This summer, Goshen College will begin a new program in partnership with a Kenyan research station, studying carbon sequestration in soil. Four Goshen College students will team up with four Kenyan students to study grassland conservation and restoration. The eight-week program involves studying at Merry Lea for four weeks in June and then at the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya for four more in July. The program “seeks to understand the role fire and grazing play in sequestering carbon in grassland soils.” Carbon sequestration — simply put, capturing carbon in soil — has two major benefits: not only does a...

By Daniel James • December 8, 2022 • Features

When Mackenzie Miller answers the video call in Taiwan, she comments on the weather. The sun is shining. In Taiwan, during the typhoon season, that’s news worth sharing. “Riding my bike is a struggle,” she said. “We have typhoons here. [But] it’s been great.” Striking a balance given the 13-hour time difference with Indiana, Miller pauses for an interview before attending a 9:00 a.m. class at National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan. In 2021, Miller graduated from Goshen College with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and English. This year, in September, she got on a plane to Taiwan as...

By Jakyra Green • December 8, 2022 • Features

Christmas season is fast approaching, and downtown Goshen is decked out with winter-themed decorations. Plastic evergreen is wrapped with lights around the black light posts, with snowflake-themed lighting fixtures extending out into the street, eight feet or so above the ground.  Electric lights strung throughout evergreen trees and hung in storefronts illuminate the downtown. Each storefront has its own decoration decisions to make. While these decorations may be easy to brush past without second thought, each business must put thought and preparation into their profusion or lack of decoration. Plastic holly, bulbs, Christmas lights and cream plastic candles with fake...

By Phil Witmer-Rich • December 1, 2022 • Features

You hurry to your seat, the lights go down — the show you’ve been anticipating is beginning. The lights go up on stage, the performer appears and you applaud for what’s to come.  Whether you’re in Sauder Concert Hall, Rieth Recital Hall or Umble Center, the shows you’re seeing didn’t just happen. Someone is working backstage to ensure that your experience was worth the wait. Brody Thomas, performance venue production manager at Goshen College, is the man behind it all.  “Any production that happens in one of our venues, I help manage, staff and provide direction so the event can...

By Sarah Miller • December 1, 2022 • Features

Campus Activities Council (CAC) hosted a Battle of the Bands for student-organized bands on Saturday, Nov. 19th, to showcase their sound.  Three student bands, The Runaways, Goshen Panic, and Potential Novelty, competed. Goshen-alum-started Gross Puppy performed a set as well.  There’s no shortage of music at Goshen College, with every weekend seeming to boast a jazz concert, Performing Arts Series event, or choral performance. Most of these events are formal ones targeted primarily to the surrounding community rather than students.  The Battle of the Bands was a different story. Colorful flashing lights and a small stage transformed Newcomer Center 19...

By Annika Alderfer Fisher • December 1, 2022 • Features

Tyson Miller’s hands move between a keyboard and an intricate radio board, his eyes darting between three monitors. As he manages these many streams of information, he speaks into the microphone: “Stay tuned for a few of my friends joining me at the top of the hour.” Miller, a sophomore communication major, is hosting the morning show, The Breakfast Blend, on Goshen College’s radio station 91.1 The Globe. The Globe, which claims to offer “a platform to discovering culturally progressive content,” programs a mix of Americana and AAA (adult album alternative) music. The station is student-run with hosted morning, sports...

By Simon Hertzler Gascho • November 10, 2022 • Features

On the south side of Goshen,Yoder-Culp Funeral Home is quiet. Death passes through its rooms every day. It stops for no one. “Sometimes they’re still warm when [we pick up the body],” said Tim Yoder, 70, owner of the funeral home. “Other times you go to a big city hospital, the body may be there a couple of days and then they’re cold. I mean the feeling is that the blood isn’t moving there. It isn’t something that’s necessarily normal; I think you have to become acclimated to it.” On a daily basis, Yoder comes face-to-face with death. Living and...

By Phil Witmer-Rich • November 10, 2022 • Features

When Doug Schirch attended Goshen College in the early 1980s, he couldn’t have predicted that he’d be a professor of chemistry here decades later. More surprising, however, was his first job after earning a doctorate in biochemistry: living in Nicaragua to record abuses committed by rebel groups that were supported by the U.S. government.  Schirch first traveled to Nicaragua for two weeks in graduate school. There, he was inspired by teachings from Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. “I was so shocked by what our country was doing to Nicaraguans that I felt absolutely compelled to return and help the...

By Amelia Witmer-Rich • November 10, 2022 • Features

If you’ve gone for a stroll in downtown Goshen around 10:30 a.m. sometime this fall, you may have noticed a newly opened restaurant with several patrons waiting outside. This is Daycap, a family-friendly, sit-down business serving breakfast and lunch food as well as cocktails. And it’s popular enough to have a 30-plus minute wait time at peak hours. Daycap opened on Aug. 28 of this year and is the second venue opened by Jami and Ryan Hawkins, a couple who have owned and operated the next-door Common Spirits cocktail bar since 2015. This weekend, I had the opportunity to spend...

By Asa Schiller • November 3, 2022 • Features

Nata Fontan did not always want to be a therapist, peeking into people’s lives. Now, as he fields a series of probing questions, those roles seem to be reversed. “Since I was young, my dream was to be a college professor,” he said, leaning back in a squeaky chair, fingers entwined.  Fontan is in his office on the first floor of Wyse 118, pausing for an interview between counseling sessions with Goshen College students. In 2018, he graduated from GC with a bachelor’s degree in social work, but his story begins thousands of miles south. Fontan grew up in Argentina...

By Jakyra Green • November 3, 2022 • Features

A group of 100 or so people convened in the College Mennonite Church-Chapel this past Sunday for a hymn sing. It wasn’t just any hymn-sing; hymns were paired with artwork in “Voices Together,” with reflections on the art and hymns happening between songs. Three people presented, all graduates of Goshen College: Bradley Kauffman, general editor of “Voices Together;” Adam Tice, text editor; and SaeJin Lee, co-chair of the visual arts committee. The first hymn, led by Lee, was number 732: “Open My Eyes (Abre mis ojos).” “As we are singing the songs in the hymnal but also looking at the...

By Phil Witmer-Rich • November 3, 2022 • Features

Duane Stoltzfus, chair of the communication department, received an email on Feb. 7 with the subject line, “question from a journalist.” It was from Malcolm Gladwell, renowned journalist and podcast host of “Revisionist History,” which Gladwell describes as “things overlooked and misunderstood.” He was planning a series of episodes about the Minnesota Starvation Experiments. In the early 1940s, conscientious objectors were faced with a dilemma. By definition and principle, they could not morally justify going to war. But the war was precisely where their country was headed. “By World War II,” Stoltzfus said, “We had the Quakers, Brethren and Mennonites...

By Phil Witmer-Rich • October 28, 2022 • Features

If you sit in the back of a concert on campus, you might hear an unexpected sound: the slight click-click-click of knitting needles. Upon investigation, the odds are that you will find Beth Bontrager, an administrative assistant in the Mennonite Historical Library and subscription manager at The Mennonite Quarterly Review. Along with her professional work, Bontrager is an avid knitter — and she has been for years. “My grandmother was an avid knitter, tatterer, crocheter, sewer, [and] quilter,” Bontrager said. “[She] and my mother taught me to knit when I was … 8 years old.” Wherever she goes, it seems...

By Daniel James • October 28, 2022 • Features

Fall break — a time of rest and recovery for many students here on campus. Or is it? For Mia Yoder, sophomore environmental science major, fall break was a time of exploration. Yoder, a transfer student from Portland, Oregon, used her days off to discover the rural and urban ranges of the Midwest. She kicked off her break by taking the South Shoreline Train to Chicago alongside some of her close friends.  “I’ve never taken a commuter train before; that was sort of an adventure in and of itself,” Yoder said. When she and her friends finally arrived in the...

By Eliza Alemán • October 28, 2022 • Features

The arrival of autumn in Goshen brings the perfect weather for a multitude of fall festivities. Kercher’s Sunrise Orchards, a well-known Goshen spot for fall fun, is a great place to head once there’s a chill in the breeze — and the drive to the orchard is only five minutes from Goshen College’s campus.  This year, Kercher’s is celebrating their 100th anniversary. William Wheeler Kercher purchased 40 acres of land in 1922. Since then, five generations of Kerchers have seen the business that the orchard has brought in, while the sixth toddles through when they visit. A group of GC...

By Sarah Miller • October 13, 2022 • Features