Video game-based rehabilitation, pharmaceuticals in the environment, a student-designed car, perspectives on survivors of Sierra Leone's civil war, a professor's semester in Japan and strategies for listening to jazz will all be featured during the annual Hope College Winter Happening on Saturday, Feb. 5.
Video game-based rehabilitation, pharmaceuticals in the environment, a student-designed car, perspectives on survivors of Sierra Leone's civil war, a professor's semester in Japan and strategies for listening to jazz will all be featured during the annual Hope College Winter Happening on Saturday, Feb. 5.
Winter Happening will feature multiple seminars in two blocks in the morning, a luncheon with musical entertainment and a home women's basketball game with Calvin College. Open to the general public, the event is sponsored by the college's office of public and community relations.
The morning will feature six seminars, three at 9:30 a.m. and three at 11 a.m.
The 9:30 a.m. seminars are "Drugs, Dirt and Water: Pharmaceuticals in the Environment," "How to Listen to Jazz" and "An American Life in Japan." The 11 a.m. seminars are "Negotiating Amputation, Forgiveness and Reconciliation," "Video Game-Based Rehabilitation: It's Not All Fun and Games, But it Helps!!" and "The Little Car that Could: Engineering Design at Hope College and Formula SAE."
° "Drugs, Dirt and Water: Pharmaceuticals in the Environment" will consider the presence of prescription and over-the-counter drugs in the environment, and will highlight recent collaborative research among Hope faculty and students aimed at understanding fundamental interactions between antibiotics and soil particles. The seminar will be presented by Dr. Jon Peterson, professor of geology and environmental science, whose interdisciplinary research projects involve students and faculty from multiple departments and have resulted in publication in a variety of scholarly journals.
° "How to Listen to Jazz" will provide tools for better understanding jazz music. The seminar will be presented by Dr. Brian Coyle, who is professor of music, chairperson of the department and director of jazz studies at Hope. A performer, composer, arranger, author, adjudicator and clinician, Coyle has performed with a multitude of recording artists and with national touring companies, and has appeared at festivals, universities, colleges, high schools and clubs both nationally and internationally. Locally he serves as artistic director of the Holland Jazz Orchestra.
° "An American Life in Japan" will feature reflections by Hope faculty member Eva Dean Folkert following her recent fall semester at Meiji Gakuin University in Japan. She taught Japanese students at the university through the college's long-standing exchange relationship with Meiji Gakuin - the two institutions have exchanged students since 1965 and faculty since 1994 - but returned having learned the most about herself through her first experience living and teaching abroad. Folkert is an assistant professor of kinesiology and co-director of athletics whose academic interest is in sports sociology.
° "Negotiating Amputation, Forgiveness and Reconciliation" will center on faculty member Dr. Ernest Cole's research regarding the use of punitive amputation as military strategy in civil war Sierra Leone, emphasizing the experience of survivors of the 1991-2001 conflict. Cole's research, which has included interviewing survivors who continue to be isolated in refugee camps nearly a decade after the war's end, is exploring the way that the amputees' self images are shaped by their injuries, and he argues that it is crucial for them to be provided the opportunity to become functional and re-integrated into society rather than left in a state of dependency, not only for their sakes individually but for the future of the country itself. An assistant professor of English and native of Sierra Leone, Cole has taught at Hope since 2008 and earlier this semester received a Towsley Research Scholar award to support him as he writes a book based on his research.
° "Video Game Based Rehabilitation: It's Not All Fun and Games, But it Helps!!" will examine research at Hope focused on using console-based video games as an effective and entertaining way of engaging patients in rehabilitation following injury - the better to get them to continue with a process that is crucial but can otherwise be rather dull. The seminar will be presented by Dr. Kirk Brumels, who is an associate professor of kinesiology, program director of athletic training education and athletic trainer at Hope, and has had several articles published and made numerous presentations at state, regional and national professional conferences about the topic.
° "The Little Car that Could: Engineering Design at Hope College and Formula SAE" will highlight the student-driven effort to design and build a car for the International Formula SAE competition held at Michigan International Speedway in May. Competing with teams representing well-known college and university programs from around the world (120 teams had pre-registered), the group of Hope students earned top-rookie honors and an overall 76th-place finish. The seminar will be presented by Dr. Michael Misovich, associate professor of engineering, and students involved in the project.
The luncheon begins at 12:30 p.m. at the Haworth Inn and Conference Center ballroom, and costs $12 per person. Highlights will include musical entertainment. Reservations for the luncheon are required.
The women's basketball team will host Calvin College at 3 p.m. at the DeVos Fieldhouse. Tickets are $6, and a limited number of general admission tickets will be available for persons attending other Winter Happening events.
Also during the weekend, the gallery of the De Pree Art Center is featuring the exhibition "End of the Line: An Exhibition of Drawing." The exhibition is running from Friday, Jan. 14, through Friday, Feb. 11, and the regular gallery hours are Mondays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.; and Sundays from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. Admission is free.
In addition to being required for the luncheon, advance registration is recommended for the seminars. Additional information may be obtained by calling the college's office of public and community relations at (616) 395-7860 or online at www.hope.edu/pr/11WinterHappening.html
Registration during the morning of the event will be from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Haworth Inn and Conference Center, located facing College Avenue between Ninth and 10th streets.