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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...

Every year the NAIA names scholar-athletes to represent them on the Daktronics NAIA Scholar-Athletes list. To be eligible for nomination a student-athlete must be a junior or senior in academic standing, attend an NAIA nominating institution for one full year, and have a minimum GPA of 3.5 on a 4.0 scale. Seven student-athletes were chosen to represent the women's basketball and the California Pacific Conference. Two Pioneers were chosen among the honorees.Junior guard Carla Bartlett and senior guard Julie Ford were among the athletes chosen as scholar athletes this year. They helped lead the Pioneers to a 2-22 overall record and 2-10 conference record. The Pioneers concluded the season with a loss to Menlo College in the first round of the Cal Pac tournament.The Pioneers are joined by Lesley Vodicska (HNU), Rachel Estabrook and Janessa McGirt (BU), Corie Thompson (MC), and Maria Viola (WJU), as representatives from the California Pacific Conference.Congratulations to all athletes on their very noteworthy achievement.Click on the following link to view the entire 2011 Daktronics-NAIA Division II Women's Basketball Scholar-Athlete list.http://naia.cstv.com/sports/w-baskbl-div2/spec-rel/031411aaa.html» Read about the Pioneers Men who received recognition....

Pacific Union College launched its own application for iPhone and other iOS-enabled devices. The new application, PUC Mobile, will keep students connected easily and efficiently, on and off campus. PUC Mobile is now available for free download at the iTunes App Store. Features on the app include quick access to college news updates and photo galleries; a schedule of upcoming campus events; a real time menu for PUC’s Dining Commons; a phone and e-mail directory that initiates contact with one click; and an interactive map of the campus and surrounding attractions. “With the explosion of mobile devices in the past few years, PUC wanted a way to stay connected with users and allow them to easily get information from and about PUC on their phone,” says PUC webmaster Nic Hubbard, who developed PUC Mobile. “Students want to be able to be able to check the cafe menu and view the events calendar quickly while on the go, without having to get onto puc.edu.”...