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January
2006
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Volume
2 - Issue 1
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Your
ticket to
2006
Hope Alumni Tour
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It’s the new year! It’s time for resolutions, promises, and high expectations for the future. What tops my resolution list this year? More exercise, improved diet, better church attendance, more time with family, and innovation at work. Funny thing, those have been my resolutions for the last five years. So what happens to us as we go through the year? What happens to keep us from reaching the goals that we set out for ourselves? Life – that’s what happens. We get swept up in the myriad of appointments and requirements that life demands. Those great lunch hour workouts are waylaid by lunch meetings. Salads are replaced by sandwiches with chips, and Sunday mornings seem better spent playing with children than getting them all dressed up for church (kicking and screaming the whole time of course). If you are like me, there are a few things to hang your hat on at the end of the year; a few resolutions that made it through the year intact. This year, I ask that you make one of your intact resolutions a commitment to Hope College. I strongly encourage you to contribute to the Hope Fund if you do not already. Your participation in that fundraising campaign directly affects so many aspects of Hope, including our national ranking against other colleges and our ability to secure funding from corporations and grant making organizations. In this respect, your participation is the key; not necessarily the amount that you give. The participation rate equalizes the playing field - one dollar is equal to one thousand dollars, which is equal to one million dollars. Right now around 30% of our alumni give back to the college. Let’s make a resolution to change that this year – to raise the bar and show how much Hope alumni support their alma mater!
“I’m looking for a Hope College t-shirt for my uncle – do you have anything that actually says, ‘Uncle’ on it?” “My daughter used to play field hockey at Hope in the ‘70’s – is there a still sweatshirt like that?” These are questions that used to vex Debbie Sanderson, clothing and gift buyer for the Hope-Geneva Bookstore. “Our customers don’t always understand that we just can’t carry every imprinted Hope item they are looking for. The reality is that we have to order 48 or 72 pieces of most styles we stock and items that generate one or two sales a year are not going to make the cut.” Still, it made her sorry, “our student, parent and alumni customers are very loyal to Hope and we don’t like to send any of them away empty-handed.” Until recently that was pretty much all she could do. Enter collegiate sales representative Al Mracna. He visited the store last spring, excited about a new vendor that his company was representing called MyGarb. The idea was simple – this company could make a variety of garments incorporating Hope College graphics that could be actually designed by the customer. The items would then be printed and shipped directly to the customer at what seemed like a very reasonable price. It sounded almost too good to be true. Al recalls, “The Hope Bookstore people are very protective of both their graphics and their customers and it took a little to convince them this was a legitimate deal. Luckily MyGarb had been able to establish accounts with well-known schools like Duke and Michigan State.” It also helped that Al had been calling on the Hope account for over 20 years. Debbie and Mark Cook, the store director, agreed to begin work on the project with the idea of having it ready for the Christmas shopping season. Neither of them realized the work that would be involved. The design area of MyGarb is limited to sports, programs, graphics and wording approved by the college so all those choices had to be in place before the site could go live. “We had to imagine what our customers would want to order,” says Debbie, “we combed old yearbooks, catalogs and of course the current list of clubs, organizations, departments and sports. I’m sure we missed a few things but we can always add them as people ask.” The Hope College online version of the MyGarb site went live in November and already customers are discovering it. “My experience was as expected with little or no problems and the quality of the items are excellent!” said Neil Becker, 1972 Hope alumnus, who was one of the first alumni to test out MyGarb on Hope’s website. The site will never replace the quality and variety of items sold through the Bookstore, but for those one-of-a-kind requests that used to frustrate Debbie, she now has an answer, “Have you looked at the MyGarb site…”
Dr. Richard Smalley, Class of 1965, passed away Friday, October 28, 2005. Dr. Smalley attended Hope during his freshman and sophomore years before completing a bachelor of science degree in chemistry at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1965. After working for several years as a research chemist for Shell Chemical Company, he attended Princeton University, where he completed a master of arts degree in 1971 and a doctorate in 1973. He then became a faculty member at Rice University in Houston, Texas in 1976 as a professor of chemistry, and has also been a member of the physics department since 1990. He was named to his endowed chair in 1982. Smalley has recieved several awards and prizes for his research. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1990, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991. Dr. Smalley also won the Nobel Prize in chemistry with two fellow researchers in 1996 for their 1985 discovery of "buckyballs" (buckminsterfullerenes, or carbon 60). Hope College presented Dr. Smalley with the Distinguished Alumni Award in May, 2005. His declining heath prevented him for attending in person, but he sent the following letter which was read at the Alumni Weekend banquet.
2005-2006 Academic Year Photo Gallery
One of the most efficient means of maintaining a connection with the Hope College community (other than talking with your student, of course!) is by utilizing the resources available through the college’s web site. It is a timely means of obtaining information and can be done regardless of the distance you reside from campus. From academics and athletics to the arts -- a multitude of resources are available just a click away from the College's home page. Visit "Hope College Today" regularly to keep up-to-date with campus and community news including:
We invite you to take some time to explore Hope's website and see what information awaits you there!
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