Archives: News Stories
Trinity Christian College has been ranked 21st among Regional Colleges—Midwest by U.S.News & World Report in “America’s Best Colleges” for 2013. A total of 370 colleges are ranked in the entire Regional category.
The College stands among other institutions in the Regional Colleges category that offer a wide range of degree programs in the liberal arts and in fields such as business, education, graphic design, and nursing.
The U.S. News rankings are based on several criteria, including peer assessment, graduation and freshmen retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, and alumni giving.
“As we welcomed students to campus a few weeks ago, qualities that can’t necessarily be ‘ranked’ but are an integral part of our standing were evident,” said Provost Liz Rudenga, Ph.D., “as professors warmly greeted students; upper-class students helped new students move into the residence halls; students, mentors, and professors engaged in conversation during First Year Forum; athletes eagerly began practices and games; and students were excited to be in labs and classrooms.”
Campus Ethnic Diversity: Regional Colleges—Midwest ranking
Trinity also ranked 11th in the area of Campus Ethnic Diversity: Regional Colleges—Midwest. This ranking speaks to the College’s continued commitment to develop a multi-racial, multi-national, and multi-denominational student body. To determine this ranking, U.S. News factors in the total proportion of minority students (leaving out international students) and the overall mix of groups.
Jennifer Brink ’12 of Grand Rapids, Michigan knew that when she graduated she wanted to work with diverse populations. With a summer position in Hong Kong and a new year-long position in Africa, she is doing just that.
In November, Brink, a graduate of the College’s social work program, will be living in Liberia, Africa, for one year, where she will be working with several organizations including the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.
Brink said her classes and experiences at Trinity pushed her to travel out of her comfort zone.
“I was reminded time and time again that God created all people, and regardless of their diverse background, he calls us to be servants in this world,” said Brink. “I have made the decision to spend the next year in Liberia because God has blessed me with so much, and I am now given an opportunity to share those blessings with others around the world.”
While serving with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Brink will work with orphans. In addition, she will help with a hot meal ministry for war-affected people in the area, teach at a college, and work at a clinic and hospital.
“It is amazing and a bit scary to think of the opportunities and learning that I will do,” said Brink. “I am confident that God will provide the strength and words that I need to walk alongside people while I’m there, helping in whatever ways are possible.”
The trip will not be her first overseas. After graduating in May, Brink traveled to Hong Kong, where she worked for a few months with Play Infinity, an organization that helps children learn through its Science Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program (STEM).
Dr. Rose Malinowski, professor of social work at Trinity, believes Brink’s Trinity field placement at Westside Christian School in Chicago in spring 2012 helped prepare her for her journey.
“Jen’s experience provided her with many opportunities to serve in a culturally rich environment with the support of helping professionals from various backgrounds,” said Malinowski.
Trinity Christian College has been named by G.I. Jobs magazine as a Military Friendly School for 2013.
This ranks Trinity in the top 15 percent of all colleges, universities, and trade schools that make efforts to embrace America’s military students and ensure their success on campus. An annual list is compiled through extensive research and a data-driven survey of more than 12,000 VA-approved schools nationwide.
“I am pleased we have been identified in this way,” said President Steve Timmermans, Ph.D., “for we honor those who have served our country when we make higher education accessible to them.”
Some of Trinity’s benefits noted by the magazine include an advisor on staff to assist veterans with career placement, in-state tuition without residency requirements for active-duty military students, and participation in the Yellow Ribbon Program.
For information about applying to Trinity, call 866.TRIN.4.ME. For information about military-related benefits at Trinity, contact Ryan Zantingh in Financial Aid at 708.239.4872 or ryan.zantingh@trnty.edu.
Although many of the musical events at Trinity feature student ensembles and choirs, faculty and professors of the College’s music department had the opportunity to showcase their talents at the Music Faculty Recital on September 11 in the Van Namen Recital Hall.
“The recital provides a great night of music and also lets students hear their professors perform,” said Dr. Mark Peters, professor of music. “We hope it will also encourage some students to join a music ensemble or take private lessons if they’re not already.”
Peters opened the event with prayer and the concert began with an African-American spiritual, “Give Me Jesus” performed by Dr. Helen Van Wyck, professor of music. The evening took the audience through a variety of performances including a cornet duet by Peters and Dr. Ken Austin, professor of music, and a guitar solo by Jonathan Roth, the College’s new lesson instructor.
“As a music student, the recital helped me to realize and appreciate the wonderful, talented faculty that I have the pleasure of studying under,” said Leah Laky ’13 of Grand Marais, Minnesota. “What other students can say that they learn from people capable of mastering Bach, Mendelssohn, and Villa-Lobos?”
About Jonathan Roth
Jonathan Roth, a Chicagoland native, composes classical guitar music. Roth attended Pepperdine University, where he studied with Christopher Parkening for his undergraduate work.
Roth began graduate studies at the University of Southern California Thornton School Of Music where he completed degrees under the instruction of Scott Tennant.
Roth taught as an instructor of guitar at Pepperdine from 2008 until 2011, when he moved back to the Midwest and taught at Indiana University South Bend. This year, Roth agreed to take on the role as Trinity’s guitar instructor. Roth has recorded two solo albums, “Meditations” and “Nostalgia.”
Upcoming Music Events at Trinity
September 23: Southwest Symphony Orchestra, 4 p.m., Ozinga Chapel Auditorium
September 28: Black and White Dress-up Night of Jazz, 7:30 p.m., Ozinga Chapel Auditorium, free admission
October 26: Fall Instrumental Concert–Wind Ensemble, 7 p.m., Ozinga Chapel Auditorium, free admission
Students looking to get involved and members of different campus and community organizations recently had an opportunity to meet at the annual Student Involvement Fair.
The event featured representatives from campus organizations and local businesses. They presented the various ways student can participate in activities and services both on and off campus. Students were also able to ask questions and discover more about groups that interested them.
“Every student could find something that they enjoy, because there are so many groups out there,” said Student Association Vice President Megan Kuiper ’14 of McBain, Michigan. “The wonderful weather and picnic dinner brought not only new students, but returning ones as well.”
Organizations Represented:
Academic Initiative
Acting on Aids
Allelu (yearbook)
Archer Bank
Art Club
Cafe 23
Campus Ministries
Courier (newspaper)
Covenant OPC
Debate Team
First Midwest Bank
F.T.W. Improv
Grace Community Church
Harvest Bible Chapel
H.A.S
Investment Club
Immanuel CRC
Education Club
L.S.P.
Multicultural Committee
Music Department
Office of Service Learning
Orland Park CRC
Outcry
Palos Heights CRC
Palos Heights Library
Prayer Ministry
Psychology Club
Pui Tak Center
Random Acts of Kindness
Read With Me
Service Outreach
Sign Club
Social Justice Chapter
Student Activities
Student Association
Sunday Night Worship
Sunday Snacks
Theatre
Westminster OPC
Over 200 new Trinity students spent a morning working together in their matching “Troll Nation” t-shirts to wrap presents for children in need.
The service project at the Children’s Hunger Fund was part of First Year Forum (FYF), a one-credit, week-long course designed to introduce freshmen to current students, faculty, and the mission of the College.
Tara DeVries ’15 of Ripon, California, enjoyed the activities as a way to get to know her fellow classmates and to praise God.
“One of my favorite moments was our first night on campus where all the freshmen were singing worship songs,” said DeVries. “I just looked around at my whole class with our candles and our hands raised high and thought, ‘Wow, God put me at the right school.’”
The incoming class also had the opportunity to interact with Drs. Steve and Barbara Timmermans. Small groups took turns walking through the heavy rain to the president’s house for fellowship and a dessert reception.
“This event is such a great example of the hospitality Trinity embodies every day,” said Becky Starkenberg, director of First Year Experience.
The FYF program also included group discussions about diversity and expectations for college students, a trip to downtown Chicago, and other opportunities for worship and activities.
Sitting in the same church where Christina Rossetti once worshipped, Dr. Karen Dieleman, then a Ph.D. candidate, contemplated how this Victorian woman’s worship experiences may have affected her development as a poet.
Dieleman, associate professor of English at Trinity, spent a total of six years researching Rossetti, as well as poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Adelaide Procter. Her research of these participants in their respective Anglican, Nonconformist, and Catholic strands of Christianity culminated in the recent publication of her book Religious Imaginaries by Ohio University Press (2012).
In the book, Dieleman explores the relationships between each woman’s commitment to a particular liturgical practice and the development of poetic voice.
Dieleman’s visits to England relate directly to her current method of teaching and scholarship, namely her love of context. In addition to visiting two of the poets’ places of worship during the first three years of research, she traveled to Cambridge’s Girton College, the first college for women, to further study Procter.
The next three years of research required expanded reading and writing to fit the work into the larger field of Victorian poetry studies and within current thinking on human formation. Dieleman earned her Ph.D. from McMaster University in Ontario in 2006 and joined the Trinity faculty in 2008.
Religious Imaginaries will especially appeal to scholars and upper level college students, and for Dieleman, has been an intellectual project that has overlapped with her own Reformed tradition.
“I prayed a lot over the work,” said Dieleman. “I don’t need to make a splash in the world but have strived to be faithful and to honor these women.”
Convocation is “a calling together” of the entire campus community to celebrate the beginning of the academic year.
On Wednesday, August 29, President Steve Timmermans, Ph.D. welcomed students and faculty back to campus, adding a special welcome to 10 new faculty members, 12 new staff members, and more than 400 new students.
Student Worship Scholar Brian Haak ’15 of Zeeland, Michigan, gave the invocation.
Professor of the Year Dr. Bob Rice, now in his 30th year of teaching history at Trinity, was met at the podium by the enthusiastic applause of the more than 600 who had gathered to reconnect, worship, and hear Rice’s message “The Year before Us.”
Rice posed the question, “How do we approach the academic year?” He encouraged all to “take up the year together” in their responses to God, in their anticipation of the wonder of a Christian liberal arts education, and in their public profession and engagement as they “raise questions, discuss, imagine, and act to renew God’s world.”
Dr. Craig Mattson, professor of communication arts, and Heather Hernandez ’14 of Mokena, Illinois, led the audience through the litany reading based on Psalm 50.
Prior to the benediction by Chaplain Willis Van Groningen, Ph.D., Provost Liz Rudenga, Ph.D., Dean of Students Mark Hanna, and Student Association President Kathryn Woodside ’15 of Kearney, Nebraska, offered prayers of thanksgiving for faculty, staff, and students.
Convocation Address by Bob Rice (August 29, 2012):
“The Year before Us”
How do we take up the academic year before us? With our longings, our expectations, our prayers and the prayers of others – how do we approach this academic year?
In her recent book, The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson portrays the migration of six million African Americans from the southern states of the United States to the North (with destinations like Chicago) and from some southern states to the West Coast of America. She tells the story of “the Great Migration,” which occurred from about 1915 to 1970 and which brought so many thousands of people from settings of pervasive injustice and terror to places of relatively greater possibilities to gain freedom for American citizens in our civil society. But Wilkerson also states that, compared to other migrations and immigrations in American history, this “Great Migration” has been underreported and insufficiently studied. Even though this migration was so important to those people who undertook the journey and had such positive effects upon American culture, it has not been prominent in the portrait of American life in the twentieth century. Wilkerson writes about a people, with all of its diversity from within, who encountered American culture and who brought about significant change in American life.
There is a second movement of people which has persisted for the last 60 years. Every year in late August or early September, thousands of students, faculty, and staff come together on college and university campuses across America. Many of them wonder: How do we become a people or a campus community? Should we confront the cultural commitments and directions in which we live? How can we connect our mission statements with our present reality?
Although we must continue to ask these questions and seek partial answers, I believe that at Trinity, we can find a place to stand and hope at the beginning of the academic year. I suggest first that we take up the academic year in response to God. Listen to the words of Psalm 96, verses 1-6:
1Sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all the earth.
2Sing to the LORD, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
3Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.
4For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
he is to be feared above all gods.
5For all the gods of the nations are idols,
but the LORD made the heavens.
6Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and glory are in his sanctuary.
The psalmist asserts that God reigns and that we are called to respond to Him. Our responses are affirmations of God’s goodness as we sing, tell, bless, and declare His love for His world. Our responses also declare God’s renewing presence in His world, which give meaning to the days, weeks, and academic semesters before us. As co-workers with Christ, we anticipate through our responses the old becoming new and the long unfolding presence of His kingdom.
We stand before God also as we anticipate the wonder of Christian liberal arts education. Liberal arts education has a long, rich history with humankind offering philosophical treatises, eloquent poetry, artistic expression, institutional development, and all kinds of engagement with creation. God offers us ways for us to center this liberal arts education through our courses, our disciplines, and our emerging habits of life and learning, through which God shows us that all of life can be redeemed and that peace and justice can embrace. Christian liberal arts education will continue to surprise us and to show us the fullness of God’s work in His creation.
Finally, we take up this academic year in response to God, with Christian liberal arts education, and we do so publicly. We use many images in higher education that remind us that learning is private, individual, and inward. But we also learn publicly in the library, in the laboratory, in the studio, and in the practice room. We take up this learning publicly as we connect classroom, residence hall, chapel, cafeteria, athletic field, and internship site. This is a public profession and a public engagement as we raise questions, discuss, imagine, and act to renew God’s world.
So we take up this year together as we respond to God, enjoy a Christian liberal arts education, and act publicly. May God guide us as we seek to be faithful in making all things new.
Trinity’s move-in crew welcomed incoming resident students during the College’s official Move-in Day for freshmen on Friday, August 24.
Shopping carts were stacked high with the essentials and wheeled back and forth between family vehicles and the residence halls as freshmen settled in to their new home away from home.
In the afternoon, resident students joined fellow classmates living off campus for the beginning of First Year Forum (FYF), a program in which first-year students are mentored as they learn more about living in this Christian academic community.
The College also welcomed transfer and returning students moving in on August 27. Classes begin Wednesday, August 29.
Tania Anzaldi ’11 teaches 4th grade at Steele Creek Elementary in Charlotte, North Carolina. Although she is just starting out, her commitment to her vocation and especially to her students was recently recognized with the First Year Teacher of the Year award presented by the school.
Recipients are selected by the school’s principal, and Anzaldi was one of two teachers chosen out of approximately 15 with less than four years of experience.
“The reward came as a big surprise,” said Anzaldi, who started her position a week after school began and hit the ground running. “Trinity’s education department taught me to teach (serve) with excellence. The principal stated that my commitment to my job and caring attitude with student/parent and teacher relationships really shined through.”
Originally from Trevor, Wisconsin, the former elementary education major first enrolled at Trinity with plans to enter nursing but changed her major sophomore year. Her teacher aide experience at a high-needs school solidified her decision. “After working with those kids and my cooperating teacher for a semester, I knew that without a doubt teaching was where God was calling me.”
And the reward of answering that call is experienced every day.
“If I only had to name one thing I love about teaching, I would have to say the students,” said Anzaldi. “As difficult and challenging as kids can be there is nothing better than looking back at the end of the year and seeing children do a complete 180 degree turn all because someone took the time to care and challenge them to be who God called them to be.”