Articles

From The Director
An Arctic Blast of a Reminder
By Robby Larson, Director of Alumni Relations
According to the people on the news, we are in the midst of "Arctic Blast 2008." The weather has been unusually cold here in Oregon over the past few days and we have had a decent amount of snow, with the most significant accumulation still to come. Students were thrilled to find out that George Fox was closed on Monday; even if it was the traditional "dead day" with no finals or classes scheduled. The evidence of their joy was evident all around the campus: snowmen, remnants of snow angels, and evidence of sledding on the hills surrounding Hess Creek. A look out the window reveals a peaceful wonderland. Then the television storm coverage comes on. More...

News

School of Education Receives $400K Grant
George Fox University’s School of Education received a $405,000 grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust for the purpose of providing professional development and mentoring services to Christian schools in the region over the next three years. The university has received the first installment ($63,000) of the grant, designated for a project entitled "K-12 Christian Schools Capacity Building Initiative." The project will provide mentoring support to pre-K-12 Christian school leaders, potential school leaders, and beginning teachers who work in organizations with a Christian mission. Read more.

Shari Scales Named Vice President of Advancement
Shari Scales, executive director of the Providence Newberg Health Foundation, will join George Fox University as vice president of advancement. Scales has been with Providence for eight years and successfully led a $5.2 million capital campaign to help fund the construction of Providence Newberg Medical Center, which opened in 2006. When she starts at George Fox in April, one of her first projects will be seeking funding for the Austin Sports Complex, which will provide new athletics fields for the university’s sports teams. Read more.

The Amazing Race Visits Tilikum
The Amazing Race’s 30,000-mile world tour made a high-flying visit to George Fox University’s Tilikum Center for Retreats and Outdoor Ministries in 2008. With a $1 million prize on the line, three teams competed high above the ground on Tilikum’s challenge course to collect clues to their next destination. The season finale for the Emmy-winning reality show was filmed in May and aired Dec. 7. To read more or watch the episode online, click here.

Computer Programming Team Places at Regionals
Students Brad Buchanan (Happy Valley, Ore.), Tim Alvey (Salem, Ore.) and Ben Wynsma (Redmond, Wash.) earned a top-20 placement among 85 teams from throughout the Pacific Northwest at the regional level of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) programming contest last month. The team’s 19th-place finish at the event, sponsored by IBM, marked the university’s highest finish in the 14 years it has competed. Read more.

Junior Wins Oregon Right to Life Scholarship
The Oregon Right to Life Education Foundation named George Fox University junior Sarah Klatt of Neotsu, Ore., as the winner of its first Pro-life Media Scholarship. Klatt is a cinema and media communication major. Applicants for the scholarship are college sophomores, juniors or seniors who are committed to the pro-life cause and plan to incorporate the pro-life message into their future media work. The award includes a monetary gift of $2,500 and an internship, which gives students the opportunity to work with other dedicated pro-lifers in their field. Read more.

Speech Team Shines at Local Tournament
The George Fox speech team earned several top awards from the Clackamas College Speech Invitational at Clackamas Community College Dec. 5-6. Eleven colleges and universities from Oregon and Washington participated in the two-day event. Leading the way was sophomore Jennifer Salame (Hillsboro, Ore.), who took first place and was declared the tournament champion in Open Division Informative Speaking. Salame’s speech examined the research and future potential of Brain Machine Interface (BMI). BMI is the process through which electrodes are connected to the brain of a person who has suffered an amputation. The electrodes allow the individual to mentally "will" an artificial limb to move. Read more.

Bösendorfer Concert Series
The George Fox University Performing Arts Department is proud to feature a world-renowned pianist, Gianluca Luisi, in the Bösendorfer Concert Series at 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009, in Bauman Auditorium. This concert marks the return of Luisi to the Bauman stage after his performance during the first year of the concert series in 2007. "Gianluca Luisi’s extraordinary talents combined with the Imperial Bösendorfer Piano and Bauman Auditorium’s remarkable acoustics will offer attendees an unforgettable concert," according to Dr. Kenn Willson of the George Fox music faculty.

For more information about the Bösendorfer Concert Series and ticket information, call 503-554-2620, or click here. Tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and alumni, and $6 for students and children.

Kaleo 2009 – Ordinary Radicals with Shane Claiborne
The annual Kaleo conference for people who engage with youth will be held on Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009. Nationally known speaker Shane Claiborne will be speaking about Ordinary Radicals. Anyone who works or engages with youth – including youth pastors, church lay leaders, parachurch youth workers, social workers, and parents – would benefit from this conference because its aim is to affirm and bless youth workers and to offer practical training to sharpen their skills. Encourage the youth workers in your life to attend this conference, and be encouraged to attend it yourself! For more information about the conference content and registration, go to kaleo.georgefox.edu.

Homecoming 2009
Homecoming 2009 is less than two months away and registration materials should be arriving in the next few weeks. We want to make sure that you join your classmates at the celebration so keep an eye on your mailbox! Taking place on campus Feb. 20-21, homecoming is a great opportunity for all alumni to return to George Fox and reconnect with old friends. Make plans now to come home to your alma mater and join in the exciting homecoming festivities.

Reunions will be held for the classes of 1939, 1949, 1969, 1979, 1984, 1989 and 1999. Affinity reunions also will take place for anyone associated with the George Fox football program and for all alumni who went through a business program at either the graduate or undergraduate level. For more information, visit homecoming.georgefox.edu.

Announcements

Travel with GFU to Alpine Europe, Summer 2010
George Fox University is excited to offer our tour of alpine Europe to see the Passion Play at Oberammergau, Germany, in early-summer 2010. Open to all alumni, parents, and friends of George Fox, our 11-day tour, departing May 31, will include visits to the beautiful alpine European cities of Frankfurt and Munich, Germany; Salzburg, Austria; and Lucerne and Interlaken, Switzerland. Among many other highlights, the tour will include travel through the Rhine Valley, Black Forest, as well as the Swiss, Austrian, and Bavarian Alps. Additionally, visits are planned to Neuschwanstein and Heidelberg castles, and Rothenburg, Germany’s best-preserved medieval town. The highlight of the trip will be the Passion Play, an inspiring one-day play, dating back nearly 375 years, which is performed for sold-out audiences every 10 years in a magnificent outdoor-covered amphitheater with the Bavarian Alps as a backdrop. To read the full itinerary, request more information, and register for the trip, click here.

Tuition Free Course Auditing
Now is the time to sign up to audit a class for the spring semester utilizing the tuition free course auditing benefit for graduated alumni. Alumni who have graduated from George Fox have the opportunity to audit one undergraduate or graduate course per year – tuition free. For more details on this program, and to get an application form for the spring, click here.

Starting in summer 2009, the tuition free course auditing benefit for alumni will undergo a few changes. This program will continue to provide graduated George Fox alumni the opportunity to investigate courses of interest and to continue their lifelong learning at their alma mater. However, the administrative fee for this program will be increased, the first such increase in 11 years. Also as a part of this change, there will be no limit to the number of classes that can be audited in a given year. Watch future issue of eBruin for more detailed description of the coming changes.

George Fox University on iTunes U
Starting this fall, George Fox can now be found on Apple’s iTunes U. The George Fox page includes audio and video podcasts of university events, course content, athletic contests, chapels, and more. New content is added all the time. To get to the George Fox page, go to the iTunes U page in the iTunes Store or click here.

Highlighting Our History

Watching students take advantage of the freezing temperatures and snow that have hit the Newberg-area in recent days by sledding down the hills around Hess Creek and making snowmen, made us wonder what snow stories are out there from days gone by at George Fox. If you have a good story, special memory, or photos of you in the snow at George Fox, please email them to bruinheritage@georgefox.edu.

Here is one story, albeit from an off-campus outing, that we found in the 1969 L’Ami.

In spite of all the planning made for this year’s all school "ski-trip," most GFC students were impressed not to attend. They were still attempting to recover from the unusually hard winter right in Newberg, where for several weeks they had seen nothing but snow.

Those who once again dared the cold found the experiences quite different from the previous year. The Snow Bunny Lodge in the Cascades was the scene for this year’s activities.

It’s often interesting to note the clothing worn by GFC students – anything from a bright ski-sweater to an old Air Force flying suit.

After lunch everyone was off to the slopes where they began the task of packing the snow by repeated runs down the hillside. As the slopes became slicker, facter [sic], and harder, more brave souls turned "chicken." Now instead of runs on single inner-tubes, students and profs [Harold] Ankeny and [Arthur] Roberts joined together in trains attempting to make the run a little safer.

As is always the case at such an outing, at least one person is inevitably doomed to injury. This outing was no exception. During one particular run, Dr. A. Roberts was "sling-shotted" from his tube onto the icy-hard banks. He sustained a leg injury with minor face cuts, fortunately not serious, but enough to send him limping back to the lodge.

The most outstanding performances for the day were undoubtedly by David Brown and Ginger Brown. Dave, especially, showed a great deal of courage. In fact, he was the last person to leave the slope, even after Dean Ankeny had condemned it as unsafe. Nonetheless, for all his fearlessness, Dave did not return unscathed.