Had you walked into Dr. Ken Brown’s lab early yesterday morning, you would have been witness to this scene: Dr. Brown on camera, enthusiastically sharing his experience as an A. Paul Schaap Research Fellow.
It is always great to hear our faculty express such passion for their work (whether they’re on camera or not!). Every day, that work includes scholarly engagement and one-on-one collaborative research with students.
Recently featured on Hope’s homepage was a story about Dr. Brown, professor of chemistry. After reading it, you’ll understand the depth of collaborative interaction between Hope faculty and their students. You’ll also understand why, to Dr. Brown, it was important that “he never had to choose between research and teaching.”
In the story, Dr. Brown reflects on the instruments in his lab. “The equipment that we have is very impressive, even when you compare it to major research institutions,” he says. “But when you consider small schools like Hope, the amount of research that goes on and the equipment that we have far exceeds other schools, which makes student hands-on training even more feasible.”
As critical as they are to scholarship, sophisticated lab instruments do not singularly define Hope College as a community of scholars. And, well-equipped academic facilities alone have not made Hope a recognized leader in undergraduate research. At the heart of our students’ academic experience are the people — including dedicated professors like Dr. Brown.
sabbatical (n): a break from customary work to acquire new skills or knowledge, traditionally occurring every seventh year
Breaks Away: Sabbatical Stories of Hope Each academic year, a number of Hope faculty take sabbatical leaves away from the college, submersing themselves for extended periods of time into their favored fields of inquiry. If viewed from above and all together, those fields would look like a calico landscape, so varied and colorful is the topography of their collective research, writing, and creative pursuits. Offering restoration and adventure both, sabbaticals are a bit like information and imagination transfusions. These breaks away from normal classroom and committee work give Hope academicians a boost to reinforce and revitalize their teaching and scholarship.
Sheep in New Zealand have a friend in Dr. Tom Bultman. And Dr. Bultman, professor of biology, was happy to oblige the massive, wooly industry that is valuable in a country where sheep outnumber humans by about 10-to-1.
Dr. Tom Bultman, professor of biology at Hope College
Funded by a National Science Foundation grant and headquartered at AgResearch just outside of Christchurch, Dr. Bultman spent three months in the spring of 2015 investigating the growth and effects of endophytic fungus inside perennial ryegrass, the mainly foraged food source found in New Zealand paddocks. His research findings may eventually ensure that New Zealand’s ovine population (and America’s too) can eat their meals toxin-free.
“Endophytic fungus can produce chemicals in the grasses that can be toxic,” explains Dr. Bultman, who collaborated with six other New Zealand scientists, as well as Hope graduate Kelly Krueger ’14, on the project. “So it makes sense that ridding the grasses of those fungi and possible toxins is important to farmers in New Zealand and the U.S. because the effects of the fungi are pronounced in these two part of the world.”
Dr. Bultman and associates also looked at the alkaloid levels — the presences of nitrogenous compounds — in damaged grass and the insect impact on that grass as well. In other words, when ryegrass is walked on by sheep hooves or torn by the sheep’s teeth, what alkaloid, if any, would be produced and how would insects respond to it?
“We found that one variety of fungus actually produced reduced alkaloids in damaged grass, probably due to the sheep’s saliva,” Dr. Bultman says.
So in layman’s terms, sheep spit is actually a good thing.
“I’m a pretty simple guy, I admit,” he replies when asked what he appreciated most about his break away, “so sabbaticals are the chance to simplify, to focus on one thing for a big block of time. This research is new and novel, and I can’t wait to write it up.”
With most of his findings in hand, Dr. Bultman will now begin to author his work for publication in scholarly journals such as PLOS Biology. In fact, he’s anxious to do so.
“I’m a pretty simple guy, I admit,” he replies when asked what he appreciated most about his break away, “so sabbaticals are the chance to simplify, to focus on one thing for a big block of time. This research is new and novel, and I can’t wait to write it up.”
sabbatical (n): a break from customary work to acquire new skills or knowledge, traditionally occurring every seventh year
Breaks Away: Sabbatical Stories of Hope Each academic year, a number of Hope faculty take sabbatical leaves away from the college, submersing themselves for extended periods of time into their favored fields of inquiry. If viewed from above and all together, those fields would look like a calico landscape, so varied and colorful is the topography of their collective research, writing, and creative pursuits. Offering restoration and adventure both, sabbaticals are a bit like information and imagination transfusions. These breaks away from normal classroom and committee work give Hope academicians a boost to reinforce and revitalize their teaching and scholarship.
In foam and clay and metal, from memory and history and spontaneity, the new artworks created by Hope art professor and sculptor Billy Mayer can be best described as pieces of funereal whimsy. Come January 2016, when his one-man show, “440,” opens in the DePree Art Gallery, it will be easy to see why.
Professor Billy Mayer in his DePree Art Center studio with a sculpture for his upcoming one-man exhibition (and a black-white photo behind him of young Billy)
During his sabbatical leave to San Marcos, Texas, on the campus of Texas State University – where his wife, Michel Conroy, is also a professor of art – Mayer went to work to “riff on” subjects mostly from his youth. His love of rock-and-roll, fascination with the early NASA lunar missions and pull to Michigan’s automotive history are topics for his sculpture, broached in lightness but with somber undertones.
“I believe I agree with (former Hope colleague) Pinckney Benedict who said much of his creative work, and my creative work too, conveys memories and feelings from the first 10 years of life,” Mayer explains. “It was a time when few filters – either from self or society – were imposed on us. We played non-judgmentally. We were untainted sponges. John Glenn was as important to me then as was my guitar. And that has stayed beautifully lodged in my brain.”
And now into clay and other media, too. Those memories and their resulting emotions will be on display in his art exhibition entitled “440,” chosen by Mayer as a nod to his 440 ceramic, mini-skulls with various, odd objects attached (200 new and 240 from other Mayer shows) as well as the short-wave frequency to which all music is tuned.
One of the works in his new show conjures up surrealist Rene Magritte’s “Time Transfixed” and displays Mayer’s playful focus on music and youth. With a carved wooden train emerging from the glittery weave of a sculpted foam guitar amplifier, the piece harkens back to Mayer’s teen years and his love of model trains, and that guitar again, while also pointing to his sense of present place. He is neighborly, after all, with trains running the tracks just outside his DePree Center studio.
“Clay is like a child. You can’t walk away from it for too long. It moves; it cracks. You have to constantly tend to it.” — Billy Mayer
Other artwork – like “The Second Assassination of Chief Pontiac” and “Revelation 9:17” – unveil an artist who creates in ways that simultaneously display the mutability of language and the malleability of clay. Through word and material play, Mayer’s eloquence reveals itself, for in “440,” the gallery-goer will find sculpted works that “riff” some more and speak to ISIS, John Boehner and medical marijuana as well.
Revelation 9:17 by Billy Mayer
“The English language is organic,” Mayer says. “I love etymology and how one word can morph into multiple meanings, one phrase can mean much… As for clay, it is like a child. You can’t walk away from it for too long. It moves; it cracks. You have to constantly tend to it.”
While in Texas, Mayer also visited Marfa, a west Texas desert town noted for its unique art filling fields and streets and home to the Donald Judd Foundation. Trips to the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts in Providence, Rhode Island, and museums and galleries in Washington, DC, were all part of his itinerary and provided space for refreshment and inspiration.
“What I appreciate most about sabbaticals is the ability to focus on my own work uninterrupted,” Mayer concludes.
Because when he does, it turns out he has a lot to do and say. Well, at least in 440 ways.
sabbatical (n): a break from customary work to acquire new skills or knowledge, traditionally occurring every seventh year
Breaks Away: Sabbatical Stories of Hope
Each academic year, a number of Hope faculty take sabbatical leaves away from the college, submersing themselves for extended periods of time into their favored fields of inquiry. If viewed from above and all together, those fields would look like a calico landscape, so varied and colorful is the topography of their collective research, writing, and creative pursuits. Offering restoration and adventure both, sabbaticals are a bit like information and imagination transfusions. These breaks away from normal classroom and committee work give Hope academicians a boost to reinforce and revitalize their teaching and scholarship.
Dr. Renata Fernandez, Associate Professor of Spanish at Hope
Dr. Renata Fernandez’s return to her native country for sabbatical last spring had more to do with churchgoing than homecoming. For it was on the walls of numerous Catholic churches and former convents and monasteries in Mexico that Dr. Fernandez focused much of her research into the “camouflaged culture of resistance” rendered by indigenous artisans in the mid-1500s.
“I am captivated by the first generation of colonial evangelism in Mexico. So I had to go back to dig into the material culture there,” explains Dr. Fernandez, who is originally from Veracruz and travelled to more than 10 rural towns in five different Mexican states for her research.
What she discovered were the muted underpinnings of early native resistance. In those many Dominican, Franciscan and Augustinian churches and convents she visited, tucked in murals or hiding in plain sight in sculptures, are symbols that subtly defy the friars’ artistic and evangelistic orders. Instructed to duplicate European patterns and designs from books brought by the Spaniards, the local artists complied, but only to a point. Instead, they shrewdly incorporated local animals, plants, and deities alongside Renaissance decorative motifs.
“These artists were saying, ‘This is my sacred space as much as it is yours. Yes, I will praise your God, but in reality, I’ll retain my own too. We will remember our history even though you want us to forget it.’” — Dr. Renata Fernandez
These works of art depict then the tension that resulted from a clash of cultures, especially one that had been aggressively overtaken. The cleverly appropriated art was not an overt, orchestrated rebellion, but it was the beginning of clever opposition that would eventually lead to one.
Dr. Fernandez explains that “these artists were saying, ‘This is my sacred space as much as it is yours. Yes, I will praise your God, but in reality, I’ll retain my own too. We will remember our history even though you want us to forget it.’”
Murals of Malinalco: Cacti amongst Renaissance motifs
Interestingly, Dr. Fernandez also found that the use of covert indigenous symbols were especially prominent in Augustinian structures. Another question she’s asking then, and will further research to find the answer, is “Were the Augustinian monks oblivious to what was happening on their walls, or did they allow the native renderings to make evangelization easier?”
“I’m also wondering, is there a pattern? Does this kind of resistance happen in other Spanish territories, such as Peru?”
So, Dr. Fernandez has more work to do but she has a voluminous start. For now, she will use many of her new findings in her upper-level Spanish course on Colonial Latin American literature and culture at Hope. She also plans to write a text for “there is currently not one book that teaches what I want to teach.” She hopes to fill this textbook void by unapologetically taking on the domination discourse of Mexican conquest and unveiling a sophisticated pre-colonial society determined to retain and never forget its cultural and symbolic origins. Like the frescoes and sculptures that soared before her in Mexico, she has a story to tell. And this time it won’t be that subtle.
Four Hope College faculty and staff members — two musicians, a dancer, and a Lego artist — plus numerous Hope student viewers, some of whom attend as part of their social work course, will be among the many participating in ArtPrize, the “radically open, independently organized, international art competition” held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, annually.
Dr. Charles Cusack’s entry: Latin Squared Square. Photo credit: Steve Nelson, Hope College Art and Art History Department
ArtPrize opened its 2015 collection of more than 1,500 works yesterday. Now in its seventh year, the competition offers its artists and viewers an unconventional and intriguing way to discuss what art is and why it matters. The highly communal artworks, which are voted on by judges and the public alike, will remain on display throughout the downtown Grand Rapids area until Sunday, Oct. 11.
Dr. Charles Cusack, associate professor of computer science, has been a Lego enthusiast since he was a young boy. Now he’s putting that enthusiasm on display with Latin Squared Square, a 38” x 38” piece of two different types of combinatorial objects constructed with Legos. Located in the B.O.B, Cusack’s work is a simple, perfect square that has been squared. A Latin square is a grid in which every cell is a certain color (or shape or number) and every row and every column contains each color exactly once (like Sudoku). Cusack says the work took him over a year-and-a-half to conceive and create as he wrote computer algorithms to achieve his desired Latin square effect and spent much time shopping online to track down the Lego pieces he needed. “It’s harder to find pieces of specific Lego than you would think,” says Cusack, who admits he never thought of himself as an artist but has toyed with the idea of an ArtPrize submission for years. “Lego has to be one of the most expensive mediums, too,” he says, especially when those pieces are carefully and colorfully selected and arranged in a specialized, mathematical way.
Professor Angie Yetzke, assistant professor of dance, and Bruce Benedict, chaplain of worship music in Campus Ministries, along with Pj Maske of Urban Garden Performing Arts, are uniting their talents to present a collaborative production entitled “The Blind Ambition of Miss Columbia.” The piece is a hybrid work of movement-based theatre and live music. “The Blind Ambition of Miss Columbia” is a critique of the historical American notion of Manifest Destiny, which asks “questions about collective cultural identity and memory,” explains Maske. “When popular art and culture blindly romanticize the past, how do we own the truth of a (troubling) history?” It will be performed at the Amway Grand Plaza‘s outdoor patio on the northwest corner, on Saturday, Sept 26 and Saturday, Oct. 3 at 1:30, 2:00, 3:00 and 3:30 pm.
Stephen Talaga, adjunct assistant professor of music, has entered “New Hope” in 2015 ArtPrize. Photo credit: Juan Daniel Castro
Professor Stephen Talaga, adjunct assistant professor of music, has entered an electronic keyboard improvisation piece in ArtPrize. “New Hope” was first commissioned by Julia Randel of the Hope College Music Department for the opening of the new Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts on campus this fall. Talaga says he created the celebratory work “on my home computer by layering successive tracks until I ended up with a result I liked.” Randel likes it too. “What I especially enjoy about the piece is that it evokes so many different sounds and styles, so it suggests the broad range of what we do in the music department,” she explains. “Being an electronic piece, it has ‘newness,’ but it also connects with multiple traditions coming together in our building.” The eight-minute piece is accessible to listen to through the ArtPrize website and via listening stations at St. Cecilia Music Center.
Students in Dr. Deb Sturtevant’s Social Interventions III class attend ArtPrize as a vital component of their coursework. In the gallery that is three-square miles of downtown Grand Rapids, senior-level social work students witness how art can revitalize organizations and communities, especially in lower-income neighborhoods. Sturtevant, professor of social work, has used ArtPrize since its inception as a vehicle to convey that the macro-practices of social work are “not just about soup kitchens.” Her students attend ArtPrize each year to see how art, especially in the Heartside Ministries and Avenue of the Arts neighborhoods of Grand Rapids, is created and viewed by those who might be homeless, for instance. “Some of my students go back to ArtPrize repeatedly,” she says. “Many are especially drawn to art with a strong social message.” Her students must talk with the artists and viewers as well as simply observe. And while paper-writing and vote-casting are required, Sturtevant’s students come away from ArtPrize with an even greater realization that art provides value to communities beyond its beauty on a wall or in a park. They find art and ArtPrize informs and transforms artists and observers, neighborhoods and friends.
“Some of my students go back to ArtPrize repeatedly. Many are especially drawn to art with a strong social message.” — Dr. Deb Sturtevant
If you’re heading to ArtPrize over the next few weeks, be sure to check out the entries created by members of the Hope community!
If you’ve noticed a little electricity in the air on campus lately, it may be the excitement around the opening of Hope’s Kruizenga Art Museum. Our new museum enhances the role of the college’s permanent collection as a teaching tool. Designed by architect and Hope alumnus Matthew Vander Borgh ’84 of C Concept Design, the building provides space and resources to conduct scholarship using artwork from around the world.
The latest issue of News from Hope College included the article “Global Scope, Lasting Impact,” which describes the academic mission of the the Kruizenga Art Museum.
From the article:
Vase with Eight Daoist Immortals; Chinese, 19th century; porcelain, enamels; Gift of David Kamansky and Gerald Wheaton
[Margaret Feldmann Kruizenga Curator of the Kruizenga Art Museum Charles] Mason is eager to see the museum connect with departments in every academic division — not only the arts, but also the humanities, natural and applied sciences, and social sciences — to find ways that the objects, their history and their context can enrich the experience of students campus-wide. One themed exhibition, for example, might include a concert featuring music from the tradition represented. Another might compare and contrast Tibetan and European monastic traditions.
“Our goal for the first year is to show the breadth and overall quality of the collection, to give people a sense of the range of material that we have in the collection and how it could potentially be used to support a wide range of academic disciplines,” Mason said. “So it’s to some extent going to be a kind of ‘greatest hits’ of the Permanent Collection, but with an eye toward having pieces out that we can use to begin conversations with faculty and students from different academic departments across campus about ways that we could integrate the museum into teaching and learning.
Abuna Gebre Manfes Qeddus; Gabra Sellase Abadi Walda Maryam (Ethiopian, ?-early 1980s), c. 1971-72; paper (cardboard), pigment, ribbon, thread; Gift of Neal Sobania ’68
Though it was created with students and scholars in mind, the museum is open to all. Come visit! In the meantime, check out this recent media coverage about the Kruizenga Art Museum:
Mention the Hope College Dance Department to a dancer, dance educator or dance enthusiast, and it’s not long before the conversation turns to Maxine DeBruyn. The two, it seems, are synonymous.
After all, Ms. DeBruyn — “Maxine” to the Hope community, and “Max” to those who know her well — has spent a 50-year career at Hope College, where she grew the dance program from a single course to an academic department to an academic major. Today, the program — accredited by the National Association of Schools of Dance for three decades — is one of only 250 arts programs of all types nationwide highlighted in the book “Creative Colleges: A Guide for Student Actors, Artists, Dancers, Musicians and Writers.”
Here at Hope, we know what a tremendous difference Maxine has made to generations of dancers. So, you can imagine how excited we were to learn that the National Dance Education Organization will be presenting Maxine with its most prestigious honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award, for her contributions to dance education locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.
As a professor, Maxine served the campus community as department chair, teacher, choreographer, cheerleading coach and student group adviser. She retired in 2006, but slowing down wasn’t her style. Even in retirement, she has continued to inspire us by teaching dance classes at Hope.
Maxine DeBruyn in 1968, early in her decades-long tenure at Hope College, where she has educated generations of dancers
You can learn more about Maxine’s career and her Lifetime Achievement Award by reading the recent news release from Hope College.
Congratulations on this honor, Maxine! It makes us want to — what else? — dance with joy.
Maxine DeBruyn is the Dorothy Wiley DeLong Professor Emerita of Dance in the Dance Department at Hope College.
Dr. Jeff Johnson is an award-winning Hope College chemist with a complex sounding research focus — carbon-carbon single bond activation and the development of transition metal catalyzed methodologies.
Dr. Jeff Johnson, Associate Professor of Chemistry and 2015 Dreyfus Scholar-Teacher Award Winner
You see, in Dr. Johnson’s laboratory, carbon-containing molecules AND an inflatable pink flamingo can effortlessly cohabitate without pretense or hesitation. Both are indicators of a researcher and teacher serious about organic molecular demolition and Hope student education.
“Oh, the flamingo is a holdover from Aloha Day a couple years ago,” Dr. Johnson confides, standing next to his lab’s experimental mascot. “Each summer I encourage the students to have a theme week, and they can decorate their desk area and dress up for the themes as well. There is still serious chemistry going on, of course, but this gives them a chance to have some fun, too.”
Welcome to Dr. Johnson’s office.
Mind you, it’s not that an intensive, 10-week, 50-hour-per-week summer research program isn’t fun in and of itself. Sometimes you just need a pink flamingo around to lighten the mood.
The hard, fun work in Dr. Johnson’s lab centers around the development of new methods of taking a variety of larger, organic molecules and chopping them down. This is done with the potential of testing those lopped-off parts for biological activity. It’s a very difficult and intricate process that could eventually have application in the pharmaceutical and agrochemical worlds, for instance.
“Stable bonds are why you and I exist, right? That’s why we don’t turn into blobs. So what we are trying to do is find ways that we can break these stable bonds. That’s the carbon-carbon activation part… What our method has the promise of doing is taking a complex structure and chopping off little parts of it that then can be tested (for future application).”
More than 50 students have come alongside Dr. Johnson in his lab since he arrived at Hope in 2007, with (another) celebrated Dreyfus award in tow (for faculty start-up). Since then he’s accumulated more than $1 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, the American Chemical Society, and of course, the Dreyfus Foundation. A number of those 50 students have advanced onto present their findings at national conferences or co-authored articles in professional journals as well.
“We have future physicians, researchers, teachers and even business managers working right alongside each other. I’ll take anyone who is interested in the research and find a spot for them.” — Dr. Jeff Johnson
And in a show of both fondness and pride, Dr. Johnson displays eight years’ worth of Hope student-researchers’ group photos in his office, very near those of his three young children, a remembrance of the bonds made in relationships if not in carbon.
“It can be a madhouse in here with 12 students working together,” he says. “But it’s great because I have an open-door policy. We have future physicians, researchers, teachers and even business managers working right alongside each other. I’ll take anyone who is interested in the research and find a spot for them.” (But they do at least have to have taken General Chemistry, though most have completed Organic Chemistry as well.)
Dr. Johnson’s “Propose a Project” board
While Dr. Johnson guides his students’ researching process, he gives them room to lead, too. His student-researchers can “propose a project” and hash it out on a dedicated whiteboard. Like his use of theme week, Dr. Johnson puts an emphasis on student creativity and engagement to enhance excitement and dedication. The former musician in him (he played the trumpet and tuba through college) can’t help but give students the chance to appreciate the sound of carbon molecules falling to pieces.
“I want my students to get an appreciation of the process (of research),” says Dr. Johnson, who also regularly teaches courses in organic and inorganic chemistry. “In classroom labs, our experiments are designed to work. But as soon as you get into research, it doesn’t work. Well, most of the time it doesn’t work. And it’s the not working that teaches students just as much as the things that do work. Learning how to take ‘failure’ and turn around and design a new experiment and gain from that — that is my overarching priority and philosophy in research education.”
Step foot on campus, and it’s not long before you realize that Hope College is the kind of place that changes lives.
Hope comes alive in our vibrant Christian atmosphere and our focus on the holistic development of each student. It inspires through our nationally accredited fine arts programs and our championship athletics. It challenges and emboldens with our distinctive academic rigor and our commitment to the highest levels of scholarship.
At Hope College, we believe in the depth of our academic curriculum. It’s challenging and highly collaborative, with deep roots in the liberal arts tradition enhanced by a rich heritage of graduate school-style research in every field of study.
We believe in our faculty, too. These active, engaged scholars are dedicated to teaching — and to encouraging the intellectual excitement essential to a lifetime of learning. Together with our caring staff, Hope professors are committed to the success of each and every student, helping them to think about life’s most important issues with clarity and wisdom.
In today’s world — a world where diverse human communities call out for innovation and interconnection — Hope matters. This blog, Hope Matters, will be a space for the college to share exciting stories of scholarship and research conducted by members of the Hope community. Whether in a laboratory, in the field or in the studio, the work of Hope College is transformational and inspirational. We’ll showcase it here.
Had you walked into Dr. Ken Brown’s lab early yesterday morning, you would have been witness to this scene: Dr. Brown on camera, enthusiastically sharing his experience as an A. Paul Schaap Research Fellow.
Step foot on campus, and it’s not long before you realize that