Hope Numbers in the News

Recently, a Holland Sentinel new story featured the phenomenal work and large sums of external funds secured by Hope faculty for undergraduate research.  And the numbers, and people, are impressive. “Hope’s Research Footprint: $9.9 in Use for Faculty, Undergrad Studies” highlights Dr. Courtney Peckens and her research project on sound quality in the new Jack H. …

Hopeful Health for Kids in Holland

“Foundations of Fitness,” a multidisciplinary program that provides Holland area families with age-appropriate structured exercise and lifestyle education, is a Hope College-based childhood wellness program that seeks to reduce childhood obesity and overweight percentages locally and has been funded with about $250,000 in grants from Herman Miller Cares over its two-year lifetime.

Humans of Syria and Japan

This year’s Critical Issues Symposium – opening today on Hope’s campus – addresses “Engaging the Middle East.” Professor Megumi Hirayama of Meiji Gakuin University (MGU) in Tokyo has been doing just that for more than decade. Hirayama, a visiting professor at Hope since last fall who specializes in public health and taught a comparative social …

CFL and SHI: Partners in Ideas, Innovation and Leadership

A unique and collaborative partnership between Spectrum Health Innovations (SHI) in Grand Rapids and Hope College’s Center for Faithful Leadership (CFL) is providing opportunities for both parties to glean the benefits that any good partnership seeks to achieve: combining ideas and labor toward reaching desired outcomes. For professionals at SHI, the objective is to create …

Flint Water Crisis in the Round

This past Monday night in Maas Auditorium, 13 bottles of water sat on a long table, each provided for one of the 13 speakers preparing to speak on an interdisciplinary panel about the Flint water crisis. One container of water, though, was not being consumed, nor would it be.

Breaks Away: Dede Johnston

Happiness is a choice, positive psychologists say, but the ways we choose to be happy and how we express that joy can vary from the grandiose to the sublime across cultures, Dr. Johnston is discovering. Taking a portion of her yearlong sabbatical to study happy emotions found in thousands of pictorial images of people in ## countries, Johnston is quick to relay that what may seem simple to define is actually complex.

Breaks Away: Jonathan Peterson

Whether in the field at the Michigan-based AuSable Institute of Environmental Studies (AIES), or in a lab at the prestigious Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), or in the classroom of a Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) interdisciplinary program, Dr. Jonathan Peterson spent much of his year-long sabbatical being fully convinced of this: things in life are interesting and important to the degree that they relate to other things.

Hope 2016: A Watch List

A new year is a perfect time for list-making. Many of us do it. A resolution list for self-improvement. A goals list for work. A bucket list for travel. Basically, these are all ways to look forward to 365 days worth of new opportunities and growth. At Hope, we have many things to look forward to in 2016, the sesquicentennial year of our existence. While our resolution list will always be our mission – “to educate students for lives of leadership and service in a global society through academic and co-curricular programs of recognized excellence in the liberal arts and in the context of the historic Christian faith” – we have goal and bucket lists, too.

Give the Gift of Reading (Hope Authors) This Christmas

Need a book idea to give as a Christmas gift? A multitude of Hope professors are also authors of several bestselling, general interest books. On topics that range from faith to sports, these books are testament to the writing talent of Hope scholars who desire to share their passion and expertise beyond the classroom in published, public form. And though the Christmas shopping list is certainly not exhaustive of all of the books by Hope faculty, it does offer a little of something for everyone.

Hip Hop a Hit in Japan

This past September, Professor Crystal Frazier walked into a Tokyo dance studio to teach a distinctly American art form and immediately encountered a vibe that was uniquely Japanese. A class of 40 college students stood eagerly at the ready – respectful, disciplined, hospitable. An interpreter, earnest to translate, barely needed to speak. Hip hop would be the vehicle to move bodies and relationships across cultural lines; dance would be their universal language.