Student Rachel Morris reflects on her summer 2012 trip to Nicaragua with Messiah’s Collaboratory for Strategic Partnerships and Applied Research

Anticipation rose as we turned off the bumpy dirt highway into off-road country surrounded by roaming farm animals, tiny huts and clotheslines. A swarm of kids chased after the big yellow bus that carried our diverse team of Messiah College students, Living Water educators and newly trained village leaders, welcoming us to the community. After spending time in Puerto Cabezas preparing, we finally arrived with the mission of bringing pure water and The Living Water to the small community of Awas Tigni, Nicaragua. The next two days spent in the beautiful land of Awas flew by like a blur. Community members were eager to learn all we had to share. Classrooms were filled, and people completed a variety of activities and lessons on everything from hand-washing, to making a tippy tap to using one of our filters! (more…)

Working half a mile underground in an old Minnesota mine, two engineering students and their physics professor described the subterranean lab as pretty typical … except for the occasional bat flying overhead.

Messiah College Physics Professor Abaz Kryemadhi and two engineering students, Joel Love ‘14 and Nick Martin ‘14, were awarded a Department of Energy Visiting Faculty Program grant to spend 10 weeks at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago. There they worked with the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment which is located half a mile underground in an old mine in Soudan, MN. The Messiah College team worked on simulation and detector design for a new generation detector called SuperCDMS. (more…)

Being able to breathe fresh air, connect with nature and engage in physical exercise are just a few of the benefits of being outside. Therefore, it is no wonder that parents often want their children to play outside during the summer months.

One of the best ways to get children outside is to go outside with them. Time spent outside together can create lasting memories that strengthen family bonds. (more…)

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…)

Just a few miles south of Messiah College, a 244-year-old farm is the site of an archaeological dig involving Messiah students, young participants in the Oakes Museum Curator Club, and older adults from nearby Messiah Village’s Pathways Institute for Lifelong Learning. The treasures from this effort aren’t simply the artifacts buried beneath the ground.  The great value, according to the dig directors, is in collaboratively exploring regional history, answering real research questions and adopting keen problem solving skills.

David Pettegrew, a professor in the Department of History, and Ken Mark, director of the Oakes Museum of Natural History, are overseeing the dig at the Stouffer Farm, a York County property dating back to 1767. The dig has been underway since fall 2010. (more…)

On Feb. 7, Chad Frey, director of Messiah College’s Agape Center for Service and Learning, and Hope Hess ‘12, student director of outreach, participated alongside Dr. Sybil Knight-Burney, superintendent of the Harrisburg School District, in a round-table discussion facilitated by the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

This is not the first time Messiah has partnered with the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.  This past summer, Messiah joined the White House’s Interfaith Campus Community Challenge, which encourages increased student service in the community.

The round-table discussion focused on the role of faith-based organizations and colleges in helping low performing schools and a possible partnership between those organizations and the White House. Since the discussion, the partnership, entitled “Together for Tomorrow,” has been announced by the Obama administration. (more…)

From left to right, Jason Long, Michael Adams, and Zach Felix. (Student Anthony Spargo and advisor Scott Weaver are missing from this picture.)

As if it’s not impressive enough to solve four challenging computer programming problems in five hours, a Messiah College team—comprised of students Michael Adams `13, Anthony Spargo `13 and Zachary Felix `15—solved the problems correctly and quickly enough to earn them third place in the Mid Atlantic United States Regional Programming Contest of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).

The impressiveness of their accomplishment does not end there however. The team, led by advisors Jason Long `03, ITS employee; Scott Weaver ‘85, computer science professor; and Jonathan Corbin `03, was notified in mid-December that their stellar regional performance earned them a coveted invitation to compete in the ACM World Competition in Warsaw, Poland in May.

Messiah College will be one of only 20 American colleges and universities competing at the international level! (more…)

What started as childhood affection for historical fiction—particularly Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House”—has grown into a passion for American history that now finds senior Katie Garland immersed in early American life as a member of the prestigious Historic Deerfield Summer Fellowship Program.

Love of stories
“Part of my love for history comes from a love for stories,” Garland says. “It is fascinating to see how the world today came to be.”

This summer, Garland is finding out plenty about the Americans that lived in Deerfield, Mass. between 1600-1850. Garland was chosen from among 350 applicants to study material culture and decorative arts with seven other history or art history majors in the historic town of Deerfield, known for its public collections of art and antiques from early New England. (more…)

Junior Roxanne Benedict traveled to Kenya during a May 2010 cross-cultural course, and returned to campus inspired and motivated to positively impact the lives of Kenyan children affected by poverty and AIDS.

Together with Dawn Gearhart, instructor of family and consumer sciences, Benedict, a family and consumer sciences major, devised a plan to sew book bags; fill them with school supplies, hygiene products, books and notes of encouragement; and deliver them to Kenyan children.

Benedict, through participation in the Pennsylvania Family and Consumer Sciences Conference in Gilbertsville, Pa., in October of 2010 was able to secure additional assistance from family and consumer science majors across the state. Soon the project was embraced by dozens of like-minded students and professors.

“I just felt God’s hand was behind it all,” said Benedict. Students spent class time sewing the bags from materials provided by teachers and parents. (more…)

On April 18, more than 27,000 runners and nearly a half million spectators flooded the streets of Boston for the annual Boston Marathon. The race, which at the ripe old age of 115 is the world’s oldest marathon, winds through (and up and down) the greater Boston area before coming to a climatic finish at Copley Square. This year, five students and one professor from Messiah College were among the team of medical professionals available to weary runners as they crossed the finish line.

Wendy Cheesman, senior lecturer in health and human performance, has volunteered at about a dozen Boston Marathons. She takes a small group of students with her so they can witness the magnitude of what is not only a huge sporting event but also “an incredible medical event,” Cheesman notes. Students work at the finish area, providing wheelchair assistance to exhausted, dehydrated runners, and help in the block-long medical tent where doctors, nurses, athletic trainers, and physical therapists work together seamlessly to assure the recovery of every runner. (more…)