Archives: Initiatives

At the 2019 Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s (ATHE) annual conference in Orlando, Dr. John Sebestyen, associate professor of communication arts and director of theatre, took part in two sessions: “Getting Physical: Encouraging Physicality in Young Actors” and “Never Forget: Teaching the Holocaust Through Theatre.”

For the panel on physicality, Sebestyen spoke about “Increasing Awareness of Our Own Physicalities: Coaching Newer Actors to More Fully Inhabit Their Own Bodies Onstage.”

The issue is a particularly interesting one at a smaller college like Trinity, where many participants in the theatre program are not necessarily also studying theatre in the traditional classroom.  “Focusing on acting strategies for how actors can more fully embody characters onstage is an important component in connecting with the humanity of these characters,” Sebestyen said.

For the panel on Holocaust theatre, Sebestyen spoke on “Alertness to Oppression: Directing and Teaching Holocaust Plays in an Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts Context.” His fellow panel members included Dr. Alvin Goldfarb, a nationally known theatre educator and administrator. Among other topics, Sebestyen talked about directing “Andorra” at Trinity in November 2015. The play, by Max Frisch, explores anti-Semitism in a European village 15 years after World War II.

The theme of the 2019 ATHE Conference was “Scene Changes: Performing, Teaching, and Working Through Transitions.” ATHE is a comprehensive non-profit professional membership organization. Founded in 1986, ATHE serves the interests of its diverse individual and organizational members, including college and university theatre departments and administrators, educators, graduate students, and theatre practitioners.

For Jesse VanMaanen ’12, a surgery resident at the University of South Dakota, the coronavirus pandemic isn’t just a workplace issue—he is currently in isolation after having contracted the illness during a rotation at Chicago’s John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County.

VanMaanen shared his story recently on “Troll Talks,” a podcast series of conversations with alumni, parents, faculty, and friends of Trinity Christian College, hosted by Director of Alumni and Family Engagement Jeremy Klyn.

During his conversation with Klyn, VanMaanen offered advice for dealing with the current pandemic situation, discussed his personal story, and talked about how his Trinity professors help prepare him for medical school.

A graduate of Pella Christian High School in Pella, Iowa, VanMaanen is already recovering at his home in Sioux Falls, S.D.

While the current situation has been challenging for everyone, VanMaanen stressed that we can’t let ourselves live in fear. “It’s not healthy, and it’s not productive. But people need to be smart. We serve a God that is bigger than this—but that doesn’t mean we can decide that God’s got this, and we can go get together with all our friends. We also have to act appropriately and responsibly,” he said.

He credits Trinity with helping to shape his worldview and vocation. After graduating in 2012 with a major in biology and minor in chemistry, VanMaanen attended the University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medicine. After graduating from medical school, he next decided to pursue general surgery training at the University of South Dakota, where he is currently in the fourth year of the five-year program. Part of his surgical training included rotations in Chicago.

“My wife and son came along for my Chicago rotation, and they stayed at her parents’ house in the suburbs,” he said. “I stayed at the hospital in a dorm, and somehow, while I was there, I must have had an exposure.” For safety’s sake, VanMaanen chose to return home, while his wife and son stayed in the Chicago area. “I knew I was going to be exposed, and I really wanted to keep them out of harms’ way as best I could. They are going to stay there until my quarantine period is up, my symptoms are gone, and I’m cleared to go back to work.”

For VanMaanen, who has suffered from headaches, muscle aches, cough, loss of taste and smell, and other COVID-19 symptoms, being away from his family has been hard. “But it’s temporary, and that’s something everyone should remember—this is temporary. But it’s also important to do the right thing during that time.”

That includes social distancing. “By time you get symptoms of coronavirus, you will probably infect two to three people on average. And then those three infect another three, and those people each infect three more. So, you can see how it can sweep through a small area really quickly. You can break that chain link with just one person. By the time you get symptoms, the damage is already done.”

He cautions people to not be overly concerned on an individual level, but to think about improving society as a whole. “It’s going to run its course, and it’s going to be over,” he said. “But the question mark, and the big thing that drives a lot of the fear, is when that will be. And no one knows.”

VanMaanen stressed the importance of supporting the people who are continuing to work on the front lines. “It’s not just nurses and doctors. We need to be supporting small businesses. We have teachers at home making videos for kids to do online learning, which is amazingly valiant. Garbage needs to be picked up, things still need to be repaired. Places still need to be cleaned, and food still needs to be made. Everyone is taking a hit.”

In his conversation with Klyn, VanMaanen reflected on his deep beliefs in both faith and science—which he credits Trinity for helping him to develop. “At Trinity, you get an education that weaves faith and science together. One of biggest things I enjoyed at Trinity was the professors who really worked to say, these are both wonderful things and we really need to embrace how they work together, not how they work apart. If anyone is thinking of pursuing a science major and a Christian education, Trinity is wonderful place to be.”

The Madron Gallery in Chicago is currently hosting an exhibit featuring the work of several artists who are part of the Trinity family. “Drawn Together” includes pieces from Professor of Art & Design John Bakker, alumni Pierce Cruz ’18 and Hannah Dykstra ’17, former adjunct professor Cecil McDonald Jr., and Kwabena Foli, who exhibited at Trinity’s Seerveld Gallery earlier this year, as part of the College’s Professional Artists Series.  

The Madron Gallery exhibit is sponsored by Art on Sedgwick, which is dedicated  to catalyzing connection and opportunity through art in Old Town’s Sedgwick Corridor in Chicago. Its classes, events, and public artworks draw on Chicago’s diverse, world-class artistic community to inspire a shared imagination for a vibrant and inclusive neighborhood.  

Members of the Trinity community have close ties to Art on Sedgwick, where Bakker serves on the Governing Board and Dykstra works as Programming and Communications Manager.  

Worship leaders, pastors, and other church leaders should be encouraged to recognize the need for worship to be a product of the way we live in our communities and love our neighbors and neighborhoods well, Jonathan Brooks, recruiter and mentor for Trinity’s five-year B.A./M.Div. program with Northern Seminary, told the audience during a seminar at the recent Calvin Symposium on Worship.

During his seminar “Church Forsaken,” which shared a name with his recent book, Brooks, who serves as senior pastor of Canaan Community Church in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, also talked about introducing hip hop as a worship style that the church not only needs to accept, but embrace. “Hip hop is probably the most impactful and globally diverse culture in the world,” he said. “I had Pastor Terence Gadsden, the campus pastor at North Park University, also known as DJ Rock On, who performed with me during the vesper services, join me for the workshop.

“We wanted to show it was about more than music, and that embracing and learning from hip hop is a way that the church can lean into its God-given diversity,” he said.

This is the first time that Brooks has presented at the conference. “But I have been in contact with the Calvin Institute for quite a few years discussing how worship needs to be activated in the community. In other words, real worship can come outside of the four walls of the church and actually be a product of the way we live in the world,” he said. “In my book Church Forsaken, I talk about how my activity in the community and my love for my neighbor has led to a greater and more authentic worship of God.”

Brooks said some attendees were very encouraged by the notion that our worship of God can be enhanced by the way we move closer to our neighbor and are more engaged in our neighborhood. “The premise that our welfare and the welfare of our family is bound up in the welfare of our neighborhood, from Jeremiah 29:7 (‘Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper’), was truly an eye opening reciprocal way of thinking about how we live in the world,” he said.

The annual Calvin Symposium on Worship is a three-day conference sponsored by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and the Center for Excellence in Preaching held on the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary.

When working with children, behavior analysts and school-based professionals need successful collaboration, Trinity’s Assistant Professor of Special Education Karen O’Connor, Ph.D., told audience members during a presentation at the recent Illinois Association for Behavior Analysis annual conference.

“I was inspired to develop a presentation on the topic of improving how we collaborate with school personnel as behavior analysts are often put in this role but we struggle with effectively meeting the needs of teachers,” she said. “As behavior analysts, we need to work to build relationships with school staff, more effectively collaborate to address the priorities of teachers, and use tools to evaluate the impact of our consultation.”

O’Connor was one of several presenters at the conference, which took place Feb. 20-21. “It was very nice to see a variety of talks that had a focus on improving professional practice in our field,” she said.

For Professor of History David Brodnax, Sr., Ph.D., a recent publication took him into the world of hip hop. Brodnax has published an entry about the life of Antwan “Big Boi” Patton, the Grammy-award winning artist, songwriter, and record producer, and half of the groundbreaking duo OutKast in “The African American National Biography,” (New York; Oxford University Press, 2019).

“I wanted to do it as a labor of love,” said Brodnax, a long-time fan of OutKast, which recorded together from 1993-2006. Since OutKast’s last album, “Idlewild,” in 2006, Big Boi and his bandmate Andre “Andre 3000” Benjamin have recorded solo music and occasionally performed together.

For Brodnax, OutKast’s music was part of the soundtrack for a formative part of his life, as he was attending college at Illinois Wesleyan University; earning a J.D. at University of Iowa College of Law; getting an M.A. and Ph.D. at Northwestern University; and beginning his teaching career at Trinity.

So, when he saw a call for submissions for the publication, he submitted a proposal for an entry on Big Boi. Once it was accepted, his research included listening to all of Big Boi’s music in chronological order. “That included all of his solo and OutKast albums, which I already owned, and many other songs that I did not own but accessed on YouTube. It was a trip down memory lane,” he said. Brodnax became so involved in the project that his initial draft was far longer than the article’s requirements.

In addition to using this research in some of his courses, Brodnax also expects to submit a conference paper based on his work about Big Boi.

Among his other projects, Brodnax is continuing work on his book, “Breathing the Freedom’s Air: The African American Struggle for Equal Citizenship in Iowa, 1830-1900.”  He also recently participated in the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora’s 10th Biennial Conference at the College of William & Mary. The conference’s theme focused on the 400th anniversary of the origins of slavery in what became the United States, with the arrival of approximately 20 Africans in modern-day Jamestown, Va., in August 1619. During his time in Williamsburg, Va., he explored several historical sites, which was a powerful experience. “It represented the beginning of the end for Native Americans, as they knew life,” he said. “And it was the beginning of black slavery.”

Brodnax is also working on a journal article on black identity in Iowa on for the “Middle West Review” and two projects for the annual meeting of the Midwestern History Conference in May: a paper on diasporic black consciousness as expressed in Iowa’s black press; and being part of a plenary panel on the current state of Midwestern history scholarship.

The Ferrater Mora Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, based in Oxford, England, is committed to putting ethical concerns for animals on the intellectual agenda. And as a fellow of the Centre, Associate Professor of Social Work, BSW Program Director, and Department Chair Cini Bretzlaff-Holstein, DSW, LSW, will have new opportunities to continue her research and interest in integrating animals into social work practice and education.

“Animals have value and worth, they are part of our world, and they need to be given ethical and moral consideration,” said Bretzlaff-Holstein. “The Centre for Animal Ethics is the first of its kind, and the work they are doing is innovative and ground breaking.”

The think tank brings together academics from a range of fields, including philosophy, theology, science, ecology, and other areas. its fellowship is an international academy dedicated to the enhancement of the ethical status of animals through research, teaching, and publications.

Along with publishing the “Journal of Animal Ethics” and a book series on animal ethics, the Centre offers a “summer school” every year. A lifelong animal lover, Bretzlaff-Holstein first attended the summer school in 2018 and was a scheduled speaker in 2019, until the birth of her daughter caused her to rearrange her plans.

Along with her work at Trinity and as a fellow of the Centre, she also serves as member of the advisory council for the Humane Education Coalition (HEC), as well as an editorial advisor for the organization’s peer-reviewed journal, “The International Journal of Humane Education.” She also serves on the HEC accreditation committee.

Named in honor of Catalan philosopher José Ferrater Mora, the Ferrater Mora Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics was founded in 2006. It is an independent think tank dedicated to advancing progressive thought about animals and to put animals on the intellectual agenda.