Academics

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.”...

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. In the sport of men's basketball the California Pacific Conference had six scholar-athletes, (four from Pacific Union College), receive recognition for their hard work in the classroom. The Pioneers tied the record for most scholar-athletes named to the Men's Basketball Daktronics NAIA Scholar-Athletes list for 2011. Dickinson State University, in North Dakota, was the only other institution to have four student-athletes make the list.Michael Giang, Josh Jewett, Aren Rennacker, and Brent Wild were named as scholar-athletes by Daktronics and the NAIA, recognized for their academic achievement and hard work. They helped guide the Pioneers to a 7-18 overall record this season and a 5-7 conference record. The Pioneers concluded the season with a loss to Holy Names University, who the Pioneers swept during the regular season, in the first round of the Cal Pac tournament. The other two California Pacific Conference representatives include, Menlo College guard and Cal Pac...

Pacific Union College’s Biology Club sponsored a work bee Sunday, February 27, in which 16 students, staff, and faculty members volunteered with the Berryessa Trails and Conservation organization to help restore the wildlife habitat of local Lake Berryessa. The group gathered to remove weeds, such as star thistle and fennel, and replace them with plants that are native to the area, such as foothill pine trees, manzanita, leather and scrub oak, and coyote brush, on the northwestern side of Lake Berryessa. They learned about the process of habitat restoration through hands-on experience. “We’re hoping this is the first of many partnerships between PUC and conservation organizations,” says biology professor and club sponsor Aimee Wyrick. She believes that such activities provide valuable opportunities for PUC students, especially environmental studies majors. The work bee is part of the initial stage of a larger combined effort between the Bureau of Reclamation, Berryessa Trails and Conservation, and the Audobon California Landowner Stewardship Program to act on the bureau’s commitment to preserve and protect natural resources around the lake. Ultimately, the project will plant more than 100 native trees, shrubs, and grasses to reestablish the lake’s native vegetation and wildlife habitat. “It was great to...

Pacific Union College opened its campus to 126 high school seniors from Northern California, representing ten schools, in its 46th annual Math Science Workshop, February 27-28. Directed by math and science department chairs, the workshop provided students with the opportunity to attend math and science classes and perform experiments in the college setting. The workshop offered a two-day schedule packed with activities. Students attended a variety of PUC classes, including Calculus, Intro. to Computer Science, General Chemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology, and Philosophy of Origins. Professors also held Question and Answer sessions on the topics of math, biology, chemistry, physics and engineering, and computer science. Biology department chair and workshop coordinator Robin Vance hopes the workshop allowed students to “do some actual experiments and have fun doing [them].” Academy students chose between additional seminars specific to their field interest. Students focusing on chemistry conducted a classic experiment to determine the mass of a sample of copper; biology students emphasized the theme of equilibrium; physics and mathematics students collected data on the decay of radioactive samples; and students interested in computer science used computers to program several types of random number generators, used the generators to simulate the radioactive decay of...

Noted Biblical scholar Jaques Doukhan presented the semi-annual Heubach Lecture on Sabbath, February 19, to a packed audience in PUC’s Scales Chapel. The Heubach Lectureship is an informative series honoring former PUC religion professor Paul Heubach, and it is aimed at examining central truths of Christianity in easily understood terms. Doukhan is a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary and director of the Institute for Jewish-Christian Studies at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Mich. His lecture, entitled “’Yes’ to Creations: More Than ‘No’ to Evolution,” approached the literary elements of the Genesis creation story, exploring both the structures of the account and the story’s centrality to authentic Christian faith. After an introduction by former Andrews colleague and current PUC president Heather Knight, Doukhan introduced his topic with the assertion that creation and evolution are fundamentally exclusive explanations of origins. He warned that too often, discussions of creation focus on contradicting evolutionary theory, when the creation story is a rich and meaningful topic on its own. He then discussed the Genesis account in its original Hebrew form, highlighting the beauty and poetry of the words and sounds. The structure, he says, serves several purposes:...

Pacific Union College hosted a blood drive February 14, encouraging the campus community to give the ultimate gift of love this Valentine’s Day. A steady stream of students, staff and faculty flowed through a mobile blood bank set up in a side room of the Dining Commons. PUC’s office of health services coordinates the quarterly event in conjunction with Blood Centres of the Pacific, a Bay Area blood bank. According to Sandra Sargent, PUC’s health services director, the college has often been among the blood bank’s most productive collection sites. This quarter’s drive yielded 55 pints in one afternoon. To help encourage blood donation, Blood Centres of the Pacific a offered donors a variety Valentine’s Day-themed prizes ranging from T-shirts emblazoned with hearts to discounts on dinner cruises on the San Francisco Bay. Furthermore, health and exercise science professor Elaine Neudeck offered extra credit points in her health class to students who donated blood. But for many on campus, the extra incentives were not necessary. “It’s a nice thing to do on Valentine’s Day,” says senior Natalie Vigil, a veteran blood donor. Senior Victor Henriquez, a nursing major, made his sixth donation, citing the influence of his mother, a frequent...