Archives: News Stories
Nursing has always been a demanding profession, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only increased the pressure.
Associate Professor of Nursing and Department Chair Tina Decker ’06, DNP, recently talked with the Illinois Association of Colleges of Nursing (IACN) about how the expectations and requirements of nurses have changed and how nurses can adapt.
“I would dare say every nurse has been affected by the pandemic,” Decker said. “Even just trying to keep up to date with the newest guidelines, and verify actual versus fake information can be mentally, spiritually, and emotionally draining.”
Click here to read the entire interview.
Trinity is a member of IACN, which strives to advance excellence in baccalaureate and graduate nursing education in service to the public.
Convocation represents one of Trinity’s most beloved and long-standing traditions. For 62 years, it has marked the beginning of the academic year and the return to campus of students and professors. While this year’s Convocation may have looked a little different than past years, the spirit, purpose, and joy of the event continued intact.
In order to ensure that the campus community remains safe, the event took place outdoors in the Quad, with participants wearing masks and socially distanced from each other.
As part of the Convocation tradition, the Professor of the Year provided the address. This year, Professor of Theology Yudha Thianto, Ph.D., spoke about “A Tapestry.”
Thianto began by sharing some of his own story, including his struggle to continue his education as a teenager in his native Indonesia while facing parental expectations, discrimination, and financial challenges.
According to Thianto, a good tapestry tells a good story through the interweaving of all its threads. “All of our stories are interlaced into one big tapestry that God is creating,” said Thianto. “Our lives intersect in this corner of God’s creation we call Trinity Christian College. Through God’s infinite wisdom, we meet here at Trinity to form this tapestry. We are here to be with each other, the threads, to learn from each other, to hold each other’s hand in joy and in sorrow and to glorify God together.”
Thianto also spoke about the difficulties of being forced apart by the Coronavirus during the Spring 2020 semester. “And then, as we are struggling through the pandemic, we are again deeply shaken by the injustices that happen around us,” he said. “Our sense of togetherness as a whole people is torn apart when we see the systemic racism that is still happening in this country and all over the world. So, we say, ‘This is not right.’ In the midst of God’s beautiful creation, we experience the pain caused by brokenness of our world. That is why we stand together and say Black Lives Matter. We show that we carry each other in our hearts, minds, prayers and actions.”
God has brought us together here at Trinity Christian College, Thianto said. “Our individual stories become one big family story. Together, we will accomplish the calling that He has given us.”
As another aspect of the Convocation tradition, faculty led the procession to start the program, with music provided by Prof. Minkyoo Shin. President Kurt Dykstra, J.D., provided the welcome, and Javonta Howard, ’21 gave the invocation. Calvin Handoko, ’22 read from Ephesians 3:14-21.
The Prayers of Thanksgiving & Petition were offered by Kyle J. Dieleman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History; Ny’Ahmby Romaine, Academic Support Coordinator, Office of Learning Services; and Kyra Khan, ’21, Resident Assistant.
Chaplain and Dean of Spiritual Formation Rev. Willis Van Groningen, Ph.D., closed Convocation with a benediction.
The entire 62nd Annual Convocation can be viewed here.
Nothing can stop the spirit and generosity of the Trinity community! For the 34th year, participants and sponsors came together for the annual Trinity Athletics Club (TAC) Golf Classic, raising money for student-athlete scholarships. This year, 132 golfers participated in the event, which took place at Crystal Tree Country Club in Orland Park, Ill., on Monday, Aug. 17.
“These event sponsors and participants showed up for Trinity student-athletes at a particularly unique time,” said Mark Hanna, director of athletics. “We had a great day together and we are so appreciative as the proceeds from this event will directly support young people seeking to be Trinity student-athletes.”
At the conclusion of Monday’s event, over $55,000 came in to support student-athlete scholarships. The generosity of these supporters was met with 18 holes of golf, a grab-and-go breakfast, food throughout the course, a piece of Trinity Athletics apparel, and plenty of raffle prizes.
“The TAC Golf Classic had a great turn out this year,” said Ashley Martinez ’21, a student-athlete on the women’s golf team. “We had beautiful weather for golf and lots of fun with members of the Trinity community. As a student-athlete, I am very grateful for the people that participated in the outing and those that donated!”
The lowest foursome of the day ended up being Jeff Ozinga, Matt Postema, Brian Fritzler and Ken Cook.
The College would like to share its appreciation for its event sponsors, Ozinga Bros Inc. and Providence Bank. There are also over 30 other individual and company sponsors that the College would like to thank for their generosity and support.
To learn more about TAC and how you can support the Trinity student-athletes all year long, visit trnty.edu/donors/join-tac.
Congratulations to Associate Professor of Nursing Sarah Gouwens, DNP, who has been named a 2020 Illinois Nurse Educator Fellow. The fellowship, a program of the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the Illinois Nursing Workforce Center Advisory Board, is designed to promote excellence in nursing education.
“It’s exciting to be part of the fellowship, and I’m looking forward to the opportunities that the fellowship offers in terms of learning and growing as an educator. It will give me opportunities to move forward in my career and provide more expertise around my role at Trinity as Simulation Lab Coordinator,” said Gouwens, who is working toward certification as a healthcare simulation educator through the Society for Simulation in Healthcare.
Along with her work with simulation labs, Gouwens’s research also focuses on end-of-life care. “That is my other passion, and what I focused my doctoral research on,” said Gouwens, who worked in oncology and hospice and palliative care before focusing full-time on teaching. “The Nurse Educator Fellowship will help me to develop and implement knowledge, debriefing skills, and research.”
The fellowship includes grants for professional development. Attending conferences, gaining certifications, and pursuing other opportunities has been a little challenging with COVID shutdowns, she said. “But many of the conferences are now online, and I’ll still be getting the materials and content,” said Gouwens. “It’s rich in information.”
For example, she is planning to participate in SimOps 2020, sponsored by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, and the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium conference.
Gouwens is also excited about the opportunities that Trinity students will benefit from, as the Nursing Department Simulation Labs are currently being renovated and upgraded. “We treat our Simulation Lab as real-life environment. Our students will have even more opportunities to practice their skills and critical thinking with these renovations,” she said.
Trinity’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree program, which has had a 100 percent first-time pass rate on the NCLEX-RN exam for three of the last four years, prepares graduates in all areas of clinical nursing with a Christian perspective.
Trinity’s Staff Council is pleased to announce that Diana Pell, Administrative Assistant to Faculty, has been named Staff Member of the Year for 2020-21.
“There were a lot of deserving candidates for this year’s Staff Member of the Year award,” said Caleb Jonkman, Chair of Staff Council for 2019-20 and Director of the Trinity Fund. “But when we looked at Diana’s nominations, her recommendations came from across Trinity’s campus. It was not just from people she works with on a day-to-day basis, but from all different departments. That really speaks to the work she does here.”
Nominations cited how Pell exemplifies Christian service, generosity, and professionalism every day.
Pell, who has worked at Trinity since 2001, said she was surprised to learn of her award. “I know that there are so much more deserving staff members,” she said. “I love my job. I love my faculty, fellow staff members, students, and our administration, so serving is a joy to me.”
Pell said she has developed many close friendships at Trinity and God has taught her a great deal through them. “I have learned to listen more and speak less; I have learned that love truly does cover a multitude of sins; I have learned that sometimes all a student needs is a mama-hug and to know that there is someone is praying for them, and a smile goes a long way!” she said. “I am so blessed to be part of a community who loves and cares for each other and hopefully the world knows that we are Christians by our love for one another.”
Her favorite Trinity memory involves her father’s visits to campus one summer. “He spent June and July with us and liked to come to campus with me. He typically walked around the campus and prayed, but once when he came back to my office he said, ‘There are angels here at Trinity and they are very interested in Trinity Christian College,’” she recalled. “He prayed prayers of blessings over this College for many years.”
The Staff Member of the Year Award recognizes the achievements of a distinguished staff member. This is the second year that the Staff Member of the Year award has been given. Laura Chávez-Dávalos, Director of the Office of Learning Services, received Trinity’s inaugural award last year.
President Dykstra shared this message today with the Trinity community:
Hello, Trinity Community.
I write to you today about our plans for the Fall. I know that we have communicated with you repeatedly over the summer about those plans. But I also know that as the fall semester gets closer and as the world around us continues to experience the effects of COVID-19, you have been asking questions about those plans and wondering if we would be modifying them in any way to account for changing factual circumstances and recently released governmental guidance. So, I write to you to share and describe Trinity’s modified plans to be In It Together during this unique Fall semester.
In short, for the Fall semester, while the campus will remain open, Trinity is moving most of its academic program on-line and offering limited campus housing for undergraduate students.
Let me tell you why we have made this decision, how we came to it, and what this all means for our students and for their education.
All of us hoped – and expected – that, after the flow in spring, by late summer we would be seeing a substantial ebb in the spread of this virus. That is what the models predicted and that is what the data was showing. That expectation informed our announcement back in May that Trinity intended to return to a predominantly in-person, on-campus experience for this Fall. And, behind the scenes since that announcement in May, scores of people at Trinity – included among them members of our science and nursing faculty, student life team, physical plant members, food service providers, and College leadership – have been working tirelessly to best prepare this physical campus for the return of the human community in the Fall. This COVID Response Team’s work is as comprehensive and as good as you will find anywhere – and largely done with non-existent, delayed, or contradictory guidance and regulation from the State of Illinois and Cook County.
So, I want you to know that for months, Trinity has been working the problem with the stated goal of a return to campus in the fall for students, faculty, and staff.
Unfortunately, over the last month, the promising COVID infection trends took a decidedly unexpected and unfortunate turn. Instead of receding, the virus is resurging. You have seen the reports and heard the news. This is not solely an issue in education. For example, professional sports teams have barely been able to operate without infections, even with all of the sizable resources at their disposal; the Miami Marlins, for example, did not last much more than a weekend before COVID infections paused their play and put the rest of the Major League Baseball season in jeopardy. In the last ten days, most small college athletics programs, including ours, have postponed Fall competition to Spring. More states, counties, and cities have implemented quarantine travel restrictions for persons coming from other states both near and far. And, very importantly, in our recent survey of our Trinity students, a sizable – and growing – percentage of you told us that you wanted or needed to have the semester altered due to the COVID-19 situation.
We are committed to providing an outstanding Trinity education that best protects the vulnerable members of our students, faculty, and staff while creating the kind of memory-making college experience that every member of the Trinity community, and especially our students, wants to enjoy together. Every institution, whether implicitly or explicitly, vows that the safety of their community is a paramount concern; Trinity refuses to simply pay lip service to a platitude. We really mean it.
So, on the cusp of the start of a new school year, let me tell you how, in the face of new facts and current reality, we are modifying our plans for Fall. More detail about these plans can be found at the College’s website and will be forthcoming to you in follow up emails yet today and in the coming few days.
We are calling this Fall plan Trinity: In It Together because we believe that this provides the best realistic opportunity for the Trinity community to learn together and to support one another during this remarkable time. There is much around us that can easily tear us apart and cause division. Surely the COVID virus and the policy choices that flow from it could cause such a result. Thankfully, and to your credit, that has not been Trinity’s experience thus far and I trust that we will keep the faith with one another. For we need to continue to come together.
Our Trinity: In It Together plan seeks to do just that. Our Fall will not be like the Fall of 2019 – but it will not be like the end of the Spring Semester 2020 either. The campus will remain open in modified ways: faculty will have access to their offices, classrooms, studios and labs; the Huizenga Library will be available; limited residence halls will welcome undergraduate students with modified safety expectations; new co-curricular opportunities will be available; and campus ministries will offer worship and discipleship experiences.
Permit me to describe all of this in some further detail. First, I will start with Trinity’s academic program. Most of our courses will be offered entirely remotely. In fact, for most of our students in most of our programs, the entirety of the semester can occur without needing to be on campus at all. I know that this is a relief for some, a frustration for others, and a disappointment for all. We heard what you told us about your concerns of physically returning to campus in the present environment. We share those concerns.
Though students will not be present in a classroom, this is not a repeat of the Spring’s emergency transition. Rather, our faculty will have the full resources of their offices and campus spaces available to them to provide a more comprehensive remote learning experience. They also will have more time to craft courses designed with that model in mind.
For a small number of programs, especially upper level courses in those programs, remote learning simply is not a plausible way to do the necessary work. For those limited students and programs, your courses will be in-person and on-campus. Over the course of this week, those limited number of students in these particular programs will be contacted directly by the departments’ faculty to discuss how these programs will proceed on-campus in the Fall.
What will campus life look like this Fall? Surely, with limited persons on campus and state restrictions on gatherings to 50 people or less, some of the most important Trinity traditions will be modified. As a Christian College, Trinity will provide regular campus worship and discipleship experiences in ways that are different from both our “usual” forms and from what we experienced in the sudden shift in the Spring.
We will continue to tackle the important, difficult, and seemingly intractable issues in modern American life and continue to do so from a biblical worldview. College is a season and place to think hard about important issues, issues that matter. It is a dedicated time to get in on the big conversations that have captivated the human intellect for centuries. This especially is so at Christian colleges. As a result, we will continue to expand our knowledge so that we can deepen our wisdom. We want to be a people and place that knows and loves God – and knows and loves the justice, grace, and truth that God cares so much about, too.
Importantly, Trinity will again offer students a Student Success Coach, and we will open a new Remote Learning Support Center to support students in the specific challenges faced in online learning. Counselling services and academic support will be available as they have been before. Campus offices will be staffed in person during normal business hours. Student programming, the arts, athletics, and others across campus are working to craft experiences that harness the best of our Trinity traditions, perhaps create new ones, and adapt them for this short and unique season.
We are offering a full-service college experience and adding new programs and structures to support our students during this temporary season of disruption. To that end, our pricing will remain the same and existing financial aid packages will be honored. A Trinity education already is typically priced at or below that charged by our peer institutions. At the same time, we recognize that every student’s situation is different and, due to the generosity of friends, alumni and supporters of Trinity, have created the In It Together Fund that, by application, also can offer direct financial assistance to students in need of particular help.
Let me emphasize in closing that this is a short and unique season even as it is a frustrating one. Measured over the span of a college experience, let alone an entire life, a semester is a limited time. I do not mean to minimize the disappointment that this news brings – trust me, all of us feel it, especially after working so hard for so many months to return to an on-campus and in-person experience. At the same time, those who have gone before us experienced depressions and world wars lasting multiple years and, in their own ways, persevered through those more disruptive eras. I am confident that we, too, will persevere through this trial and do so together.
Over the last number of weeks, I have gone back to re-read C.S. Lewis’ wonderful message to students in the fall of 1939. He gave this message, “Learning in War-Time,” to students about to embark on their studies as the world stood at the edge of World War II. His words, edited slightly to fit our moment, perhaps will speak to you as they have to me:
“The [COVID pandemic] creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If [humanity] had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare [pandemic] with “normal life.” Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil … turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes.”
We, too, as a part of the Trinity community want knowledge and beauty now. So in this season and during this time, we will pursue knowledge and beauty, wisdom and truth, for God’s glory and for the good of the world.
I look forward to spending the Fall with you and look forward to seeing how God will use this time in our lives together.
Kurt D. Dykstra, President
Trinity Athletics has hired Theo Owens as the new head women’s basketball coach, Director of Athletics Mark Hanna announced.
“It has been a real joy getting to know Theo during these last several weeks – he has a keen knowledge of the game of basketball, has a big heart for supporting and developing young people, and has a unique desire to do this work with student-athletes here at Trinity,” Hanna said. “We are eager for Coach Owens to be our colleague and to provide leadership to a remarkable group of Trinity student-athletes.”
Before coming to Trinity, Owens was the associate head coach of CCAC opponent Robert Morris University’s women’s basketball team. Last season, he helped the team to an overall record of 19-12, which was the team’s best finish since the 2014-15 season.
Owens also worked in the CCAC prior to his year with Robert Morris, as the assistant coach for the University of St. Francis women’s basketball team for three seasons. In that time, he helped the team to a conference championship in the 2018-19 season. The Fighting Saints also made it to the NAIA Elite Eight that same season. During the 2017-18 season, he guided the team to a second-place finish in the conference and a Sweet 16 appearance in the NAIA tournament.
Before coaching at the college level, Owens was a boys’ basketball coach at Proviso East High School in Maywood, Ill., where he led the team to a fourth-place finish and a runner-up appearance at the state tournament in 2013 and 2012, respectively. Along with coaching at Proviso East, Owens coached at various other high schools in the area, including Christian Heritage Academy and his alma mater, Farragut High School. He also coached at various clubs including Full Package Athletics and TAW Basketball School.
As a player, he started at Kennedy-King Junior College, where he was a JUCO All-American and Region IV Player of the Year in 1994 and an All-American honorable selection in 1993. After spending two seasons playing at the junior college level, Owens transferred to Loyola University Chicago, where he played for the Ramblers. Currently, he sits in fifth in the record books for career assist average. He was also named to the 1990’s All-Decade team for Loyola.
He has established his coaching philosophy over the course of his career, and he plans to bring that same outlook to this position.
“When it comes to coaching, my philosophy is that it is 90 percent attitude and 10 percent technique,” Owens said. “While I believe that a good coach can change a game, I am confident that a great coach can change a life. But as we all know, change is a process and I am committed and dedicated to that process.
“After going through the hiring process, God gave me the desires of my heart. I was excited to receive the call from Mark Hanna with an offer to be the new head coach,” Owens said. “I accepted without hesitation. While I still had a few options on the table, I knew Trinity was where I desired to be and where I was called to be.”
Owens began as the head women’s basketball coach on July 13.
“I am so elated to be a part of Troll Nation,” Owens said. “The moment that I first stepped onto the campus, I felt the warmth and genuineness of the community. I know without a shadow of a doubt that as I begin working with my new colleagues, we will continue to grow and expand the Trinity brand. I look forward to this new chapter in my life and all that Trinity has to offer.”
In light of the COVID pandemic, the NAIA has publicly announced a decision to postpone national championships for fall sports to spring 2021. The CCAC has also just publicly announced decisions with regard to fall sport competition. The conference will quickly begin working to modify conference schedules to align with new national championship dates. New championship dates have not been identified.
Trinity will honor athletic scholarships for the 2020-21 academic year even though season dates and schedules are changing, and will continue to provide student-athletes with a meaningful experience throughout the fall semester. Trinity realizes the ability for student-athletes to connect with teammates and coaches is critical, and to the extent that health and safety guidelines allow, coaches will make plans for relevant sport and team activity once the fall semester begins.
For detailed information on how this decision affects move-in day and other aspects of the sports season, please read the statement released by Mark Hanna, Associate Vice President of Student Life and Athletics.
Today, organizational leaders everywhere have to think like social entrepreneurs, says Professor of Communication Arts Craig Mattson, Ph.D. That is a premise he is exploring in a book he is currently writing, as well as a podcast series called “Spiritual Capital” he launched earlier this year.
“Talking with 44 social entrepreneurs over 2019-20 in research supporting this book project gave me a couple of notions,” said Mattson. “First, a lot of people out there are interested in talking about spirituality in organizations and, secondly, I think that the breakdown of mainstream institutions in American society compels organizations across every sector to innovate and aspire in ways that even a few years ago wouldn’t have seemed necessary.”
According to Mattson, organizational leaders everywhere are scrambling to figure out the wisdom that social entrepreneurs already understand, in some measure. He has launched the podcast series in order to amplify voices like theirs. “My hope is to put their organizational savvy and mojo into circulation for other leaders trying to be more social and more entrepreneurial,” he said.
As part of the writing and interviewing process for the podcast and book, he has discovered that the question of organizational spirituality is tied up in questions of racial equity. “That’s partly because of the season we’re in nationally; it’s also because of what I’ve been hearing from social innovators themselves.” he said. “I’ve learned that one of the easiest ways to start talking about systemic racism is to talk about the financial system in the United States. Systemic racism lives and flourishes in the financial system. My podcasts very deliberately seek out people of color and seek to extend their influence in organizational thought and practice.”
For example, Mattson recently featured Patrick Reyes, Director of Strategic Partnerships for Doctoral Initiatives at the Forum for Theological Exploration and a past Trinity speaker, in a podcast entitled “Nothing about Us without Us.” In another episode, Mattson interviewed Daniel Rogers, founder & CEO of A.M. Financial, an organization created to shift the current financial landscape by enabling students from all backgrounds to graduate from college and build wealth.
Mattson originally began working on the podcasts during the winter, before the COVID pandemic caused the shift to remote learning on Trinity’s campus. “I started the podcast with the assistance of Evie Dykhouse ‘22, who served as a producer and editor, making content decisions, and assisting with the podcast’s social media presence.” Web & Database Developer Aaron DeBoer ’19 of Trinity’s IT Services Department also provided assistance. Trinity alumnus Ben Hoekstra ‘16 designed the Spiritual Capital logo and has helped market the podcast, Mattson said.
But since the COVID pandemic, Mattson has been managing the podcast himself. That has involved conducting all podcasts remotely: “From a technical point of view, it’s been tricky having interviewees capture their own audio and then interleave their data with mine,” he noted.
Mattson said the podcast has been energizing, as he works to complete the draft of his book by December. “It’s been an interesting, integral project, both for my teaching and for my own research and interests.”
With a Human Resource Management degree from Trinity, graduates not only learn how to manage HR from a strategic and organizational point of view—they learn to do so with an emphasis on human relationships.
And Trinity is pleased to announce that the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has acknowledged that Trinity’s HR Management degree now aligns with SHRM’s HR Curriculum Guidebook and Templates.
“Achieving alignment certification with the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) gives our students the assurance that our Human Resource Management program is built to equip them to participate in testing for important professional certifications offered by SHRM,” said Professor of Business and Department Chair Deborah Windes, Ph.D. “SHRM certifications are the most prominently sought out by employers. Alignment certification also ensures that our program is equipping HR students for a strong start in their professional career in human resource management.
“With this achievement comes the opportunity to be listed in the SHRM directory of schools with aligned programs,” she said. “This is an excellent way for Trinity to reach more students seeking to work in human resources.”
The HR Curriculum Guidebook and Templates were developed by SHRM to define the minimum HR content areas that should be studied by HR students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The guidelines are part of SHRM’s Academic Initiative to define HR education standards taught in business schools and help them develop degree programs that follow these standards.
With more than 300,000 HR and business executive members in 165 countries, SHRM impacts the lives of more than 115 million workers and families globally.