Category: Campus

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.”

“Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness.” So begins world-renowned Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s seminal poem “Kindness.” This Friday, Oct. 27, Nye will visit Houghton College to share her insights on the art of poetry writing and her experience as a child of many cultures.

Though Nye makes her current home in San Antonio, Texas, she has frequently described herself as “the wandering poet.” And for good reason. The child of a Palestinian refugee father and a German-Swiss American mother, she spent her early years in San Antonio and Ferguson, Missouri, playing with African- and Mexican-American children. When her father’s mother became ill, he brought their family back in the West Bank, to a house on the tumultuous road that stretched between Jerusalem and Ramallah. It was at the age of six that she wrote her first poems, which focused on everyday subjects like friends and animals. Since then, her writing and speaking has carried her through Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

This perennial fascination with heritage and obsession with the ordinary unfolds itself in Nye’s poetry. In her writing, Nye frequently lends a freshly surprising perspective to the humdrum, powerfully evoking the emotions and nostalgia that accompany familiar people, comfortable places, and household objects. “I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole,” she writes, “not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.”

Embracing a diversity of subjects—from the cultural functions of storytelling to the role of the writer in a fragmented contemporary society—Nye’s poetry is known for its unornamented language and striking imagery.

In an interview with The Observer in 2014, Nye reminisced on her connection to Ferguson and the West Bank, two epicenters of social and racial conflict. “I felt like if I didn’t say something, what kind of writer am I?” she said. “Maybe the connection is slight, but I think the connection of domination and injustice is strong.” By focusing on the similarities between Jew and Palestinian, white and black, she aims to spark conversations about the loves we share.  

Naomi Shihab Nye’s books of poetry include Poems of the Middle East, Red Suitcase, You & Yours, and Words Under the Words. She has also published several essay collections, including Never In A Hurry and Are You Okay? More recently, she has begun to move into children’s literature with her children’s novels Habibi and Going Going, and her picture books Baby Radar and Famous. In all, she has authored or edited thirty volumes of poetry and fiction, and is currently working on a collection called Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners.

Over the years, Shihab Nye has been honored by many prominent arts organizations. She is Guggenheim Fellow, a Lannan Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow (through the Library of Congress); and the recipient of four Pushcart Prizes and a Lavan Award. She was recently named a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Nye has also made a name for herself as an educator, traveling around the world to lead lectures and workshops on the craft of poetry-writing and the nuances of cross-cultural communication.

“Nye’s ethic of care and compassion never ceases to inspire and challenge,” Houghton professor of writing Dr. Laurie Dashnau said. “I need to help others, my students especially, to experience ‘the tender gravity of kindness.’”

Students, faculty, and staff are invited to enjoy lunch with Shihab Nye at 12-12:45 p.m. in the Lennox Dining Room, immediately followed by a question and answer session in the Center for the Arts Recital Hall. A select group of English and writing students will also participate in a poetry workshop led by Nye later in the afternoon.

Houghton’s long-celebrated New Vision Week will begin on Monday, October 23rd and last until the 25th. New Vision Week gives students an opportunity to explore missions and learn about the different forms missions can take. Kylie Gibbs ’18, a co-organizer of New Vision Week, emphasized the universal nature of missions in the life of Christians. “It’s important that people recognize that their mission field can be anywhere…you can be a chemist and God can use that,” she said. She added that through chapels, workshops, and special events, New Vision Week will provide a chance for students from diverse backgrounds and majors to find unity.

This year’s New Vision Week speaker is Mick Veach, who is a pastor at Mosaic Midtown Church in Detroit, Michigan. According to the church’s website, Veach’s commitment to share the love of God has led him to “smuggle Bibles, feed lepers, and work and live amongst a Muslim people group.” Veach will be speaking in chapel on Monday and Wednesday.

Monday night will feature the Culture Fair according to event organizer Courtney Zhang ’18. This event will involve food, music, henna, and crafts, and will give international students an opportunity to “share their culture,” Zhang said. Students will prepare traditional Chinese and Korean food for everyone to sample, which Zhang noted is always one of the greatest attractions of the event. Co-organizer Briana Bellan ’19 said that one of the things she values most about New Vision Week is the opportunity to “see all the various cultures that our student body shares and represents.” She continued, “If someone is looking to engage in conversation [with the missions representatives] but the line at the mission organization tables seems intense, the Culture Fair is a great way to engage in more relaxed conversation.” The Culture Fair will take place in the Campus Center from 8:00-9:00.

On Tuesday, workshops will be offered for alternative chapel credit. Gibbs announced there will be a total of 6 workshops offered, some from 11:00-12:00 and others from 3:00-4:00. The topics of these workshops will range from “how to find a mission field or missions organization” to “missions in a Muslim context” Gibbs said, adding that she is particularly excited for the latter. Bellan said that when she was a freshman, the workshops drew her into New Vision Week and gave her a chance to “begin some conversations and journeys.”

On Wednesday night, there will be a prayer and worship night, which Bellan said is a “fairly recent creation.” She continued, “We started it last year in place of the usual documentary and felt that it went over really well. I’m looking forward to attending that as we close out our ‘week.’”

Throughout New Vision Week, 13 missions representatives will be available to students interested in learning more about missions. Gibbs said that these representatives will speak in classes throughout the week, and each will have a booth in the Campus Center. Gibbs emphasized that the representatives are eager to interact with students of all kinds and share their experiences. “We encourage students to talk to the reps whether at their booths or over a meal or coffee,” she said. Some of the representatives “have people coming with them who are interested in business and science, so this is not just to appeal to students majoring in missions or intercultural studies,” Gibbs said. While many of the representatives are returning and are “excited to catch up with students that they knew from previous years,” the organization Teach Beyond will be represented for its first year, according to Gibbs.

New Vision Week will provide an opportunity to “learn to use our gifts for missions, wherever we are, however old we are,” Gibbs said. Bellan expressed hope that New Vision Week’s approach to missions will involve a diverse body of students, saying “We want to be intentional in recognizing the value in [diversity]–and not just this week, but starting conversations, relationships and outlooks that will place diversity and difference in a positive light for many, many years to come.” She continued, “I’m looking forward to all that is in store for this upcoming New Vision Week, but I’m most excited to see the way that God is glorified through it, and continues to guide journeys and hearts for His purpose.”

On October 26, 27, and 28, Houghton Lyric Theatre will be presenting The Old Maid and the Thief and The Telephone. These two one-act comedic operas are directed by Prof. Amanda Cox and will be performed by Kingsley Kolek ‘18, Lauren Grifoni ‘19, Daniel Bussey ‘20, Alessia Paolini ‘20, Ellenore Tarr ‘18, Aniela Perez ‘18, Sissi Lu ‘18, and Joshua Ellis ‘21, with piano by Elizabeth Liddick.

The two one-act comedic operas were composed in the early twentieth century by Gian Carlo Menotti. Originally written to be broadcasted over radio, the two shows are designed to be appreciated by the common person who could not afford to go to the theatre. The results are gripping, dramatic, and hilarious shows that are fueled by modern music.

The Old Maid and the Thief tells the story of an old maid, Miss Todd, and her housemaid, Laetitia. When a good-looking man named Bob wanders into town, the two convince him to stay with them. Miss Pinkerton, the town gossip, has heard rumors of an escaped convict in the area and warns Miss Todd that she may be harboring him. Meanwhile, Laetitia falls in love with Bob, but convinces Miss Todd that he is in love with her so that she will continue to allow him to stay with them. Eventually, Bob and Latitia run away together, but not before the true thief is revealed.

In The Telephone, Ben comes to visit Lucy at her apartment, hoping to ask for her hand in marriage before he leaves on a trip. Ben’s attempts to propose to Lucy, however, are interrupted by incessant phone calls. As Ben tries to pull Lucy’s attention away from her telephone long enough to pop the question to her, he becomes more and frustrated. This opera is full of suspense and hilarious moments that build up to a delightfully ironic conclusion.

The Old Maid and the Thief and The Telephone provide a unique opportunity for some of Houghton’s music majors. Lauren Grifoni said, “Being a part of this production is such a delight. Under the direction of Professor Cox, our cast has grown both as actors and as singers. The music has been very challenging but everyone has worked so hard to learn it and bring it to performance level.”

I’m a Lyric Theatre newbie, and I’ve appreciated working with Professor Cox and my talented castmates. They’ve been a huge source of encouragement for me as I’ve stepped into something out of my comfort zone, and I love witnessing their enthusiasm and positivity. I’m excited to portray a pretty nasty character in The Old Maid and the Thief. Mrs. Todd isn’t exactly likable, but she certainly has a lot of passion. It’s just hidden behind her knitting.

Tickets are only $5 for Houghton students and the shows will be at 7:30pm in the Center for the Arts next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday!