You might not expect a historian of Medieval and Renaissance Europe to be among the first educators at Messiah College to volunteer to lead a pilot project exploring the impact of mobile technology—in this case, the iPad—on students’ ability to learn. But that’s exactly what happened.

Joseph Huffman, distinguished professor of European history, and the eight students in his fall 2011 Intermediate Latin course exchanged their paper textbooks for iPads loaded with the required texts, relevant apps, supplementary PDFs and a Latin-English dictionary. The primary goal was to advance the learning of Latin. The secondary goal was to determine whether the use of the iPad improved, inhibited or did not affect their ability to learn a foreign language. (more…)

There is a student organization at Messiah College that has recently been drawing much attention from students and alumni. It’s Messiah’s student alumni council Eyas, an organization that seeks to build school spirit and tradition, unify students and connect the student body with alumni. Eyas was founded in 2006 and has quickly grown in popularity as its members have been creating exciting programming for students and alumni. 

So, where did a council with such unique impact find an equally unusual name? According to Eyas’ website, “An eyas is a falcon in the stage of its development when it learns to fly. This stage occurs right before the falcon leaves its mother to exist on its own. In the same way, Eyas looks to positively impact students during their time at Messiah before they move on to their various future endeavors.” (more…)