2011

At a special Colloquy program on Thursday morning, Pacific Union College named the 2011 Educator of the Year: associate professor of communication Tammy McGuire. McGuire, who came to PUC in 2005, completed her undergraduate studies at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. She went on to earn an M.A. in English from Eastern Washington University and a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Missouri-Columbia. In addition to teaching a series of major classes in the communication department as well as courses in the Honors Program curriculum, McGuire is a prolific researcher who has presented her studies on communication, linguistics, religion, and feminism at several national communication conferences. At colloquy, a number of faculty friends and students offered a roast, paying tribute to McGuire; each praised her in every aspect, from her innate ability to engage students in the most challenging of subjects to her impossible athleticism. Roasters Elaine Neudeck, Lynne Thew, Michelle Rai and Doug Wilson left no base uncovered, revealing everything from her love of peanut butter to her ferocious childhood temper to photographs from her days as a lanky Pathfinder. The communication department honored the woman of the hour with a video featuring messages from various family members,...

Pacific Union College has selected the recipients of this year's prestigious Maxwell Scholarship. The scholarship rewards incoming freshmen for high academic achievement, a commitment to Christian service, and outstanding leadership experience with $15,000 in annually renewable funding—$60,000 over the course of four years at PUC. These students comprise the third group recognized by the Maxwell Scholar Program, which was established at PUC in 2009 to recognize the late Malcolm and Eileen Maxwell, former president and first lady of PUC. Applicants must meet GPA and test-score requirements, and the ranking of their applications is based on resumes, an essay, and letters of recommendation. This year's winners are:Tori FodeSacramento Adventist AcademyCarmichael, CaliforniaTori served in student government for a number of years, including in the office of senior class president. She also played varsity flag football, was first chair clarinet in the school concert band, and a member of the school choir and handbell choir. In addition to her academic and leadership accomplishments, Tori volunteered 75 hours at Mercy San Juan Hospital in Sacramento, independently raised $700 for a local crisis center, and participated in a mission trip to Honduras. Tori, who also volunteers at her church, has preached at several worship programs...

PUC students held the college’s fourth annual REVO fundraising event on the Campus Mall, Sunday, May 8. Hundreds of students braved damp weather to turn out for the charity event, contributing about $2,500 toward feeding an impoverished population in Argentina. The event featured performances by two student bands, as well as the San Francisco rock group I the Mighty. Students also browsed many tables of donated clothing and assorted items for sale, followed by REVO’s annual second-hand fashion show. Models in the show strode the runway in fashions inspired by African tribal dress. A new feature at this year’s REVO event was the silent auction in which students bid for goods and services from PUC’s staff and faculty, including music lessons, athletic adventures, and homemade food. “REVO couldn’t exist without the students at PUC, willing to come spend their time and money,” says REVO coordinator and junior Tyler McCulloch. He is one of several student organizers that plans the annual campaign. This year’s project is a community kitchen that will serve a small indigenous village in the Argentinean province of Salta. Malnourishment is widespread in this community, and REVO has partnered with the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) to...

A visit from innovative environmentalist Annie Leonard highlighted Pacific Union College’s celebration of Green Week, Thursday, April 21. Leonard spoke for the annual Green Week lecture at Colloquy, and her presentation, entitled “Stewardship for the 21st Century,” capped a yearlong campus discussion on consumerism and society. Following the lecture, roughly 200 students attended a Q & A session with the speaker. Leonard is founder of The Story of Stuff Project, author of The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health—And How We Can Make it Better, and creator of a documentary of the same name. This year, Pacific Union College students read her book as part of the college’s new PUC Reads program, through which the college aims to foster a rich learning community by providing a shared reading and critical discussion experience to students and faculty. Last summer, all incoming freshman for the fall 2011 quarter received a copy of Leonard’s book. The Story of Stuff was then incorporated into several classes, including English and communication courses. Beginning her lecture, Leonard described the events that led her to a career in environmentalism. Having grown up in a family that frequented nature...

REVO PUC, the college’s popular student-run philanthropy organization, raised over $1,800 toward a community kitchen at a charity run Sunday, April 17. The race, which took runners through 3.1 miles of PUC’s beautiful forest trails, was the kickoff event for REVO’s annual fundraising season and also served as the capstone event of PUC’s Homecoming Weekend. Approximately 100 runners—including students, alumni, and local athletes— participated in the race. Their $30 entrance fees will go to Adventist Development and Relief Agency, which is partnering with REVO to establish a self-sufficient community kitchen serving Argentina’s underdeveloped province of Salta. Napa Valley local Alex Lovick won first place in the race. In 2008 PUC students started the first campus branch of REVO, an international philanthropy movement. The students, who are entirely responsible for the project, select a different cause each year to support with fundraising and awareness events. Hundreds of students on campus get involved each year—through planning, coordinating, event participation, or donations. Causes have included rehabilitating the victims of human trafficking in Peru, supporting local food banks, and combating a debilitating disease rampant in Ethiopia....

Pacific Union College alumni returned to the mountain as the college held its annual Homecoming Weekend under sunny skies, April 15-17. This year’s program honored the graduating classes of ’41, ’51, ’61, ’71, ’81, ’91, ’01, and ’06, plus 25-year reunion class of ‘86. The celebration began Friday evening with the traditional Diogenes Dinner, a banquet honoring a person who has shown outstanding lifelong service to PUC. This year’s honorees were Ruth and Lyle McCoy, ’42 and ’45, two local alumni who have been intimately involved with the Angwin community and have given regularly and substantially in support of the college. President Heather J. Knight recognized the iconic PUC couple with another PUC icon—a beautiful watercolor painting of the old west wing of Irwin Hall by former art professor Vernon Nye. Knight took the opportunity to announce her dream of restoring that historic structure, which was demolished in 1982 amid concerns of its structural integrity. The announcement drew pronounced applause from the attendees, as Irwin Hall has long been a rallying point for many of PUC’s alumni. Following a short service honoring alumni who have passed away this year, Brigadier General Loree K. Sutton, M.D., ’81, presented the message at...

Pastor Laffit Cortes has accepted the position of PUC campus chaplain and associate pastor of the PUC Church, and will begin the new post effective July 1 of this year. Cortes currently serves as the youth director for the New Jersey region of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and comes with a wealth of outreach and young adult ministry experience that makes him an ideal fit for the position. As youth director, Cortes coordinates ministry events and programs for young people within the 13,000-member New Jersey Seventh-day Adventist community. He has also been a featured speaker at a variety of programs for young people within New Jersey and across the country. Cortes began laying the groundwork for his ministry at PUC April 7, when he came to Angwin to meet with student leaders and administrators on campus to begin planning for next school year. He will also took the opportunity to meet and greet the campus April 8 at a special program for PUC students. “I hope to collaborate with others as we develop future servant leaders that will not only love God, but live lives dedicated to serving as Christ did,” he says. “By God's grace, He will use us...

In the tradition of celebrating the diversity of its student body, Pacific Union College recognized its Asian-American students at colloquy Thursday morning. The Asian-American heritage colloquy shed light on the culture and talents of the students who comprise roughly 23 percent of the total student body. This was the fourth in a series of assemblies putting the spotlight on the various ethnic groups with a strong presence on campus. A number of Asian-American students displayed their talents through musical performances throughout the meeting. Peter Han, a junior film and biology major, conducted an Asian-American string ensemble, who played Antonio Vivaldi’s “Spring: Allegro” from The Four Seasons violin concerto. Junior Carissa Kan and sophomore Ernest Ly later sang a Chinese song entitled, “Mei Li De Shen Hua.” The colloquy featured chemistry professor Ray Rajagukguk as speaker, who spoke on the role Asian-American Christians should play as members of the “model minority”—a term in social psychology used to describe a minority group (typically Asian American) who achieves greater success than their society’s average. Focusing on the empowerment brought about by the emphasis on education in Asian-American culture, Rajagukguk called students to use their education with the intent of imparting that knowledge others....

College students have long felt the burden of textbooks—their weight, price tag, and time consumption. Since last spring, Pacific Union College art history professor Alexander Carpenter has simplified the lives of his students by integrating Smarthistory.org, a non-profit, multimedia art history “web-book,” into his lesson plans. This web resource combines the text and images of traditional textbooks with new features, like discussion video clips, to dynamically and engagingly supplement—or even replace—art survey course textbooks. Now PUC students have gotten involved with the project directly, making their own impact on this increasingly popular web resource. Smarthistory.org and the classroom meet as Carpenter requires students to watch the site’s discussion video clips and respond to a number of questions in preparation for upcoming lectures. “I’ve noticed that students seem to come to class better prepared,” he says. “[And] I think the questions are more engaging than what I had [students answering] before.” Carpenter enjoys the flexibility offered by the website because he does not believe students retain information from long reading assignments as well as they could from multimedia sources. “As a student, I really didn’t like when teachers would assign a lot of [reading] because I felt like I didn’t know...

The Pacific Union College campus was enlightened on the effects of American consumerist behavior at colloquy on Thursday morning. In the annual “PUC Reads” edition of the campus-wide assembly, students, faculty, and staff had the chance to view a short documentary entitled The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard. The film, which has quickly become the go-to guide in the sustainability movement, explains the lifecycle of material goods in a “material economy,” addressing the detriment to people of third world countries and the Earth caused by wasteful habits of American culture. Leonard breaks down the process into five segments: extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. Her work is both critical of excessive consumerism and the power of corporations over the American government, and advocates environmental and social justice. Leonard’s original book with the same name was assigned to first-year students in their English 101 classes by a committee called PUC Reads that, according to English professor Cynthia Westerbeck, “discussed the concept of having the entire freshman class read a single book as a way to expand the concept of PUC as a learning community.” While the student response to the book have been mixed, with some individuals inspired to make...