Meet our new Office Manager & Hope Alum ’12, Alison Lechner, as she shares how her experience at Hope shaped her career. How did your Hope education shape you? I feel very blessed to have earned a liberal arts education, and that has absolutely benefited me in my career post-graduation. I was a History and …
Continue reading “Transformed by Hope: An English & History Alum Returns”
Sarah (Lepard) Smith (’97) is a former secondary English and Psychology education major at Hope. Currently she works at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids. We asked Sarah to share some of her walk with us. Share your work path in your pre-Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital years. After graduation, I was hired as a …
Continue reading “Helping Sick Kids Just Be Kids: Alumni Interview with Sarah Smith ’97”
The glow of summer is fading and fall is preparing to blanket the campus, which means that once again we’ve arrived at a new semester… and new season of the Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series (JRVWS)! We’ve got a great mix of books and authors this fall, from middle grade fantasy to historical fiction. You …
Today we’re excited to interview recent grad Angelique Hines, class of ’18, who’s here to tell us a bit about her new life in Memphis! What have you been doing since leaving Hope, Angie? I actually spent my last semester of college doing an off-campus program as a means to get used to the workplace, …
Continue reading “One Class Can Change Everything: Alumni Interview with Angie Hines ’18”
Today’s post takes us all the way to Honduras, to hear from 2015 grad Laura Van Oss, who studied English for Education here at Hope. Laura, what are you doing now, and how did you wind up doing it? My graduating year, Nancy Cook in the Education department connected me with International School Tegucigalpa, a …
Continue reading ““Loving English in Honduras”: An Alumni Interview with Laura Van Oss ’15″
Happy New Year, and to all at Hope, welcome back for a new semester. This week we’re delighted to bring you an interview with RJ Casey, a Hope ’09 grad whose pursuit of English has taken him from Moby Dick and Walden Pond to the cutting edge of comics publishing! RJ, we can’t wait to hear …
Continue reading “Dreaming in Comics: Alumni Interview with RJ Casey ’09”
During a recent job interview at Baker Publishing Group in Ada, Michigan, the interviewer asked how I had become interested in the position of an acquisitions assistant. Trying to appeal to my audience, I made the classic joke, “Well, I was an English major. So eventually I had to ask myself the question, what am …
Continue reading ““How I Got My Start in Publishing”: An Alumni Feature by Melanie Burkhardt ’18”
Professor of English Kathleen Verduin shares her insights on a Hope icon, prior to the dedication of Muste’s sculpture on November 13 at 3pm at Van Wylen Library. Tell me you’ve heard of him: Abraham Johannes Muste (1885-1967), labor leader, world-renowned pacifist, and probably Hope’s most famous alumnus. Born in the Netherlands, Muste immigrated to …
Matthew Baker ’08 is coming to town, and the English department snagged an interview with our New York City-dwelling Hope alum and ascendant professional writer. Baker’s works include the middle-grade mystery novel If You Find This (2017) and the story collection Hybrid Creatures (2018), from which he’ll be reading at JRVWS on Thursday the 27th. …
Continue reading ““Writing Basically Constantly”: Alumni Interview with Matthew Baker ’08”
During the spring of 2014, I’d walk into the south entrance of Lubbers Hall and pass the oil painting of President and Mrs. Lubbers playing a diligent game of chess. I’d round the corner onto the stairs and proceed to the second floor where a cross listed English and philosophy course on Existentialism met each …
