What Does a Professor Do During the Long Summer Months?

By Dr. Gloria Tseng, History Department

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“Are you on vacation now?” my friendly neighbors often ask during the summer months. True, the academic year ends when I send in the final grades for my classes in May. Then I enter my gardening phase, which is late spring and early summer, when I’m hopeful for the new growing season and before the Midwestern sun demonstrates its full force. Yet, the reading and writing that are integral to the academic life does not cease. In fact, once final grades are in I turn my attention to the writing of conference papers for presentation at two annual conferences usually held at the end of June or the beginning of July.

The Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity holds its yearly meetings at the University of Edinburgh and Yale University, with the two universities alternating as hosts every year. The Andrew F. Walls Centre for the Study of Asian and African Christianity also hosts an annual conference, which takes place at Liverpool Hope University in Liverpool. This has been my yearly ritual for the past eight years or so: almost two months of frantic reading and writing, followed by attendance and presentations at these conferences, and then more (albeit less frantic) reading and writing back in Holland as I continue working on a manuscript on Christianity in twentieth-century China, an ongoing project of mine for a good number of years now. This is the life of a history professor in a nutshell: one never graduates!

I like to write in the quiet of my study at home. My desk is in front of a window that looks out to a big maple tree and my vegetable garden in the backyard, and my computer is in front of another window, which looks out to the street. Sometimes I see neighbors walking their dogs; sometimes I see the mailman making his round. The writing isn’t all that glamorous, but it’s the substance of the profession. The traveling to conferences, especially those on the other side of the Atlantic, on the other hand, is always a highlight of my summers. Presenting one’s work to other scholars—some from both sides of the Atlantic, and others from as far afield as Asia, Africa, and Australia—and learning from them provide a necessary stimulus to my own work. “Iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17).

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This year, however, was special. I did something I had never done before, almost extravagant. The Yale-Edinburgh meeting was to take place in Edinburgh this summer, and my cousin Jon, a newly minted MD, wanted to tag along. We decided to rent a cottage on the Isle of Skye, an island of some 600 square miles in northwest Scotland, for eight days. I persuaded a British friend to take us in a rented car. We experienced the full range of Scottish weather—rain, mist, wind, and two whole days of sunshine. The setting was fit for Wagner’s operas. We hiked up muddy and stony mountain trails where sheep wandered at will. We chatted with an old shepherd whose affection for his beasts was evident. The memory of this shepherd remained vivid in my mind for a long time, for he brought to my mind the One who called himself the Good Shepherd—

The Good Shepherd of Skye

Windswept, silver-grey hair,
Wrinkled, weather-beaten,
A ready smile, rough hands,
Accustomed to labor,
Tattered at the elbows–
“I am the Good Shepherd.”

A life of wanderings,
Tales waiting to be heard–
T’was to men such as he,
The angles first announced,
“Glory to God above,
And peace to man on earth.”

Lord, grant me eyes to see,
Thee in this humble man,
My Redeemer and Friend.

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This summer I brought back with me the memory of my unexpected encounter with the Gospel message on the Isle of Skye. I was humbled and moved as never before by the mystery of the Incarnation.

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Student Feature: Joshua Kam

By Josh Kam

2016-07-31_15.17.59Every college freshman has a Dreaded Question. The sort of thing your roommate’s mom asks almost before you’ve shaken hands, that the Michigan-friendly cashiers on 8th Street will ask to start conversation.

What’s your major?

But whatcha gonna do with a major like that?”

“Are you dating?”

“Like, I know you’re not white, but like, what’s your . . . heritage?”

For me, my Dreaded Question has been the same since the first grade: “Where are you from?”

A hard, simple question. And frankly, I’m never really sure how to answer. Does my new friend want a fact sheet of my life history? Do they just want to know we have something in common? Or do they want to really know me as a person? Lord knows. Which elevator speech do I make?

I’m a third-culture kid. Yes, like Cady Heron, but minus the seamless assimilation. I’m someone who has grown up in between countries, between languages, and between cultures. I’m not only American. I’m not only Malaysian. I’m somewhere in between: a third culture.  I was born in Montana, in the shadow of the Rockies, to Malaysian Chinese parents (which is, colloquially, kind of like being both Polish and Jewish. One’s a nationality, one’s an ethnicity).  I grew up both in Montana and in Malaysia, and have spent most of more life flapjacking between the languages, cuisines, and cultures that have now become my identity.

We spoke English at home, but when R-rated family gossip was involved my parents switched to Cantonese. My mother’s family spoke Hokkien and English, but when I went out to a supermarket in Kuala Lumpur, we spoke Malay or Mandarin. But even English is a weird stream to navigate for me. When I’m in Michigan I find myself sliding into a creamy, nasal dialect of standard American English, but when I’m in Malaysia my diction takes on a rather British-Commonwealth color. And so it goes.

But back to the Dreaded Question. I never know what to say. How much do they want to know? If I reveal that I am “the Other,” will I only ever be the Other in our relationship? If I only mention what we have in common, will they ever understand me when we don’t have values or childhood cultures in common? More often than not, I say, “Montana,” and smile breezily. It’s not a lie. I’m just not sure which truth you’d like to know.

Which also perhaps explains why I’m a history major.  It’s my answer to my Dreaded Question. It’s a way of plugging into the many, many voices of my Pasts. It’s a way of connecting the dots, and finding continuity in a story that’s been unfurling literally since records began. And TCK or not, we all have many pasts, and heritages that inform who we are. We “just” as Americans have political roots in the North European Protestant work ethic, in the Pagan Greco-Roman classics, and a cultural inheritance from all the peoples who have stumbled on our hunk of land between Spain and China.  That’s a lot to unpack all by itself!

The point is, we are the stories that have made us, and my major is about keeping those stories intact and relevant. Taking history at Hope has forced me to really evaluate the stories I tell myself, to weigh them in beside the many, many stories that built me. Under a history scholarship, I was even able to further my love of travel and my desire for origins, studying abroad in Athens, Greece, the heart of Western Civ as we know it.  This summer, I conducted research on a swashbuckling Malay epic at the University of Michigan. Again, it’s all about connecting the dots, of piecing together identities, times, places, loves, and memories. And no matter where you’re from, knowing your story grounds you. It’s a versatile, portable, marketable asset. It’s a life skill everyone needs. And Hope has been a huge part of that journey for me; the road is long but I am grateful.

Love,
Josh Kam

Collaborative Research

By Lauren Janes

This summer I had the joy of leading a team of students in collaborative research to help launch my next book project, The Modern History of Global Food.  The book will feature a series of case studies exploring how we can better understand important world historical themes by analyzing foods that moved around the globe. The students worked together for five weeks: gathering sources, building a digital bibliography, taking notes and beginning analysis.

studentsEach student researched a different example of these historic global foods. Noah Switalski ’18 explored how the humble potato has changed diets and societies across the globe after its “discovery” by Spanish conquistadors in Peru. Natalie Cook ’18 examined the central role of sugar in the Atlantic slave trade, with a particular focus on the role of slave women on Caribbean sugar plantations. Margaret Dickinson ’17 researched the development of curry as a cultural exchange between British colonizers and many different groups across the Indian subcontinent. Leland Cook ’17 worked on the long history of rice, with a focus on how global food aid has sometimes been a form of neo-colonialism.  All together, these four case studies show a history of growing global connectivity from the crossing of the Atlantic into the twenty-first century.  Cullin Smith ’17 also worked with us for a few weeks. He helped to shape the overall project by analyzing the existing literature on global food history.

IMG_4176While we worked mostly with secondary sources, we also spent a few days at the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The archive is a rich treasure trove of cookbooks and other food-related documents including promotional materials dating back to the early nineteenth century.

This project gave the student an opportunity to work together to explore global history from new angles, and it helped me get going on my next book.  This was true student-faculty collaborative research.  We are grateful to the Pagenkopf History Research Fund for funding this project.

The students will present their work to the Hope and Holland communities this spring, and you’ll be able to read more about this culinary approach to world history when The Modern History of Global Food is published.

Welcome, First-Year Students!

Today’s the day we’ve all been waiting for! Our 2016-2017 first-year students move in.

We’re so excited for a brand new school year and lots of fun changes!

This year we’re pleased to welcome a new Office Manager, Raquel Niles. She’ll be hitting the ground running, so please excuse an interruption or two to our regularly scheduled blog posts.

But never fear! We’ll continue to post regularly through the transitions and we’ll be doing an introduction to Raquel soon!

Student Feature: Cullen Smith

By Cullen Smith, ’17

20160618_142412I believe that looking into the past gives the observer a chance to understand what was then little understood.

This summer, with the help of the Mellon Scholars and the History Department (and with my advisor Dr. Natalie Dykstra from the English Department), I had the opportunity to look at Expo 76, a proposal by Boston’s city planners in 1976 to create a massive “urban experiment” along the banks of Columbia Point, to celebrate the nation’s 200th birthday and the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. It would involve filling in over 400 acres of the Boston Harbor for thousands of new housing units, building a 1400-foot-long by 60-foot-high bridge across the harbor. The revenue from the Bicentennial celebration could have run past a billion dollars.84150008A

What led me to this project was an initial interest to look at Vietnam Era society on a grander scale than I had done in Holland the summer prior. By comparative means, I thought my research last summer had prepared me for looking at Vietnam Era America on a grander scale.

Because when I was knocking on the door of a Special Forces veteran in the summer of 2014 for my first Mellon Summer research project, I had little knowledge of what a veteran community looked like, and in a reciprocal sense, what that community meant to a veteran. This was especially noted when a very large German Shepard who answered only to “Fang” came to the door to greet me.

As a whole, my summer research from last year resulted in a four-part YouTube series on Dave Fetters, the Special Forces veteran I interviewed, who had served in the Vietnam War near the Cambodian border. I had utilized several software applications, mot notably iMovie and Audacity, to produce the video series. It took hours going through 6 hours of interviews, and hundreds of pictures that Dave had given me permission to use for the series.

84150030_SmallAVideo production and interviewing, as it turns out, are completely separate from hardcore archival research.

My time in Boston, spread out from June 10th to June 24th, was an absolute whirlwind of a process, none of which involved any form of iMovie or Audacity. The best thing about Boston was that I worked in a different library every day, often doing something completely different that day than I was the last. I hopped from the Boston Public Library to Harvard’s Houghton Library to the Schlesinger Library to Northeastern Library, all within the same week. I would dig through mounds of papers related to the Boston Redevelopment Authority (Boston’s city planners), Mayor Kevin White and his personal papers, and issues of the Bicentennial Times from 9am to 5am, come home, analyze it, and then wash, rinse, and repeat.

At the same time, I was also working as a webmaster for Professor Dykstra’s Boston Summer Seminar, where teams of researchers from the intercollegiate Great Lakes College Association travel to work in various Boston archives. We would often be discussing what needed to be done with the seminar’s website, and then “switch hats” to talk about the what story I was developing with the archival materials I had found.

During my time in Boston, I was often confused as to the story I was writing. I think I found my best piece of solace when I found a 1969 letter from a middle schooler from Delaware asking about why the Bicentennial Expo was not to be held in Boston. For his conclusion: “Boston is where the fighting took place (during the Revolutionary War), so why not?”

It was from letters like this, expressing the confusion of the times and seeking simple answers, that I found my own story.

Screen Shot 2016-07-31 at 3.37.56 PMThe story I wrote was partially about failure. Boston’s city planners proposed the megastructure thinking it would solve the social ills of their day, and instead received the disapproval of the entire city, especially South Boston, on the grounds that it would negatively impact the status quo.

In another sense, however, the story that I found was about redemption. In the midst of race riots and a recession marred with massive inflation, Boston’s leadership turned the entire city into an exhibit called Boston 200. Independence Day in 1976 would see over a quarter million Bostonians flood the Charles River Esplanade to watch fireworks and activities on a perfect summer day.

With my paper and accompanying website in the final stages, there is still much of the story about Boston’s bicentennial that I have yet to fill.

20160620_153910What I can say thus far is that Boston has given me the chance to work with exceptional staff, live and laugh with an exceptional host family, and study in some of the nation’s top archives, all the while completing work that I (literally) spent hours dreaming about.

I understood little when I came to Boston, and still recognize that my job as a historian is not done. There are always stories to tell, and the bicentennial has many more. What I can say is that as a historian, it is both a pleasure and a privilege that I am able to step outside my own existence and into someone else’s. It is only then when you can begin to understand.

Alumni Feature: Lou Canfield

By Lou Canfield

LTCI graduated from Hope College with a double major in History and Political Science in 2001 and have worked for the City of Grand Rapids since 2006. I manage the Design & Development Department, which is responsible for planning and zoning, development review, permits and inspections. My work responsibilities are wide ranging including finance and budgeting, human resources, communications, technology administration, policy development and supervision. This is a busy time for our department. The fabric of Grand Rapids is changing rapidly.

I enjoy my work. I think I am an effective organizational leader and our department has a significant role in our community’s success.

My study of History at Hope College helped to prepare me for my career in government administration.

Explaining how it did so isn’t straightforward. I didn’t study local government at Hope. I didn’t learn my day-to- day work activities at Hope. Much of that I learned on the job–from mentors, or by figuring it out, or by creating my own way of doing things. And all of that is built on the foundation of my Hope education.

As a History major, I developed cognitive skills, insights and an understanding of our shared humanity that have served me well in my work. I learned how to ask good questions. I was challenged to consider a broader range of answers than I had before. I learned how to select a tentative answer, how to test it and how to advocate for it. I learned that I could change my own opinions–even long-held ones–based upon new information and insights. I learned how to communicate my ideas persuasively in writing. History professors challenged me to improve my skills in all of those areas. In doing so, they thought me to think differently–and better–than I had before.

This has led to better insights in my work. I accept that the professional challenges I face are not unique. People in similar roles have faced similar challenges for centuries. What are our priorities? How do we motivate people both inside and outside the organization? How much regulation is right in our context? How do we use our current technologies to meet individual, organizational, and societal needs? There is no “right” answer to such questions, but continuing to wrestle with them helps to keep my work interesting, leads me to better insights than I would otherwise have and keeps me focused on serving people rather than just completing a checklist of daily tasks.

If all of this sounds rather general, it is–in the best possible way. Our world needs generalists and I’m proud to be one. Some careers demand and are enhanced by a relentless focus on a single discipline, but government administration isn’t one of those. I am regularly involved in hiring decisions and am consistently drawn to candidates who demonstrate critical thinking and creativity, regardless of their specific training. Employers can easily teach tasks and skills, but we can’t teach employees how to think–colleges are supposed to do that. Hope College does! And the History Department does that particularly well. My experience as a Hope History major prepared me to be a better person and a better administrator and I remain grateful for the History Department faculty members who had such an important impact on my life.

Student Feature: Jonathan Tilden

By Jonathan Tilden, ’17

wedding (2)I researched for the department in the summer of 2015. I heard about the opportunity while in an American history class with Dr. Petit and was immediately interested. Dr. Petit, the faculty member who would be overseeing this project, was interested in constructing a website about the United War Work Campaign of 1918, an interdenominational effort to raise funds for American soldiers abroad and at home. The topic intrigued me and I had a few conversations with Dr. Petit about what the position of (paid) summer researcher entailed.  I filled out a brief application and was accepted into a four-student research team.

uwwc-studentsBy June of 2015, we were on campus doing preliminary research on the different organizations involved in the United War Work Campaign. Each of us took a certain area of the research and dove into finding and reading all of the secondary sources about that area we could. In late July, we flew out to Washington D.C. to meet up with Dr. Petit. We spent a week at the Library of Congress, analyzing primary sources about the United War Work Campaign we couldn’t access elsewhere.  We spent the next few weeks building, editing and tweaking the website.

I’d recommend the experience. Being a researcher meant spending quite a bit of time by yourself, reading and writing. At the same time, we frequently met throughout the day for quick meetings about where the research was leading us and what was next in the process. I really enjoyed the combination of solitary research and teamwork. Naturally, the Library of Congress was the highlight of the trip, for a variety of reasons. For one, the primary sources allowed us to really get a “behind-the-scenes” look at our topic. I particularly enjoyed seeing some of the propaganda posters that we had seen online prior. I realized after seeing these posters in person just how effective of tools they really were. And that’s something that books or the internet can’t convey.

Reading Teddy Roosevelt’s personal papers was an experience I will never forget. We also had the opportunity to get to know several other research teams that were also at the Library of Congress through a Great Lakes College Association grant. I roomed with two guys from Pakistan. They took me to a Pakistani restaurant in the area and we talked a lot about Pakistan and their research on Islamophobia in the U.S. This was an experience I wouldn’t have had without signing up for this research opportunity.

Research also gave me the opportunity to develop a close working relationship with a professor. At the end of my summer research, Dr. Petit asked me to be her Teaching Assistant for a seminar. This was yet another opportunity I wouldn’t have without my time as a researcher. I think one of Hope’s greatest attributes is the potential for close relationships. This extends to all members of the campus, but faculty-student relationships can be really rewarding. Working closely with professors is extremely rewarding and a lot of schools don’t allow undergraduates to work under a professor’s guidance. My research experience was very worthwhile and I’d encourage any undergraduate to look into summer research.

New Department Chair: Introduction

By Jeanne Petit

JeannePetitAs a new chair of the Department of History, I feel that I am standing on the shoulders of giants. I have worked under three fabulous chairs during my time at Hope College: Dr. Albert Bell; Dr. Janis Gibbs; and Dr. Marc Baer. Their leadership elevated our department in many areas, particularly the expansion of student/faculty research collaboration, the globalization of our curriculum and the consideration of the relationship between teaching, scholarship and faith. All of these chairs have participated in creating a strong historical community at Hope College, and I look forward to building on their achievements.

I wanted to convey some of the priorities we have as a department over the next few years. One of our main goals is to be more intentional in helping our students think through their vocations, both as history students and in their lives beyond Hope College. We have always talked with students about how the skills of a historian—critical reading, clear writing, and thorough research—are building blocks for a wide variety of careers. We are working on ways to have our students do more intentional reflection, both in the classroom and out, on the ways their historical training relates to their calling in life. Moreover, we want to help students find more opportunities to explore their calling through internships, job shadows, and independent research projects.

At the same time, we want our students to see the study of history as valuable beyond building a career. Historical thinking involves understanding the complexity of change over time as well as the importance of understanding multiple points of view. It makes us better citizens, community members and people of faith. During these stressful times, we hope our majors can bring much-needed historical perspective to understanding the challenges of our nation and world.

I hope you will read our blog over the next year and see the wide variety of experiences and ideas in which our faculty, students, and alumni are engaged. I would also like to put out an invitation to our alumni. If you have insights about the value of your history major or minor that you would like to share, please contact me. We would love to have you write a blog post for us.

Alumni Feature: Rachel Syens

By Rachel Syens

rachel colorI’ve always loved history. I was the kid who made her friends watch Gladiator over the latest rom-com, stayed up way too late devouring novels like The Scarlet Pimpernel, and insisted on taking summer vacations to historic Williamsburg. I made it all the way to the State level of National History Day with a one-woman play I wrote and performed about Spartacus (yes, you read that correctly), and I helped create a film for my eighth grade algebra class about time travel.

I have always loved to read about history, write about history, and especially see history, but I didn’t know how to translate that infatuation with the past into a career.

My time at Hope College helped me to dig deep into my passion, and I’m proud to call myself a historian today.

You may be asking yourself at this point: what do you do as a historian? I’m a Public Historian. I specialize in researching and presenting history in the nonacademic realm – think museums, historic sites, and cultural heritage. When I first started at Hope, I was in love with all of history – I hated when my friends would ask about my favorite time period because I just couldn’t choose one! The History Department at Hope was wonderful because I was able to take so many classes on different time periods and places in history. I studied the Reformation in Europe, 1930s Latin America, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and Reconstruction-era America.

Rachel Syens on a study abroad weekend trip to London with fellow Hope grads Molly (Mead) Towne and Maggie Almdale.
Rachel Syens on a study abroad weekend trip to London with fellow Hope grads Molly (Mead) Towne and Maggie Almdale.

Hope also provided me with the incredible opportunity to study abroad. I spent a May term learning and living music history in the heart of Vienna, Austria. This kind of cultural learning was so impactful on my life – I wrote a paper on Mozart and less than one week later, I visited his birthplace in Salzburg. I also spent a wonderful semester at York St. John University in York, England, where I took courses on British history, Revolutionary Europe, and Shakespeare. York is one of the oldest cities in Britain, founded in AD 71 by the Romans. Every day, I would step out of my door and into history. It was here in York, running my hand along the Roman walls, walking on cobblestone streets traversed by the likes of Constantine, and attending a church where Guy Fawkes was baptized, that I finally began to discern my vocation.

Seeing history makes it come to life, painting pictures of the past and creating connections between people of the 21st century and those who lived thousands of years ago.

My varied coursework at Hope and my opportunity to study abroad taught me one of the most important lessons in history: all people are connected. We have lived on the same earth, wondered at the marvel of the same moon, felt joy, sadness, love, and loss. I desperately wanted to work in an arena where I could help create those deep connections. This passion led me to pursue a graduate degree in Public History at Western Michigan University. I’m so thankful that Hope pushed me to read, research, and write at such a high level because I felt very prepared for my demanding graduate work. More than that, Hope shaped my love of history into a passion, and that passion carried me through countless late nights, paper deadlines, and projects.

At a recent event Rachel coordinated at the museum called "From Malaysia to Michigan."
At a recent event Rachel coordinated at the museum called “From Malaysia to Michigan.”

That passion connected me with my fellow graduate students and professors, and allowed me to make a difference as a Teaching Assistant for undergrads. That passion led me to graduate with a Master’s Degree in Public History, officially cementing my title of “Historian,” a dream since I was young. Finally, that passion led me to my job at the Holland Museum as the Volunteer and Tour Coordinator. In this position, I have the privilege of sharing history with volunteers, students, and visitors, both inside the walls of the museum and out in the community.

Alumni Feature: Jackie Huss

By Jackie Huss

Jackie headshotWhen I arrived on Hope’s campus in the fall of 2001 the thought of becoming a history major had never entered my mind. Like many people, I discovered new things about myself during my freshman year and knew I needed to find a new focus. My parents encouraged me to look back on my high school work and volunteer experiences for inspiration for what I would like to do with the rest of my life. The thing that immediately came to mind was my time spent as a volunteer tour guide at the Hackley and Hume Historic Site in my hometown of Muskegon, Michigan. I realized working in the museum field was something I found enjoyable and fascinating as a volunteer, so making it my career path seemed like a no-brainer.

At the beginning of my sophomore year I declared as a history major and started my journey. Although Hope doesn’t have a Museum Studies program, Professors Marc Baer and Albert Bell helped me mold my own learning experience through internships. The first semester of my junior year, I interned at the Holland Historical Trust Museum under the Curator of Education. I didn’t think I wanted to work with elementary-aged children, but this internship started me on a path of sharing Michigan history with the public in easy and accessible ways, which has become my passion.

Leading group of students at Hackley & Hume Histoirc Site
Leading a group of students at the Hackley & Hume Historic site.

The spring semester of my junior year, I took my Seminar class with Dr. Fred Johnson, which was an amazing experience. The topic was the Civil War and Dr. Johnson allowed me to focus my final paper on the Underground Railroad in Michigan, since I had such a passion for Michigan history. I conducted research on campus, at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library, and through a series of “field trips” to various locations of historical significance to the Underground Railroad. The paper I wrote has continued to serve as a base of knowledge in my professional career. For example, I have used the paper and the materials I cited in writing the paper as a resource for writing exhibit label text and speaking about the Underground Railroad to various groups in West Michigan.

I applied for a competitive Historical Resources internship at The Henry Ford in Dearborn and was selected as one of seven interns from over 30 applicants. I was placed at their Benson Ford Research Center for the summer between my junior and senior years. I learned a lot about research and working for a large history institution. That internship confirmed that my passion was not just in doing the research, but in sharing it with the public.

My final internship in the fall of 2004 was a turning point in my life. I knew I would graduate a semester early, so I applied for an internship back where it all began, the Lakeshore Museum Center (the parent museum to the Hackley and Hume Historic Site).

My internship with the LMC allowed me to work in all departments of the museum as well as attend my first professional museum conference.

When a position as the Assistant Curator of Education was available I knew that museum education and programming was the direction I wanted to go. I applied, was interviewed just a few weeks before my December graduation, was hired the day before Thanksgiving, and started my career immediately following graduation.

Interested students at the Old Indian Cemetery.
Interested students at the Old Indian Cemetery.

Over the last 11 years, I have grown in my position and am now the Program Manager for our main Museum Center. In addition to creating and overseeing programming for schools, families, and adults, I also have the opportunity to serve as project manager on various exhibits. The largest was a two year complete remodel of our Fire Barn Museum, during which I relied heavily on the research skills I gained while a student at Hope College.

I can honestly say that without the guidance and opportunities I had as a student at Hope, I would not be in a career that is ever-evolving and rewarding!