Volunteer
September 9, 2022
Mast joins Westlawn remodeling project
Goshen College is continuing Westlawn renovations this semester with a new director of facilities at the helm. Brian Mast will be overseeing the project alongside Cynthia Good Kaufmann, director of planning and events, and Ben Bontrager, vice president for operations. Last year, this project was headed by Bontrager and Good Kaufmann, the latter of whom served as interim facilities director. “When I was in that role, I was called director of everything because I also was director of events,” she said. Over the summer, the interim facilities director was split into the director of facilities position and the director of...
April 9, 2021
Clothesline brings style and safety to Goshen
Barbara Gingerich’s front yard has become the talk of the town. Whether you’re walking, running, biking or driving down Eighth Street, you won’t miss her colorful operation. A small white sign in the grass reads “FREE MASKS.” Meanwhile, a homespun clothesline hangs between two trees — and on it, over a dozen handmade masks sway in the wind. The initial recommendation for face coverings to combat COVID-19 came in March of 2020, and since then, Gingerich has been supplying the community with different patterned masks. “It was at a time when there was a shortage of commercial masks,” Gingerich said....
January 21, 2021
Turning discs into meals
Goshen College professor of communication, Jason Samuel, knew he wanted to raise money to help The Window, but how to come up with a fundraiser that would be safe during a pandemic was the $20,000-dollar question. Duos from Indiana and Michigan gathered despite the winter elements, Jan. 9 for an epic disc golf competition. Forty Three teams competed in the Maple City Ice Bowl to raise money for a local food bank in Goshen, The Window. Samuel came up with the idea to help community members facing food insecurity. His original goal was to raise $2,000. Instead, the event exceeded...
November 5, 2020
Students aid COVID-19 efforts
As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, members of the Goshen College student body are giving their time to help with efforts. The Center for Healing and Hope, a nonprofit formed in 1999 to help uninsured, vulnerable and underserved neighbors in the Goshen area, has been assisted by students as they offer free COVID-19 testing to those uninsured. Rachel Versluis, a senior nursing major, first found out about options to volunteer when she received an email earlier this year. The Center for Healing and Hope trained her in May to do antibody tests, and she began volunteering. “I’m still doing it occasionally...
September 25, 2019
Donating plasma to make ends meet
Being broke in college isn’t new, but some students have found that donating plasma can help ease the burden of day-to-day expenses while also helping others. According to the United States Biolife Plasma services webpage, “Plasma is the pale-yellow liquid portion of your blood that can be easily replaced by the body. It consists mainly of water and proteins, which help your body control bleeding and infection.” “I first heard about it back in high school,” said McKinzi Vega, a senior. “I wanted to do it because it helps to have a little bit of pocket cash for surprise expenses.”...
November 28, 2018
Merry Lea event to turn trash into art
This Saturday, Dec. 1, Sustainability Leadership Semester (SLS) students Lydia Dyck and Rheannon Starr, both juniors, will be leading a trash cleanup of an old farm dump in the woods on Merry Lea property. Students will have an opportunity to clean up the local environment; the discarded objects will then be used by Goshen College’s sculpture class. Dyck and Starr have been working on finding a creative way to deal with the discarded glass, metal and garbage in the Elkhart watershed as part of SLS at Merry Lea. The dump site is located directly above High Lake and all water...
October 31, 2018
Missions banquet educates students on service opportunities
The annual missions banquet, sponsored by the Goshen College Career Networks and Bible and Religion Department, took place in the College Mennonite Church fellowship hall Tuesday evening. A record number of students, over 60, made reservations for this year's event that hopes to educate GC students on ways they can serve around the world. Keith Graber Miller, professor of bible, religion and philosophy, gave an introduction to the event, which is something the department has been doing for 18 years. During the meal, each table had a representative from Mennonite Mission Network or Mennonite Central Committee and a GC faculty...
February 1, 2018
Campus host blood drive
A blood drive drew students from all different parts of campus to Newcomer 19 on Jan. 26. The event was organized by Travis Grimm and Cody McCoy, who have been the campus coordinators for the Blood Drive for the last three years. They were picked by a graduated athlete to help to advocate for and coordinate the blood drive. Their supervisor, Mara Miller, usually seeks athletes to help coordinate as their schedules line up better with the drive and they are known figures around campus. This year they’ll be on the lookout for new advocates to fill their role in...
October 12, 2017
Service club to spend fall break in West Virginia with SWAP
Representatives from Goshen’s Service Club are doing something a bit different for their upcoming fall break. Juniors Meredith Satchwell, Katie Yoder, Mary O’Connell, Annika Detweiler along with sophomore Lizeth Abad will be volunteering for Sharing With Appalachian People (SWAP) in Elkhorn, West Virginia. The group will be gone from Oct. 14-Oct. 20. SWAP is a home repair ministry based in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, and is a program of the Mennonite Central Committee’s Great Lakes Region. Groups can join the organization for approximately a week of service, volunteering to help fix homes in a disadvantaged region of the country...
September 28, 2017
Community Engagement Day
Goshen College first-year students participated in the 19th annual Community Engagement Day last Wednesday, September 20. This event, part of Goshen’s Identity, Culture and Community (ICC) course, sent nine sections of students across Elkhart County for a day of service at various locations, including the Boys and Girls Club, Greencroft, Habitat for Humanity, and even the Elkhart river, where students canoed and collected debris. In general, the ICC course hopes to teach students to think about their identities, learn about cultures and build community, while also providing a general introduction to college life and a place to ask questions. It...
April 13, 2017
Helping to feed America with a ‘Cup of Cold Water’
The goal of any church is to help people who are in need. Whether that be through giving presents to children at Christmas, giving school supplies to less fortunate children or helping people find God, churches aim to help people. At several churches in DeKalb County, Indiana, giving free meals to the hungry are how they help out the community. I grew up in the Waterloo United Methodist Church (WUMC) and in 2012, we started serving a free meal every Wednesday to anyone who needed or wanted it. The program was called Cup of Cold Water (CoCW) and it was...
April 6, 2017
Remembering Michael J. Sharp
Seventeen years later, the only persuasive speech that Suzanne Ehst remembers from teaching high school English was the one from a student holding a spoon in front of his face, trying to convince his audience he could bend it with his mind. That student was Michael J. Sharp, more commonly known as M.J. Sharp, 34, was a 2001 graduate of Bethany Christian High School and a 2005 graduate of Eastern Mennonite University. On March 27, Sharp’s body was found in a shallow grave in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and later identified through tests on March 28. Sharp was...
November 3, 2016
Students join bone marrow registry
Fifty-six students signed up to save lives at Monday’s convocation. The convocation, although primarily a pep rally to celebrate the men’s and women’s basketball teams, also included an opportunity for students to add their names to a bone marrow registry for an organization called Be the Match. Be The Match, operated by the National Marrow Donor program, specializes in connecting patients with blood cancers such as leukemia or lymphoma with non-related donors. Be the Match is the most diverse bone marrow registry in the world, with over 10.8 million samples. Angela Touseull, community engagement representative for Be The Match, represented...
November 3, 2016
Service club volunteers at the ReStore
This past Saturday, Oct. 29, Goshen College’s service club travelled to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in northwest Goshen to participate in their first service event of the year as a club. Led by Brianne Brenneman, a senior, Jill Steinmetz, a junior, and Meredith Satchwell, a sophomore, this group of eight students went to assist the donation center in a variety of activities. Several students washed silver, while others painted doors, put up Christmas trees, and organized shelves. By the end of the event, the group had reorganized an entire shelving section, which many remarked was a satisfying accomplishment. Brenneman...
October 27, 2016
Goshen College teams up with LaCasa
Goshen College received a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, in partnership with LaCasa, to provide a unique financial aid offer to new students. The project is called the Goshen College “Individual Development Education Accounts,” or IDEA. It works as a kind of savings account; low-to-moderate income students will open an account through First State Bank in Middlebury after LaCasa has verified their income. When the student has saved up to $500, they will receive an 8-1 match, meaning that the student will get $4,000 for the $500 they saved. This money will go towards paying...