2010

Disney animator Marshall Toomey spoke at Pacific Union College on March 2 about his career and experience with Disney. Toomey, who worked on classic Disney characters such as Rafiki from The Lion King and the Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was met by an engaged audience of students, faculty and community members, who filled the Chan Shun Hall lecture room. Toomey talked about his career and what it has taken him to get this far. Above all, Toomey stressed perseverance. “Follow your dream,” he said, and that is exactly what he’s done. Students resonated with Toomey and his energetic personality. Film and television major Marcus Klonek was just one of many students who enjoyed Toomey’s lecture. A future animator himself, Klonek found Toomey’s career inspirational. It was rewarding to hear Toomey speak and “just get the feeling from a professional on what it takes to be in the field,” Klonek said. “It's neat that he’s the guy who does the final animations which get shown on the big screen.” Toomey has worked with Disney for over 30 years and loves his work because, as he says, “I get to draw every day.” Even as a child, he knew...

A tall, handsome young man in a blue velvet blazer and a thin black tie walks onto the stage. In a single moment, the silence of the crowd disappears as though Justin Timberlake had come to Pacific Union College. Girls scream; boys applaud. The 400 students packed into Dauphinee Chapel give PUC alum Tad Worku the warmest welcome back home. “Being here, being around you guys, this feels more like a jam session,” Worku tells the crowd. “It just feels like home.” The highly anticipated performance by the former business major and his band of four full-time musicians (whom he calls "psychotically gifted") was undoubtedly the event of the weekend. Worku’s band, consisting of Marcus Phillips on the bass, Nate Mercereau on the guitar, Q Jackson on the drums, and gospel keyboardist Dave Jackson, left the stage with the audience on their feet. “The musicians were…indescribable!” said Student Association social vice president Chris Madrid. “Everyone was just amazed at how incredible they were.” The group played a set of 10 songs, ranging from pieces Worku wrote for other artists in the time he worked for production companies to his very first composition “Stormy Weather,” which he wrote as an 18-year-old...

Sporting a bright yellow t-shirt and a magnetic smile, sophomore biochemistry major Anthony Yeo sits at a table in the Pacific Union College library to take a break from studying for a cell-molecular biology exam. Seventeen units and three science classes is a lot to take on for a 19 year-old student, but Yeo discovered a secret weapon to combat stress while generating altruism in the town of Angwin: mentoring. “It’s a great opportunity to help someone,” says Yeo. “And for that hour each week, I don’t have to study anymore!” A self-proclaimed infectious happiness virus, Yeo was ironically matched up with a fifth grader named Patrick who Yeo considers to be “pretty mellow.” “It’s almost like a game trying to get him to open up,” Yeo laughs. “But I really enjoy spending time helping him; it’s very rewarding.” Dr. Margo Haskins, associate professor of education, started the mentoring program last winter after she spoke to the campus about “the importance of showing God’s love in tangible and real ways,” she says. “I got to thinking, ‘Okay, I’m throwing this out there, so I need to bring something to this campus that will be meaningful to everyone involved.” Haskins first...

This February, the Dramatic Arts Society at Pacific Union College hosted "Inspired By," a new works festival featuring three original plays. Each play was performed once as a staged reading after 12 hours of rehearsal, and audience members provided input on strong and weak points. The casts and directors then went back to work to develop the plays further before performing a second reading. "Kingdom Borrowed: A Tragedy" was written by current drama senior T. K. Widmer, who plans to pursue an MFA in theater pedagogy, and directed by alumna Heather Denton. The play is about the biblical King Saul, looking at the familiar story through Saul's eyes rather than David's. Current English major Peter Katz's "The Hectic in My Blood" was directed by alumna and drama program director Mei Ann Teo and inspired by Hamlet. The play is about a three-person performance of Hamlet that goes wrong when one of the players begins to lose his grip on reality. "Julia Gibbs Never Went to Paris" by alumnus Timothy Wolcott gives center stage to two supporting characters from Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," Julia Gibbs and Simon Stimson. The play, directed by alumna Cambria Wheeler, addresses dreams and the choices we...

Aren Rennacker is a busy man. He’s a full time student. He plays varsity basketball. He’s a resident assistant in Grainger Hall dormitory. These things are all major time commitments. You’d think this 21-year-old would take advantage of his weekends for a little rest and relaxation. But like many other student volunteers at Pacific Union College, he’s up at dawn on Sabbath mornings—shuttling local children of broken homes to KidzReach, one of PUC’s most powerful student ministries. “It’s just an amazing ministry that’s reaching out to those who really could use it,” says Rennacker. “And I see it as a direct response to Christ’s command to deny self and serve other people who are suffering.” KidzReach connects children of incarcerated parents and similar troubled backgrounds with volunteers who are committed to providing a positive influence. On Sabbath mornings, the student volunteers fan out across Napa and Lake counties to pick up the children at their homes and bring them to church. The children are fed breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Beyond that, the kids spend the day in the care of the volunteers—playing in the park, or just hanging out with stable, loving, Christian young adults. KidzReach was born out of...

For years, nursing students from Pacific Union College have been traveling the 30 miles to Queen of the Valley Medical Center (QVMC) for clinical rotations and, eventually, for job opportunities. So when QVMC set a goal to achieve "Magnet Status" by 2013 with 100 percent of their nursing leaders and 65 percent of staff nurses holding at least a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree (BSN), a collaboration with PUC was natural. "We have had a long history of working with the Queen," says PUC nursing department chair Shana Ruggenberg. "And we have similar missions; we both come at this from a religious mission perspective." Several other schools wrote proposals for providing an on-site RN-to-BSN nursing program at QVMC, but PUC's was selected to begin last year. The PUC nursing department provides the students with all the core upper division nursing courses in one-night-a-week classes, with religion courses completed on two full Sundays. QVMC provides classrooms in their corporate center in Napa and tuition support for their employees. Of the 17 students currently enrolled in the program, most are already working at QVMC. The purpose of this program, which is similar to another PUC offers in Fairfield, is to give...

On February 11, Jimmy Ha, a beloved religion professor who has been battling cancer, spoke for Pacific Union College's annual senior recognition program. The officers of the class of 2010 invited Ha to speak at this program, and the school body welcomed him with a standing ovation. Ha, who is also a PUC alumnus, explored "what unites us as a community of faith and learning — besides Facebook." He suggested that key elements are that we all long for meaning, we believe in the idea of truth, we believe in the notion of good and evil, we are interdependent, and we share the Christian faith. But, he said, "ultimately what unites us is death." Acknowledging the apparent morbidity of that statement, he elaborated: "When a Roman general would return from war parading in triumph into Rome to the adulation of the admiring crowd, a slave would behind him whisper into his ear, 'Memento mori.' Remember you shall die." So, in this moment of recognizing students' accomplishments and looking to a bright future, Ha said, "I whisper humbly behind you, 'Memento mori.'… It is a call to humility that makes all these commonalities I mentioned even possible." He recounted how as...

When a massive earthquake devastated Haiti this January, one PUC alumnus was especially touched. Nicole Wilson, class of 2006, had just returned from the impoverished island nation, where she and a group of Christian missionaries had been ministering to the medical, social, and spiritual needs of the people there in the wake of several hurricanes last year. This most recent disaster has served as a call to this missionary, who is now in the process of developing an international organization devoted to providing care to people living in underdeveloped countries. Wilson plans to open the organization’s first center—which will contain a clinic, orphanage, and learning center—in Haiti, a place that has grown very close to her heart. “Unfortunately it took a natural disaster, but I think it shed light on Haiti,” says Wilson. “I’m hoping God’s plan is for it to be rebuilt, and maybe we’ll obtain the resources they need to be able to do so.” Wilson got her start in missions at PUC when she joined a group ministering in Thailand in 2003. That trip, along with opportunities like PUC’s Homeless Ministries, ignited her passion for service. “PUC is very service-oriented, and the encouragement of missions I received...

The midpoint of an athletic team’s building season is a kind of like looking at half a glass of water—you have to decide how you want to look at it. Fortunately, PUC’s Pioneers women’s basketball is a team full of hard-working optimists. “We don’t have a winning record,” admits forward Vanessa Felder. “But we’re getting to the point where we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and we’re pushing forward.” Felder, a junior, is one of only two upperclassmen on this year’s squad. The rest are sophomores who have only been playing together since last season. It’s been the team’s biggest challenge this year as they face more experienced opponents in the California Pacific conference of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. “Everybody that we recruit knows that we’re very young; we’re building toward the future,” says assistant coach Doug Wilson. “But this year we’ve won as many games as they have in the past four years. So the morale really is good.” This goal of continual improvement is what keeps the women motivated on the court. But during this building year, the coaches and the players are also working on another critical value off the court: building a team...

This past summer, Pacific Union College student Robert Abdul-Karim collaborated with Pastor Marshal George of Alameda Seventh-day Adventist Church to take a unconventional approach to evangelism for Abdul-Karim’s theology degree. Together, the two decided that their ministry would be used as a way to connect with the community on a level deeper than simply distributing pamphlets or literature. While working on a small-group ministry on the Bay Area island of Alameda, the two witnessed young children skateboarding down the former naval base with no particular direction or purpose. So the two worked together to plan a ministry in the form of a skate clinic with an all-too appropriate name: Alameda Extreme. “We wanted to give the kids something to do,” says Abdul-Karim. “That’s where the idea of having a skate clinic came up – to help them out, to encourage them.” Taking this approach, the PUC students who volunteered to join Alameda Extreme went to the skate park simply to interact with the young skaters. One foggy morning in Angwin, Abdul-Karim loaded up a school van with six yawning underclassmen, all a little uncertain about what the day would bring. Once they arrived on base, the students left their nerves...