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After three-and-half years in the army and combat in Iraq, Scott Meves ’15 of Arlington Heights, Illinois, could no longer view his future through the sight of a .50 caliber machine gun. He finished his service in the Army in 2008, realizing he was not meant for a military career and facing difficult times of adjustment, including the decision about what to do next with this life
Hoping for a smoother transition from active service into a career at home, Meves pursued an education in fire science and some training as an emergency medical technician. He first became aware of Trinity because his wife Carolyn works at nearby Elim Christian Services. Attracted by the location and the College’s Christian perspective, Meves decided to transfer into Trinity’s nursing program.
“Serving in the infantry put me in violent situations. That kind of work isn’t fulfilling,” Meves said. “But in nursing, I can choose to help.”
Meves has done clinicals at various area hospitals including Ingalls and Hope, where he worked in the pediatric unit along with fellow nursing student Michael Ippel ’15. He also works as a tech in the ER at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and plans to pursue a career as an emergency room nurse.
“I feel like God worked it out right,” said Meves.
Meves is attending Trinity, a 2015 Military Friendly School, through the Yellow Ribbon program, which provides financial assistance to veterans. He has also met with fellow students who have served in the armed forces to participate in initial discussions about starting a veteran’s group on campus.
Owned and operated by the Chicago Bulls and White Sox, the Bulls/Sox Academy is a state-of-the-art training facility. It attracts young athletes who desire advanced professional instruction. Assistant Marketing Manager Sara Connolly ’11, a graduate of Trinity’s exercise science program, performs all the digital marketing duties. They include online advertising, website/social media updates and e-blasts. She also writes and distributes press releases to drive media coverage, and attends community outreach events to create brand awareness throughout the Chicagoland area.
Internship to career: “I was offered internships at three different companies, but I knew right away my first choice was the academy. Since the job market leaves a lot to be desired, I knew having a competitive edge was critical to my success after college, so I took my internship very seriously and considered it a great opportunity. I worked hard at building a reputation that would help me advance within the company. It’s important to realize that success does not stop once you get the job. It is a continuous journey. We should always strive for excellence, regardless of which career we choose.”
Prepared to serve youth: “My Trinity educationgrounded me intellectually and spiritually. It was very instrumental in preparing me to serve young athletes in an atmosphere that I love. I feel blessed to be able to apply the knowledge I gained in my major, while following Christ’s calling to assist others. I also credit my years at Trinity and Shari Jurgens ’92, assistant professor of physical education, with teaching me the art of multi-tasking.”
Kailyn Baum ’11 of Hudsonville, Michigan, has taken advantage of Trinity’s proximity to Chicago this semester by working as an intern with The Chicago Lighthouse for People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired.
The Lighthouse is a prominent non-profit organization that, for more than 100 years, has been providing services and programming opportunities for blind or visually impaired people. Baum became connected to the Lighthouse through Professor of History Dr. Robert Rice, a member of the Lighthouse.
At the start of her internship, Baum’s efforts were focused on the Lighthouse’s September 24-25 Flair Fashion Show and Sale, one of the organization’s biggest annual fundraising events.
“Working with the Flair event was really rewarding,” said Baum. “I was meeting new people every day, either those who worked on the Flair committee, or people who I volunteered with during the event. I met individuals with lives very different from my own, and getting to know them was an exciting experience.”
Recently, Baum put her English major to work, writing and distributing press releases highlighting 49 students who are legally blind or visually impaired or have multi-disabilities and who have been granted scholarships for higher education through the Lighthouse.
“My English major has helped me prepare for this internship through the writing I’ve done at Trinity,” she said.
Baum said responses she receives from the media encourage her in her work.
“Not only are press release pitches creating interest in the various outlets, but they add to the Lighthouse’s network,” she said. “This also means that the scholarship recipients are getting much-deserved recognition from their communities for their hard work and achievements, regardless of their disabilities.”
In all of her work with the Lighthouse, Baum says that her experience so far has prompted her to think differently about her future.
“I never thought I would be working in event planning, but that is essentially what I’ve been doing at the Lighthouse, and I really enjoy it,” she said. “I can see myself being a part of similar processes, conceptualizing and planning events where I can learn new skills while benefitting others in my community.”
Jocelyn (Black) Morris ’05 said that the liberal arts education at Trinity provided the fertile learning environment for a student with myriad interests. And through a switch in majors, varied internship experiences, and eventual career changes, Morris said she continued to “pull” from what she learned in her Trinity courses, philosophy, psychology, and sociology core courses.
Her internship experiences–the first as a public relations intern at Chicago’s Mayor’s Office of Special Events and the second as a stringer in Washington, D.C. for the SouthtownStar–gave Morris the “learn on the job” experience her communication arts professor stressed.
Morris graduated with “a very impressive portfolio,” which included an article in the SouthtownStar about a local resident who participated in President Ronald Reagan’s funeral ceremony, an event that occurred while Morris was interning in D.C.
Soon after graduating Trinity, Morris continued her communications studies at Medill School of Journalism—Northwestern University, continuing to work in media and in government. Morris, whose experience ranges from public relations to policy research, manages a team of 15 staff at the Social Security Administration in Chicago, where she has been employed since 2009.
Junior Fred Walls said it is definitely a “God thing.” Walls, a marketing major and communication arts minor, is not only thankful for God’s obvious hand in opening the door to attending Trinity but to a new internship opportunity on campus.
Walls serves in the newly established internship role of the Chicago visit coordinator for the admissions department’s Destination Trinity visit day. The trip to Chicago is one of the highlights for visiting students, even those who are familiar with the city. Walls is exploring more options for ways to enjoy the field trip downtown, whether by maximizing Navy Pier attractions or connecting with alumni who live and work in the city.
Walls realizes the importance of campus visits for prospective students. But a visit isn’t the only deciding factor in choosing a college, and as a high school senior, his visit to Trinity wasn’t as motivating as his father’s belief in the College’s Christian environment.
“As a high school senior, my relationship with God wasn’t where it is now,” said Walls. “My dad said he felt Trinity had something for me. I was raised in church, but my faith was transformed here.”
Although he experiences the usual peaks and valleys, Walls said he is thankful to be surrounded by people his age who are excited about Christ. In addition to growing in his faith, Walls said he has had opportunities to “grow up,” including his time as a Resident Assistant. He believes the interpersonal skills he learned as an RA are essential in his internship, and he plans to draw on those skills in order to create an even more personal experience for visiting students.
One of the words most synonymous with Chicago is “Bulls,” as in one of the greatest teams in NBA history.
Working for the franchise to help ensure that the United Center is sold out for every home game is alumnus Brandon Wright ’01, Manager of Group Ticket Sales. Wright focuses his efforts on groups of 100 or more, working with Fortune 500 companies, high schools and colleges, dance groups, churches and non-profit organizations, and Special Olympics teams. His goal is to help the team keep one of its stellar records, although not one as well-known as its record of 72 wins in a single season: #1 in NBA home attendance.
Wright, a sports junkie, born and raised in Chicago, majored in communication arts and minored in business at Trinity while also playing baseball all four years of college. Last year, he welcomed students from Professor Kyle Harkema’s business marketing class.
Talking to students is something Wright enjoys, recalling how his own Trinity education proved to be pivotal in his success. “The courses I took at Trinity were invaluable. They not only prepared me for what I do in my role at the Bulls today, but also confirmed that this was the career path I wanted to take,” said Wright.
He said former Trinity professor David Ribbens played an integral role in connecting him with a summer internship with the Chicago Blackhawks. After his graduation in 2001, Wright then interned with the Bulls, an opportunity that led to his current position.
Wright said he was being considered for full-time employment along with other college graduates, many of whom attended schools in the Big Ten and had to prove himself to the organization. Wright got the job.
“It made me proud knowing that you don’t have to graduate from the biggest school in order to work in this industry, and I know I wouldn’t be where I am today without the education and experiences I had at Trinity.”
The College is pleased to announce the publication of the new book Bad Luck, Hot Rocks by Ryan Thompson, assistant professor of art and design, and the wonderful review of the book in the Los Angeles Times.
Thompson’s book, co-authored by Phil Orr, is a collection of photos of petrified “rocks” from the Petrified Forest in the Painted Desert of Northeast Arizona, and facsimiles of some of the hundreds of “conscience letters” people have left over the years after returning the pieces of wood they had taken, a common practice but prohibited under national park regulations.
Read a short introduction to the book.
Ryan explained that due to the unknown provenance of the pieces of returned petrified wood, they can’t be scattered back in the park since doing so would spoil those sites for research purposes.
“They are instead added to the park’s ‘conscience pile,’ which sits alongside a private gravel service road,” explained Thompson, who recently shared more about the process of writing the book.
Where did the idea for the book originate?
“I first encountered the ‘conscience letters’ on a research trip in Arizona during the summer of 2011. There was a small display of the letters at the visitors’ center and I was immediately taken by the letters because of their humor, heartbreak, and humility. The content dovetailed nicely with some of my other research interests, and I knew that I wanted to work with the archive and the returned rocks in some capacity.
“The following summer I returned to the park with my good friend and collaborator, Phil Orr, to work with the conscience letter collection and to photograph some of the returned rocks from the park’s ‘conscience pile.’ The book features facsimiles of letters, photos of returned rocks, and an interview with the park’s museum curator, Matthew Smith.”
Do you have a favorite letter, and if so, why?
“I really like the ‘sad face’ letter. The way the circles are traced and the carefulness with which the tears are drawn gets me every time.
I also really like the letter that reads, ‘They are beautiful, but I can’t enjoy them—they weigh like a ton of bricks on my conscience. Sorry.’ It’s beautifully concise and poetic.
Explain the “Department of Natural History.”
“When I was in graduate school, one of my professors mentioned that my work was like a natural history museum—in the sense that I seemed interested in re-presenting information in new and aesthetic ways. Soon after that conversation, I bought the domain name for my portfolio website: departmentofnaturalhistory.com.
“Since then, the Department of Natural History moniker has been a filter through which all my work passes. For better or worse, my research interests take me in lots of different directions (like a crow living in a chrome-plated world) and the ‘Department’ helps me make decisions about how and where I should spend my time and energy in the studio. It’s also a way of branding (for lack of a better word) my studio practice so gallerists, curators, and publishers have a framework with which to understand what I do.”
This semester, Dr. Mike Vander Weele ’73, professor of English, approached colleague Dr. Rick Hamilton, professor of business, with an idea that would encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration and allow students to put their classroom experience into practice in a professional setting.
Vander Weele planned to teach a “writing for non-profits” section in his Advanced Writing course and enlisted the support of Hamilton, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career to non-profits.
Hamilton suggested a collaboration between the students in the writing course and students in his Organizational Consulting course to work with the “client,” Chicago Semester, in improving their online communication and marketing efforts, especially important during the program’s 40th anniversary year.
The Advanced Writing students worked as writing consultants for one of the Organizational Consulting business teams. The students worked together to consider how to best represent the client’s history and legacy through shaped interviews and to develop stories that would fit Chicago Semester’s communication needs.
“It is a wonderful experiment in process,” Hamilton said, adding that the departments will apply what is learned from the project to future endeavors.
Vander Weele agrees that cross-disciplinary collaborations help students to experience lessons they can carry into the future.
“This fits nicely with my sense of what the English department can do to help non-profits get their stories out while also making rich writing experiences available to our students,” Vander Weele said.
Both English and business students found it to be a rich learning experience.
Business student and team leader Adam Suwyn ’15 of Ada, Michigan, saw partnering with English students as a way to expand the scope of what his team could do for its client, Chicago Semester.
“The biggest thing [Advanced Writing students] bring is a unique and fresh perspective to our work,” Suwyn said. “Our group has been accounting and finance focused, so the writers helped us to step back and see the organization from a very relational perspective.”
Advanced Writing student Kayla VanWyk ’16 of Pella, Iowa, served as consultant to Suwyn’s team and appreciated the opportunity to understand how her skills could be used in business.
“It’s great to see how work as a writer can translate into the business world,” VanWyk said.
Other Collaborations
With the assistance of Tabitha Matthews, coordinator for Community Services and Pre-College Programs, Advanced Writing students also worked with Faith and Action, a non-profit that believes in impacting communities through demonstrating God’s love in practical ways. The class wrote shaped interviews to enhance the story of the organization through its website.
Vander Weele also reached out to Trinity’s marketing and communications office. A staff member answered students’ questions about choosing people to interview, conducting interviews, and writing content, as well as the time involved in creating a major publication, from first contact through print.
The business department has also pursued collaborative opportunities with other academic departments, such as computer science, art and design, and church and ministry leadership.
More than 550 students, families, and friends of the Trinity community gathered at the College’s annual Christmastide concert to celebrate the season on December 6.
This year’s theme, “Mystery Revealed,” was incorporated into several elements of the concert, including singing, readings of scripture, and poetry interpretations.
Directed by Dr. Helen Van Wyck, professor of music, the concert featured over 100 vocal and instrumental artists, with performances by Trinity’s Concert Choir, Gospel Choir, Honors Ensemble, Wind Ensemble, Brass Quintet, and Woodwind Ensemble. The choirs and ensembles performed traditional Christmas songs, and the audience was also able to join in several carols and hymns.
Each year, the Trinity community enjoys the long-held tradition of ringing in the Christmas season with music.
While many enjoy Trinity’s annual Christmastide concert as a way to worshipfully celebrate Christmas, they also enjoy the light, festive Jazzin’ Around the Christmas Tree concert.
Directed by faculty member Kevin Brown, the Trinity Wind Ensemble and Jazz Combo performed a variety of Christmas classics on December 5.
Guest musician and saxophonist Andy Schlinder joined students for the concert.