the people we have contact with as by how much we talk about Him.”

A life-long Wesleyan whose maternal grandparents met at Houghton College, Carlton Fisher joined Houghton in 1985. Contemplating his career, Fisher noted that “as I have become more and more comfortable in the classroom, teaching becomes more and more enjoyable.” His pleasure in teaching at Houghton has come in many forms, including “listening to myself talk,” “those relationships with a few students that happen and are very fulfilling,” and “lunches with Eckley and Oakerson.”

On the other hand, Fisher expects to find joy in retirement. He is especially eager for a closer “proximity to my grandsons. And just the excitement of newness. We plan to relocate, so there’s a bit of adventure about it which comes with a sort of uncertainty, too, about how much I will enjoy it. It’s kind of like a senior getting ready to graduate.”

As he “graduates” from teaching at Houghton, Fisher explains that for “students who have had me as a professor over the years, what I hope is that I will have said at least one thing that proved to be helpful.” Regardless of how he is remembered, however, Fisher can ultimately conclude that his Houghton career was “fun. It’s a great way to be able to spend your life doing something that you really enjoy doing.”

Throughout his past four years at Houghton, Andrew Hutton ’18 has learned what it means to be a student leader. Every year, he has learned more about the importance of being involved in the Houghton community, and has discovered what that means for himself.

During his sophomore year, Hutton was involved with Journey’s End Tutoring (JET), an opportunity available to Houghton students who have a desire to teach English to refugees in Buffalo each week. “I was going to Buffalo once a week on Saturday mornings to help teach English to refugees that have maybe been in the states for only three months or so,” Hutton explained. “For a lot of them, they’re still learning English,” Hutton said. “We tried to help them integrate into the culture.”

This past year, Hutton stepped into the vice president position at SGA, where his main role is assisting the president, Emma Steele ’18, and communicating within the SGA council and with other departments in the school. Currently, SGA is planning senior week activities, including Senior SPOT. Hutton added, “I can’t say anything about that.”

In his experience with these two positions, Hutton found that he is “so passionate about helping people—especially refugees. It’s so rewarding to be able to teach something to someone and to help them learn.”

Hutton also joined College Choir this past fall. The group visited and performed in various churches and high schools in the northeast over their February break tour.

“I also volunteer at the fire department,” Hutton said. “I joined that last year.” His involvement at the fire department includes reporting for calls and attending weekly meetings. Hutton was inspired to volunteer at the fire department by a few of his cousins who are also firefighters, and also his brother, a Houghton graduate, who was involved in the EMT program. “They’re always looking for student applicants,” he added.

As a biology major, Hutton has been involved in various research projects. “Last spring, I was conducting research with Dr. Wolfe. We were measuring chloride levels in nearby Allegheny lakes,” he said. “In the spring, snowmelt and rain can cause road salt (NaCl) to flush into watersheds and accumulate in nearby lakes and rivers. Chloride levels in these lakes can fluctuate depending on how harsh the winter was. Myself, Alyson DeMerchant ‘18, and Evan Stern ‘18 presented our findings at the Rochester Academy of Science at St. John Fisher College in Rochester.”

This semester, Hutton is conducting research with Dr. Poythress, as well as Esther Udo ’18, Sarah Vande Brake ’18, Zachary Fisher ’18, Keegan Frenya ‘19, and Tess Taggart ‘18. “We are testing a therapeutic method of electrical stimulation to heal wounded smooth muscle tissue,” he said. Hutton and the rest of his group will present their research on April 23.

Hutton wants to attend school to become a physician’s assistant, but not before he takes a gap year after graduation in May to gain experience working in a hospital or a clinic. He plans on moving to Scotland for the year to work and teach piping.

During his freshman year, Hutton admitted that he wished he had gotten involved on campus more. When asked what advice he would give, Hutton said, “Don’t overextend yourself, but definitely once you get settled, don’t be afraid of signing up for stuff like jobs, clubs, anything. And stay in touch with your family.”

Yesterday, a group of English and writing students embarked on a trip to Butler University’s Undergraduate Research Conference. The group will spend Friday at the conference before visiting the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing on their way back to Houghton.

“I’m writing a paper centered around environmentalism in fiction,” said Sarah Vande Brake ’19, one of the presenting students. “I chose to focus on the writers Wendell Berry and Barbara Kingsolver, who both address serious environmental issues in their fiction. It’s also worth mentioning that they are both writing about the same geographical area—rural Appalachia—and how this landscape is changing as farming practices change. Berry and Kingsolver come to different conclusions about what it means to practice environmental responsibility, but they agree that radically inclusive communities are the place to start…their characters evaluate their actions differently than someone who only thinks about human communities.”

Membership does mean slightly different things to these writers because of the way they imagine ideal community structure. To Berry, it’s a rural farming community that uses traditional practices. To Kingsolver, it’s more flexible. Stewardship evolves depending on current scientific understanding and practical/local needs.

Berry defines membership in terms of tradition and experience because this gives his communities security. His characters can know that generations down the line will share the same purpose of promoting health for land and people.

“Berry might be more realistic about human nature, but he’s a lot less accessible in many ways,” Vande Brake continued. “Kingsolver’s membership is flexible and people can change the structure itself for the better. Her novel Prodigal Summer is interesting because of the ways it shows communities experiencing change. It’s a hopeful picture, if a little didactic.”

Rachel Zimmerman ’18 will present a paper on four of novels of Edith Wharton’s novels: The House of Mirth, Summer, Ethan Frome, and The Age of Innocence. “I’m looking at flawed and broken romantic relationships, particularly marriage,” Zimmerman said. “[Wharton] tends to portray them all as pretty hopeless, but with glimpses of stability and hope that are achievable.”

Zimmerman hopes to focus on the “way that novels and [Wharton’s] life interweave to reveal her vision of the potential for stability and hope in relationships.”

Colleagues Sarah Madden and Olivia Richardson will present, respectively, “The Dystopian Novel and Human Nature” and “Characterizing Evil Through Transformation in Milton’s and Lewis’s Fiction.”

Laurie Dashnau, professor of writing, has supervised the Undergraduate Research Conference groups for the past three years. “The greatest challenge for me has been to shift my thinking from that of a subject matter expert to serving as a mentor and professor and overseer, branching out into areas considerably beyond my expertise,” she shared. Dashnau has enjoyed “responding as a near novice reader and listener” to foundational academic texts, which she believes helps students “think about the intersection between graduate level work and audiences that have little to no familiarity with the material.”

Dashnau continued, saying that it was “extremely rewarding to see students devise their own syllabus and see how syllabus is constantly being shaped and reshaped.

Although textual analysis in the humanities is sometimes viewed as subordinate to scientific research, Dashnau lamented the “erosion of primary text research” in universities across the nation. “I’m particularly grateful that we’ve had these three years,” she added, “to think about undergraduate research on an even wider scale with students from across the country. The number of majors in English and writing is rapidly declining, and very few students outside emerging educators are making a commitment to these majors. It’s very easy to think about undergraduate research in the sciences, but research in writing and literature takes us back to the root of the word. As Zora Neale Hurston said, research is ‘poking and praying with purpose.’ It requires having an eye out for details that have been overlooked, or for an argumentative edge that hasn’t been fully explored.”