Of Mind & Heart Newsletter: February 2009
An update from Whitworth University President Bill Robinson
I'm writing this month's newsletter on my way back from Washington, D.C., where optimism and fear struggle for the upper hand. You don't know whether to grieve America's immense economic failure or celebrate its stunning moral triumph. In the "win" category, two stories will stay with me long after I get home. I heard MSNBC's Eugene Robinson tell of an election night phone call he made right before the California polls closed and NBC announced President Obama's victory. Robinson grew up in a segregated area of South Carolina. He told of the terror he felt when his father had to protect him in his own house from the state police, who were in pursuit of a black instigator. He then told, haltingly, of making an election-night call to his dying father to say that "In a few minutes a black man will be announced as the president-elect of the United States." The other story took me back to my own 7th grade memories. Bob Schieffer of CBS recalled the fear that gripped him as a young reporter covering the riots that accompanied James Meredith's attempt, in 1962, to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Schieffer contrasted that fear with the towering joy he felt this past September, back at the University of Mississippi for one of the presidential debates, as he tried to make himself heard over the cheers of black and white students united behind a candidate whose skin was the same color as James Meredith's. The most difficult days for President Obama are certainly yet to come. The challenges are staggering. But for now, I think it's okay to tell these warm stories of redemption. Tomorrow I'll open our second semester with a convocation address on the redemption of Ruth, the Moabite widow. Ruth's three expressions to her master, Boaz, reveal the longing of every alienated heart: "You noticed me; you included me; now redeem me." Along with our rigorous academic curriculum, I hope we teach the ways of redemption to every student who attends Whitworth. I hope we notice, include and give worth to those on the outside. St. Paul reminds us that "while we were yet sinners," Christ noticed us, included us and died for us. Redemption. It's not just a Washington, D.C., story.
Academics
In March I'll report on Jan Term classes, but in the spirit of the preceding paragraph I should mention that two of those classes happened to be in Washington, D.C., during the presidential inauguration. Jim McPherson (Communication Studies) took his Media Impact in the Contemporary U.S. class to New York City and D.C., where they saw history being reported. The other class that was in D.C. on Jan. 20 was Prejudice Across America, taught by Terry McGonigal (Theology) with the assistance of Dayna Coleman and Nicole Boymook (both Student Life). That this class would witness this inauguration is a pretty good argument for God's providence. The course also included countless other moving experiences, ranging from a conversation with a Holocaust survivor at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. to worshipping at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, the home church of Martin Luther King, Jr. Students had personal encounters with Andrew Young, Bernice King, and Jessie Jackson, and they report being equally touched by the quiet, faithful, behind-the-scenes champions of inclusion and redemption they found in every city – folks who never gave up on the hope of a just America.
Whitworth faculty members believe that good scholarship leads to good teaching. The spring term began with the fourth annual Faculty Scholarship Celebration Luncheon. This is a time of recognizing the breadth and depth of faculty scholarly work. During the last academic year, 112 professors, lecturers and instructors – more than three-quarters of our faculty – engaged in scholarship that was published, presented or performed. You can find the full list of their good work on our website at www.whitworth.edu/facultyscholarship.
The Tom O'Day art exhibit will be hosted in the beautiful new Lied Center for the Visual Arts between Feb. 17 and April 3. Join us for the opening reception Tuesday, Feb. 17, at 5 p.m., in the Bryan Oliver Gallery.
Whitworth will honor long-serving Professor of English Leonard Oakland by hosting the inaugural Leonard A. Oakland Film Festival Feb. 20-22. The festival will feature three film showings as well as discussions with several of the filmmakers, including Leonard's longtime friend Ron Shelton, writer/director of Bull Durham and White Men Can't Jump. On Feb. 21 at 6 p.m., Whitworth will also host the Leonard A. Oakland Celebration Banquet at the Davenport Hotel, in downtown Spokane. The banquet will include the premiere of a new short film, A Portrait of Leonard Oakland, produced by Andrea Palpant Dilley, '00, who is a producer and director at Spokane-based North by Northwest Productions. For more details, please contact Nancy Rau at nrau@whitworth.edu.
I haven't been back to campus since the Jan Term classes returned, but I did speak to a few on-campus students taking classes that involved experiential learning. Jenny Brown (French) taught Intensive Oral French by having students watch and discuss French movies. Diana Trotter (Theatre) taught the Jesus on Film course, and I spoke with many students from that class. Corliss Slack (History) and Doug Sugano (English) team-taught Seeing and Believing. They took students on field trips to investigate rituals and spaces designed by Native Americans, Hindus, Buddhists, Greek Orthodox Christians and Jews. Jim Hunt (History) used some of his sabbatical research from last year to teach a seminar on naturalist John Muir and his thousand-mile walk through the South in 1867. Jim used slides he took by following Muir's trail in the same months Muir did. Ron Pyle (Communication Studies) and Rev. C.W. Andrews, of Calvary Baptist Church, team-taught African-American Preaching. Students visited African-American churches in Spokane and heard from many guest preachers in class.
On Feb. 12 the Whitworth Speakers & Artists program begins with a Great Decisions lecture by Melissa Ahern, who'll speak on "Peak Oil: Expected Impacts on the Domestic and Global Economies during the Next Decade." On March 5, Steven Jensen will present a lecture "In the Shadow of Slums." Jensen has 25 years of experience in emergencies and disasters in the United States and New Zealand and has worked for the United Nations' high commissioner for refugees in Southeast Asia. For a complete list of Speakers & Artists events, please seewww.whitworth.edu/speakers&artists.
Enrollment
The Whitworth Financial Aid Office is beginning to review files for new freshmen and transfer students for 2009-10. New students who have filed the FAFSA by the March 1 deadline will begin receiving their financial aid awards in March. Continuing students who meet the May 1 deadline for submitting the renewal FAFSA (www.fafsa.ed.gov) will receive their awards electronically in May and June. Academic scholarships are automatically renewed.
Student Life
As usual, Jan Term offered a pleasing change of pace to the students who didn't travel. While many students were off campus participating in Jan Term study programs, on-campus students listened to coffee house concerts, skied on local mountains, cheered on the men's and women's basketball and swim teams, watched movies while eating pancakes, competed in the talent contest "Whitworth Unplugged," and hoped to assume the title of "Pirate Idol." Some of the seniors I encountered were in a fat academic-credits situation, enabling them to make skiing or Pilates or another activity course their full load.
Resources
In an economic recession that makes a college education more important than ever and yet more challenging to afford, Whitworth appears for the third straight year in Kiplinger's ranking of the top 50 private university values in the U.S. Whitworth is No. 39 in the 2009 rankings, joining the following West Coast schools: Stanford (No. 10), USC (No. 30), Pepperdine (No. 35), Gonzaga (No. 37), and Santa Clara University (No. 43). The rankings (available online at www.kiplinger.com/tools/privatecolleges), are based on academic quality and affordability, with quality accounting for two-thirds of the formula.
I don't know why our communications chief, Greg Orwig, '91, thinks I should mention this, but a couple of weeks ago I sent the students a message on YouTube. I did it mainly because it was late at night, and I was too tired to write an e-mail. E-mails take me a long time to write because I have some kind of psychological dysfunction that gets me looping infinitely between writing and editing (and never really improving) the e-mails I send to students. So I just videoed a message, uploaded it to YouTube and e-mailed the link (www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDy0crj65Ok). I also added the link for Whitworth's Facebook site – www.facebook.com/pages/spokane-wa/whitworth-university/28199631440. You should visit it. I've become so hip.
Athletics
Our swimming teams continue to dominate the Northwest Conference. Both the men and the women are 6-0 against the NWC this season with one dual meet remaining. The Pirate men have extended their NWC dual meet winning streak to 63, and a win on Saturday will mean that a full decade has passed since the Bucs lost a conference dual meet. Sophomore Michael Woodward added the 500-yard freestyle to his list of events and he now has posted three of the NWC's four fastest times this season. Senior Brittany Gresset continues to roll through her competition in the sprint freestyle events; she has the conference's best times in both the 50 and 100-yard distances. The teams are beginning to rest up for the 2009 NWC championships, which will take place Feb. 13-15 in Federal Way. The women are hoping for their second straight NWC title, while the men are gunning for their seventh in a row.
The basketball teams are both 5-3 following the first half of conference play, and each is in the thick of NWC playoff contention. The women bounced back from potential disaster with a 5-1 stretch after losing their first two NWC contests. In a win at Lewis & Clark, senior Alida Bower poured in 34 points, a career high, while making seven three-pointers. Her point total is the highest in the conference this season. The Whitworth men also had an amazing individual performance in January, when sophomore David Riley tied his own school record with eight three-pointers, all in the first half, on the way to a career-high 37 points. That effort led the Pirates to an insurmountable 57-14 halftime lead over PLU. The top four teams in the standings will make the conference tournament at the end of the season, and both Whitworth teams are in the thick of that chase.
The track and field teams are competing indoors and working to earn qualification to the NCAA Division III indoor championships in March. Junior Cody Stelzer, the defending NCAA Division III outdoor champion in the high jump, has already punched his ticket to the indoor meet.
The tennis teams will be going strong by this weekend. The Pirate women hope to improve on last season's runner-up finish in the NWC by claiming their first conference title since 1997.
Baseball, under new head coach Dan Ramsay, will open the season at a tournament in Arizona Feb. 19-21. And the softball team, under new head coach Joe Abraham, will open the season at a tournament in Portland Feb. 21-22. The golf teams will tee off on their spring schedule in March.
Alumni
This spring I'll be joining the Whitworth Office of Alumni & Parent Relations for a series of president's receptions. We would love to see alumni, parents, friends and prospective students and their families at these gatherings. At each one I'll provide an update on what's been happening at Whitworth as well as a sneak preview of our top priorities over the next five years. In addition to providing a university update, I'll also share from my new book, coming out this month: Incarnate Leadership: 5 Leadership Lessons from the Life of Jesus (Zondervan). It's pretty surprising to find out how different Jesus' leadership style was from most of the styles we see today. We'll be in Southern California (March 12 &13), Colorado (March 19 & 20), the Bay Area (March 26 & 27), Seattle (April 2), Portland (April 3) and Spokane (April 23). Register online for the event nearest you at www.whitworth.edu/presidentsreceptions.
Join us as alumni, parents and friends gather to hear Brooke Kiener, '99, (Theatre) share her director's commentary and an introduction to the spring production of Tina Howe's Museum, on Saturday, March 7. The play, which will be presented in Cowles Auditorium on March 6, 7, 13 and 14 at 8 p.m. and March 8 at 2 p.m., questions what "art" means to its makers, their families and friends, and what it conveys to collectors, curators, aficionados, browsers, wanderers, philistines and the security guards who watch over it. All of these questions spring from Howe's simple theme of people in a public space looking at an object. Ultimately, it's the visitors who are on display in this sophisticated and multi-layered comedy. The alumni dessert begins at 6:45 p.m., and the curtain goes up promptly at 8. Cost is $14; you can register on the alumni website.
February is Heritage Month, celebrating Whitworth's 119th anniversary. You can find all of the details at www.whitworth.edu/heritagemonth. The featured program this year is the Leonard A. Oakland Film Festival Feb. 20-22 (see item under Academics). We hope you will join in the celebration. We love Leonard on so many levels. This will be great.
The Whitworth Orchestra's Spring Break Tour will take place in the following venues: March 20, 7:30 p.m.: Hanford High School, 450 Hanford Street, Richland; March 21, 7:30 p.m.: Lake Grove Presbyterian Church, 4040 Sunset Drive, Lake Oswego, Ore.; March 23, 7 p.m.: St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, 1390 Franklin Blvd., Yuba City, Calif.; March 25, 7:30 p.m.: CUSD Performing Arts Center, 2770 E. International Ave., Fresno, Calif.; and March 27, 8 p.m., First Presbyterian Church, 2407 Dana St., Berkeley, Calif. I hope you can come out to hear this excellent group, led by Associate Professor of Music (and violinist extraordinaire) Philip Baldwin.
Closing Thoughts
I won't be able to talk about Ruth tomorrow without citing her exquisite expression of commitment to Naomi, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." In terribly difficult economic times, Ruth's commitment sustained her relationship with Naomi. During our own economic challenges, it will be committed relationships that sustain us. In this spirit, we thank you for your sustaining commitment to Whitworth.
