Grove City College allows freshman the option to choose their roommates. Most of the time, students change rommates after freshman year. Marquis and Luke are a rare example of roommates who lived together for all 4 years at Grove City College.
Marquis and Luke come from two totally different backgrounds. In this 2 part video series, they explain how their different perspectives have come together and shaped them into better men in Christ. Click and watch the video to get specific insights on how Luke and Marquis have managed to be roommates throughout college and how they plan to remain as friends throughout their lifetimes.
In this video, Marquis and Luke answer the following:
How did you guys become roommates?
Where have you lived on campus?
Do you have any problems with your roommate?
What are your favorite/funniest memories?
Click here for part 2: https://blogs.gcc.edu/insider/2020/02/29/video-roommates-brothers-part-2/
Most of the time, students change roommates after freshman year of college. Unlike the rest, Marquis and Luke have managed to stay roommates at Grove City College for all 4 years. In Part 2 of “From Roommates to Brothers”, Marquis and Luke continue to discuss their journey and growth as roommates, and offer some advice to incoming freshmen.
In this video, Marquis and Luke answer the following:
What are your favorite parts about being roommates?
How have you stayed roommates all four years?
Do you have any advice for incoming freshmen?
If you have any questions regarding life at Grove City College, feel free to contact Marquis or Luke on instagram @1.quislew and @lukeurbanik.
To view part one of the series, click this link: https://blogs.gcc.edu/insider/2020/02/29/video-roommates-brothers-part-2/
Recently, I had the opportunity to talk to the members of the Grove City College Women’s Rugby Team. The team is considered a club team. This means that they compete against other colleges but are not an official varsity sport. The girls on the team come from a variety of years and majors, but all say they have grown really close throughout their season last fall and continual conditioning to prepare for the future seasons. While several of the players take part in other sports at Grove City or have in the past, many of the players had not tried rugby before joining this group. They were enthusiastic to talk about their unique sport and successful games.
Sophomore student Lilly Klein knows what it is like to come into college without being set on a major. Although being undeclared can be stressful, Lilly says she does not regret the decision.
Lilly says she always knew she always enjoyed writing, but was not sure what career options would be available to her in the field. Due to this, she made the choice to hold off on choosing her major. She also says that she did not want to decide on a major and then have to change.
During her freshman year, Lilly took mainly general education classes that would apply to most (if not all) majors. During her sophomore year she branched out and took an accounting class. Lilly says that it was this class that helped her decide on a major. During that semester she declared an Accounting major with an English minor.
“I liked it a lot and I would nerd out about it with my mom and my friends. That’s what convinced me,” reflects Lilly.
She says she is grateful for her year and a half without a declared major because she says otherwise she might have never found her passion for accounting. Although her mom studied accounting, she had not considered it as an option for herself.
Lilly believes that the main benefit of being undeclared is that it gives the student a lot of flexibility and they can explore different classes without feeling like they are putting off classes in their major.
When asked if she has any advice for younger students faced with a similar situation to hers, she says, “Don’t be afraid of not having a major. I’d also say make sure you take a lot of diverse classes. One thing that I kind of regret is that I took a lot of required classes in my spring of freshman year. It wasn’t a bad decision necessarily because I got them out of the way, but it put off my decision-making process a bit more. Try to balance required classes with exploratory classes.”
Grove City College prides itself on incorporating faith into its academics and extracurriculars. One of the notable aspects about the College includes its variety of campus ministries. Students can choose to be a part of the Redbox Ministry, the International Justice Mission, or they can go on an Inner-City Outreach. A lot of these ministries focus on spreading the gospel to cities around the world, but one group has a slightly less traditional approach.
DRIVE is a ministry group on campus that tells the gospel through silent dramas performed to music. Their acronym stands for “Dramas Reaching Inner Cities through Visual Evangelism.” They minister to those living in inner cities near the College, including Youngstown, Pittsburgh and New Castle. Every few months they go to one of these cities to perform their dramas. When not doing dramas on the streets or in shelters, DRIVE holds a few on campus events a year. At least once a semester, DRIVE members do “flash mobs” where they spontaneously start doing dramas somewhere on campus. They also plan to host a “DRIVE”-in theatre event where students can view the dramas and get to understand the group’s mission better.
I sat down with some of DRIVE’s student officers and members to ask them some questions about the group and what they stand for. Because the group is so unique and focuses on off campus ministry, not everyone knows what DRIVE truly accomplishes.
The biggest theme I noticed in the answers to the questions was one of community.
During all of the interviews I filmed, everyone talked a lot about the community in DRIVE and how it not only drew them in, but kept them coming back to meetings. The mission of the group centers around giving back to communities, both spiritually and practically. Several of the members and officers give insight into this and into what being in the group is like.
Dr. Wolinski of the Grove City College Physics Department leads a study on the development and uses of Gallium Oxide nanowires. Six young men of the department work week after week tuning machines and making discoveries on the possibility of building bridges micrometers wide. Part three concludes the process (as of current) with Kaleb Slaatthaug and Michael Thompson. Kaleb shows the camera how to bake gallium oxide wires onto a gold wafer base. Michael takes it beyond the present scope of the project, and ideas for potential uses of these wires and structures in the future.
Kaleb Slaatthaug
Yes, Slaatthaug. Imagine it as Sloat-howg. His name is Norwegian. He runs a device called a Tube Furnace for the team. The furnace is a device used for the stimulation of gallium oxide nanostructure growth. Kaleb will spend several days setting up a run of the furnace, pumping in the proper gases, getting it to the right temperature, sealing in the samples, then letting it run. He begins by inserting one of Zach’s sample wafers into the furnace, alongside a boat of gallium oxide. By the time the furnace is finished, strings of gallium oxide microstructures coat the face of Kaleb’s sample, attaching to little golden “Oreo Bumps” etched by the SEM. The gold provides the perfect base for gallium to grow on, and now the team has a plethora of structures to explore with the SEM.
Michael Thompson
But where to go from here? Michael Thompson has been with the project for years now, and knows a few things about the broader scope. The initial goal of the project was to build a bridge at microscale. With plenty of structures to work with, the project aimed to build a bridge out of nanowire. This goal has been significantly pushed back, but remains in sight. Michael’s job is to make building a bridge into a possibility again. He works with a device called a Nanopositioner, essentially a laser with several mirrors. It can show him the difference between wavelengths of light, and use that information to tell the thickness of a substance. This should allow for Michael to determine the thickness of a given wire and thus its usefulness for their project. First, however, he has to spend his time programming and calibrating his nanopositioner to get him results.
Have you enjoyed this series on the Nanostructure Study? If so, there are so many more studies and blogs to read about on Insider! Make sure to check them out, along with the video below for more details on Dr. Wolinski’s group.
Dr. Wolinski of the Grove City College Physics Department leads a study on the development and uses of gallium oxide nanowires. Six young men of the department work week after week tuning machines and making discoveries on the possibility of building bridges micrometers wide. Part One of the series kicks off with an exhaustive look at the work of Seth Byard and Tim Magargee, the first steps of creating nanostructures for the study.
Seth Byard- Preparing Samples for Wires
Seth begins the whole process by synthesizing the samples his group will work with to create all their structures on. Without these basic building blocks there’s no point to the project. It all begins with a disk of silicon. Seth coats the silicon wafer with gold in a Sputter Coater- the first block on a long journey ahead. The atoms thick layer of gold is a substance gallium oxide can cling to, giving a wires proper surface for development. From there he purifies the surface of the wafer with a Plasma Cleaner, then applies a liquid called PMMA. The liquid ensures contact with electrons, giving the team an easy way to see their micro samples using an SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope). When Seth is done, the foundation for the whole project has been laid.
Tim Magargee- Testing Machinery
Meanwhile, Tim’s job for the project is to test a machine called the Ellipsometer. It is a device that uses a laser to measure the thickness of surfaces, down to only nanometers thick. Tim has spent his semester testing and calibrating the machine with a more translucent material. He still sputters gold, but clear material allows the Ellipsometer to get an exact read of the gold’s thickness. In the end, Tim ends up with a reliable test of the machine’s efficiency. He can now check his knowledge of a sputter’s thickness against the machine’s readout. When he gets enough tests done he will know just how accurate the readouts are and how much to calibrate the Ellipsometer.
If you enjoyed this article, make sure to check out the video in the link below for the full story!
Nate Curry, a 2019 senior, may seem like your average student athlete, but last summer he had a major experience with Major League Soccer (MLS) at its National Sales Center. Located in Blaine, Minn., Nate spent the summer as an intern supporting the current crop of post-graduates who were going through the sales training program themselves.
An internship at Grove City can be used for class credit if it meets the criteria set forth by each academic department. A few of these requirements may include regular contact with your faculty advisor, logging your hours worked, and a paper to reflect on your time as an intern. Depending on the number of hours of work an intern does, they can receive an upwards of six hours of class credit. A student’s faculty advisor for their internship will be a professor who has had firsthand experience in that type of work. This has proven to benefit our students because they can go into their internships knowing what they can expect, as well as being aware of what challenges they may be faced with.
I sat down with Nate and his faculty advisor, Dr. Scott Powell, to discuss what Nate’s experience at the National Sales Center was like. Dr. Powell also gave us some insight on the advantages of doing an internship for academic credit, as well as why Grove City encourages all of their students to take advantage of those benefits.
Dr. Powell and Nate went more in depth on Nate’s internship, the importance of an academically verified internship, and what it looks like to be a Christian in a secular work environment. If you are interested in learning more about these topics, you can view our full interview here: https://youtu.be/_RBSy-zZfAo
The process of selecting a college is stressful, with its seemingly endless applications and interviews and paperwork. For transfer students, the excitement of going to college for the first time has worn off, and going through this process twice can seem overwhelming. It can be intimidating to think about leaving a school, a friend group, and familiar studies to start fresh somewhere else. However, seeking advice and learning as much as possible about potential schools is crucial.
Hannah, Larisa, Gab, Julia, and Tara have stepped in to make your transfer process as easy as possible. These ladies, all first-year Grovers, have offered to give you a peek into what it was like for them to join the Grove City College community as a transfer student. Their advice is an insider’s perspective on things like how to make friends as a transfer, how they chose their roommates, and how to get involved on campus.
Larisa Steiner, a sophomore, transferred from Indiana Wesleyan University and enjoys studying Management with an HR concentration. Finding a school with this specific field of study and a reputable business program was key in her transfer search. Also a sophomore, Hannah Kaufmann, an English major, was interested in Grove City because it aligned with her Christian values. Tara Pierce, as a junior, finds herself in the rare position of being an upperclass transfer student. She previously studied at a local community college, and enjoys the new Social Work major at Grove City. Julia Helmich will graduate in 2021 as an Elementary/Special Education major. She enjoys the on-campus preschool, where Education students are able to get hands-on work experience. Gab Capaldo, a sophomore, studies Communication and edits for The Collegian, the campus newspaper, in her free time.
Though none of these ladies would say that being a transfer student anywhere is easy, they are adjusting to life as a Grover and getting involved on campus. Intramural sports, Greek life, and Orientation Board events are just some of what they mention as ways to find friends and make connections at Grove City College.
A few episodes ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Paul Schaefer, a professor of religion at Grove City College.
Something I loved about that interview was the way he talked about his students. It was clear he adores them. He talked about their joy and their eagerness to learn. He talked about the passion he has for teaching them. All of it highlighted to me how wonderful of a professor he is.
It had another effect too, though. It caused me to want to hear the student side of the story — what do his students have to say about him?
In this episode of Reel Life, I sat down with one of them to answer that question.
