The parking lot on Ninth Street is closed to students this semester. The lot has been set aside for the construction workers doing the Westlawn renovation. It was primarily used by commuter students, who are now having to make alternate arrangements.  GC administration was not notified of the Ninth Street lot closure until early August. Chad Coleman, director of campus safety, manages the parking areas on campus. He found out the plan was to repurpose the lot after he had already finalized the new parking map. “It was just kind of an oversight … not on us, but just like...

By Annika Alderfer Fisher • January 25, 2024 • News

Located next to Shrock Plaza, the current Commuter Student Lounge stands in a central location on campus, with quick access to the education department, union dining and the Good Library.  According to Gilberto Pérez Jr., vice president of student life and Hispanic-serving initiatives and dean of students, the lounge has had several locations in the past several years. It was originally in the Welcome Center, but has since been in the basement of Kulp and on the first floor of Coffman. Regarding these previous locations, Pérez said, “None of those spaces really felt as though they were central.” Ashley Valencia,...

By Mackenzie P. Miller • November 2, 2023 • Features

The CONNECT Transit Plan (CONNECT), a collaborative, 10-year plan for interurban transportation in the Michiana area, has entered its final stage of development and is seeking to make major improvements to the area’s transit systems over the coming decade. The trolley is a resource many people rely on in Goshen and surrounding communities, such as Dunlap, Mishawaka and Elkhart, giving 338,606 total rides in 2022. It is also especially important to Goshen College’s community, since students, staff and faculty have free admission with their GC IDs. The plan has been spearheaded by the Michiana Area Council of Governments (MACOG) and...

By Lukas Bontrager-Waite • February 2, 2023 • News Phil Witmer-Rich • February 2, 2023 • News

Forty-nine percent of Goshen College students are commuters. For local students, living off-campus can help relieve the financial burden of being a college student. Being a commuter, however, comes with unique challenges. In order to help students manage those challenges, Courtney Ropp, coordinator of diversity, equity and inclusion, created a commuter student support group which will have its first meeting this Friday. The support group isn’t the first system set up to support commuter students. The Commuter Student Association (CSA) is an established group that is advised by Luna Maria Campos, administrative assistant for student life. The CSA regularly schedules...

By Phil Witmer-Rich • February 25, 2022 • News

When Megan Patterson graduated high school 19 years ago, college wasn’t even on her radar.  Now she is in the middle of her sophomore year of undergraduate studies, working toward her nursing degree. She met with me on Tuesday morning to talk about what it is like to be a non-traditional student in a college built for students with half as much life experience as her.  “At 37 years old, you have done a lot of this,” Patterson said. Patterson, who worked as a career firefighter and EMT for 17 years, has two children and a part-time job at a...

By Greta Lapp Klassen • January 24, 2020 • Features

As the number of commuter students continues to rise at Goshen College, the Commuter Student Alliance (CSA) is working to bring changes to campus this year that will lessen the divide between them and residential students. CSA came into being last year as a way to better accommodate commuter students. This year, a full-time, paid student position was introduced to the alliance. For the 2018-19 school year, these student positions are held by Katja Norton and Samantha Camacho. Gi Salas was also retained as a commuter student liaison. The paid positions were created as one of the many incentives for...

By Elsa Lantz • October 3, 2018 • Features

An issue becoming increasingly more evident on campus is the physical divide between commuter and residential students. Corie Steinke, associate director of community life, said that commuter students and residential students often do not interact beyond the classroom environment, in large part because there is a lack of a true shared community lounge space. From 2007 to 2017, the percentage of traditional undergraduate students living off-campus rose from 30 percent to 40 percent, said Justin Heinzekehr, director of institutional research. When looking at all students, the percentage rose from 52.3 percent to 46.7 percent between 2013 and 2017. The number...

By Siana Emery • April 27, 2018 • Features

Alexa Valdez has become quite the prominent figure on campus as a third year social work major. As one of the leaders of Latino Student Union, or LSU, she has grown to become a leading voice in the campus Latino community. “I am in charge of social media [for LSU],” Valdez said. “I write Facebook posts, announcements in the communicator and emails about what’s going on and what we are planning.” Valdez, a Goshen local, chose GC for a variety of reasons. She was involved in college activities as a child and a member of the children’s choirs in the...

By Christi Sessa • February 4, 2016 • Features

Last year Barbara Hernandez-Walton, a 19 year-old sophomore, was a commuter but this year she is living on campus as a Resident Assistant (RA).  Hernandez-Walton first heard about being an RA through some on-campus friends who wanted to apply for the position. Hernandez-Walton decided to apply as well because she “thought it would be really fun to live in the dorms and experience being on campus.” The start of her year has proved to be just as fun as she expected it to be. “I see myself as a freshman still,” Hernandez-Walton said when she talked about meeting new people...

By Chelsea Risser • October 22, 2014 • Features

Mike Linn transferred to GC and answers questions about his new life Q: What is your major and what year are you? I’m a sophomore environmental science major. I’ll graduate in 2016. I went to Northridge High school, in Middlebury, Ind., and graduated in 2012. My freshman year, I went to Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill. I transferred to Goshen College for a number of reasons. Q: Why did you choose Goshen? I like small schools because I feel that big schools are too impersonal. I would never choose a public university, but always a small private school. At...

By Sara Albaba • March 19, 2014 • Features

Alma Rosa Carrillo Flores woke up every morning to breathe the musty Mexico City air. She sauntered sleepily out of her small, pink toy factory-themed bedroom to meet her brother, mother and grandparents in the kitchen for, possibly, her favorite breakfast of beans with mayonnaise and a souped-up ham sub sandwich called ham cake. “Ahh, it’s like heaven!” Alma exclaimed, remembering this meal of her childhood. “And café! Not coffee, but café! It’s just a little plastic cup with Nescafé and Alpura Mexican milk. It’s delicious!” Their house was three stories high, a narrow rectangle of cement and red brick...

By Kolton Nay • January 15, 2014 • Features

While other construction projects on campus are close to completion, one project has been held up: the construction of the commuter's lounge. In other years, the commuter’s lounge has offered off-campus students a part of campus where they can study, eat or just hang out between classes. The renovation of the Union building to create the Center for Intercultural and International Education offices left the old Center for Intercultural Teaching and Learning office space empty. Early last spring it was decided that the commuter lounge would be moved from the south end of the Union to the north end of...

By Jair Hernandez • November 15, 2012 • News

Goshen College students living off campus will have to wait until mid-November to use the new commuter lounge, but Bill Born, vice president of student life, thinks it will be worth the wait. The Union building commuter lounge is being refurbished, but with a few complicated twists. Originally, the college planned to situate the new and improved commuter lounge in the former quarters of the Center for Intercultural Teaching and Learning in the north annex of the Union, Born said. But when James Townsend arrived as vice president for enrollment and marketing, he persuaded the rest of the leadership team...

By Jordan Wiebe-Powell • September 27, 2012 • News