In this episode of Reel Life, I got to meet and speak with a professor widely known and beloved here at Grove City College — Dr. Paul Schaefer.
Dr. Shaefer is a religion professor. He teaches everything from required humanities classes like Christianity and Civilization to upper level courses like Systematic Theology. Schaefer is known for being witty, energetic, knowledgeable, and most of all passionate about the subjects he teaches.
Today, I asked him four questions:
What do you like most about students here at Grove City College?
What is the most challenging part of your job?
What inspires you to do what you do?
What is your favorite part of your job?
Dr. Schaefer is truly a wonderful professor who cares about the students here and about his work. This episode of Reel Life shows you a bit of that. Enjoy!
Check out an interview I did with one of his students here.
Andrew DiDonato, a Grove City graduate in 2010, is head coach of the football team here at the college. He also teaches exercise science and physical education classes. In this episode of Reel Life, he sat down with me to answer some big questions.
What inspired you to teach and coach in exercise science?
What is the biggest piece of advice you’d give to college-aged students?
How do you want Grove City College athletes to think about sports?
What is your favorite part of your job?
Coach DiDonato is passionate, wise, and kind. I was so happy to get to do a video interview with him, because those traits show up on camera in a way I would not have been able to capture on paper.
I hope you enjoy watching as much as I enjoyed filming!
When I was looking at colleges, I expected to be either a business major or a computer science major. Now, I am an entrepreneurship major with a computer science minor – a perfect fit for me. But one thing plagued me about both options: I love music, and neither business nor computer science have much to say about music technique or theory.
In two ways, Grove City College made it possible for me to work with music in my daily life without needing to major or minor in any musical field.
First, it requires all students to take a certain number of humanities classes, and in multiple of mine, I have gotten to work with and listen to music.
Second – and the topic I want to talk about in today’s video – Grove City provides a whole host of music resources to all students in its building called PEW (J. Howard Pew Fine Arts Center).
In this episode of Reel Life, I vlog about a few stand-out resources PEW has to offer for non-music majors.
If you are ever looking for something to do on campus and you are musically talented, the stairwell in the Physical Learning Center is a place with great acoustics on campus. Ever since I was a freshman, I have always enjoyed listening to my friends play guitar or sing in the stairwell, whether it was just for fun, or if it was an event they put on. Often times during the week leading up to finals, there will be an hour-long concert held in the stairwell famously named the “Stairwell Sessions,” and students can perform during that time. More recently this semester, Jackson Clemmer and Julia Knepper put together a concert in the stairwell. The concert had a great turnout, as the stairwell was completely full, due to the Facebook Group they created to get the word out.
After speaking with Jackson and Julia, they both had a great time performing for others on campus. Julia said, “I loved the idea of collaborating with another songwriter and musician and creating a more intimate environment for people to come hear some good music.” Both of the musicians played their own original pieces, and it was a great way for others to hear their songs. Jackson stated, “My hope for the show was to create an environment where I could put my original music in front of people who were ready and excited to listen. Most of the songs I had never played for more than a couple people, so it was really exciting to get feedback from a larger audience.”
See the above video for a short clip of Julia’s song “Talk.” Jackson and Julia will be performing another concert on March 24th at Collage Coffee and Art House located on Broad Street in downtown Grove City.
Mark is an Entrepreneurship major at Grove City College and the founder of Té Amo Organic Tea. This socially conscious venture donates a percentage of its proceeds to plant trees in Haiti. For every tea bottle sold, Té Amo promises to plant one tree.
On this episode of Reel Life at Grove City College, I sat down with Mark to ask him about his business, the professors who inspired him, and the classes that helped him along his journey. Mark’s college experience is an adventure filled with risk and reward. By listening to his story, I hope you get the sense that college students can take many paths toward success, even toward entrepeneurial success, while still attending classes in a four year program.
At Grove City College, Jonathan Moore is known far and wide as friendly, active, and focused. He brightens every room he enters with a smile and laughter. As an Education major focused in Special Education, a Resident Assistant in a freshman hall, and an involved member of campus activities, he has a lot on his plate. Jonathan is a fantastic example of a college student with varied, balanced interests.
In this episode of Reel Life at Grove City College, I ask Jonathan about his experience. Hear about his favorite characteristic of Grove City students, his Friday night social activities, his one-word descriptor of his time here, and more in the video.
It is no secret that the engineers at Grove City are incredibly talented and innovative. One project that stood out to Dr. Mohr, an engineering professor here, was designed and built by sophomore Theo Stangebye. Instead of reading me go on and on about the complexities, Dr. Mohr thought it best Theo explain the process himself. Theo and his sister, Sophie, were even kind enough to put together a short video showcasing the technology – enjoy!
Hi, my name is Theo Stangebye and I’m a sophomore electrical/computer engineering major at Grove City College. This past semester, I’ve had the privilege of working in the control systems lab with Dr. Mohr through the independent study program. During that time, we’ve been working on developing a robot with the ability to track ants and other small insects as they move across a field in order to study their behavioral patterns.
The development of this robot has been a collaborative effort: the project was suggested by professors in the Biology department, the chassis was designed and 3D printed by a mechanical engineering student, and the robot’s motherboard was designed by Dr. Mohr.
The robot utilizes a tail-dragger design and measures about one foot in length from front to back. We’ve equipped the robot with many instruments and sensors which will eventually help it navigate in the wild, including a movable lidar sensor, an inertial measurement unit, quadrature encoded wheel, and a GPS receiver. Currently, however, the robots computes distance and direction solely based on the movement of its two front wheels. The whole system is controlled with a myRIO by National Instruments and is programmed by LabVIEW.
Working on the project this semester has been a blast. I’ve developed low level control algorithms which allow the robot to be controlled with series of simple, high level commands, such as “drive 30 inches at an angle of 45 degrees.” To enable this form of control, I utilized a PID loop, which constantly checks the direct the wheels to correct for errors in the robot’s heading. PID loops are standard in industry applications, so getting to write my own algorithm was an excellent learning experience.
There were challenges along the way, but getting to see the finished product has been very rewarding. The robot can perform complex maneuvers, like tracing a star pattern, with great amounts of precision. If you’d like to see the robot in action, please check out the video on this page. I’m excited to see we will accomplish in the future, especially as we interface cameras into the robot next semester.
The Entrepreneurship department at Grove City College is a high-energy, supportive, and fun community, but perhaps the best part is that students come out of the program fully equipped to start businesses and many start them even before graduation! The Center for Entrepreneurship + Innovation at Grove City College hosted a tent at Homecoming this year, and I took the opportunity to get to know some of our alumni and student business owners and their businesses. Everyone in this video is either a current student here, or graduated this past year, in May 2017. The Entrepreneurship department and the Center for Entrepreneurship + Innovation serve students of all majors, so be sure to check them out regardless of what you’re studying!
For more information about each of the businesses see each of their websites:
Graphrite (Keith Meikrantz ’18, Austin Zick ’18, Maddie Williams ’18, Samuel Kenney ’18): https://www.graphrite.com
Grove City College excels in sportsmanship. Even though I do not play sports myself, when I was a high-schooler looking at different colleges, the sportsmanship I saw and heard about at Grove City amazed me. I knew I wanted to spend my college years at a place with respect, faith-mindedness, determination, and talent. To my delight, when I went to my first Grove City College sports game, I saw all of those qualities shine out in the players on the field. It was wonderful to know that the College’s values came out even in a sports game. Looking back on it now though, it makes a lot of sense. How people behave on the field is a huge indicator of how they behave off of it.
I wanted to show you the wonder of a Grove City College sports match in a real, tangible way. So, when I was at an Ultimate Frisbee game the other night, I started filming. My friend on the team was nice enough to let me stand right next to the front lines the entire game so I could get some good shots. Like always, it was a wonderful experience. As I was watching, I considered, “What is it that I really love about being at a GCC sporting event?” I narrowed the phenomenon down to my top five favorite things I see at matches.
Talent
Excitement
(Awesome) People
Sportsmanship (or, Respect)
Faith-mindedness
So, in this video, I have focused on showing you those five things.
I hope you enjoy this episode of Reel Life. Most of all though, I hope from watching it, you get a better idea of how uniquely special sports at Grove City College are.
Ben is a junior computer science major who is involved in a ton on campus. He is the head of the robotics club, the director of media for and a dedicated player on Grove City College’s Ultimate Frisbee team, and a member of the Alpha Sigma housing group. He is also a devoted student. Ben is a classic “Grove-er achiever,” as we say here at Grove City College.
I wanted to get this interview of Ben out to you, because I think Ben is a great example of how to strike a balance between extracurricular and academic life. He also has a unique attentiveness to and memory of funny class stories. Besides that though, Ben is a great guy and friend to many. He is fully integrated here at Grove City College, to say the least. Before he got here though, he had to make the choice between The Grove and Penn State. I ask him a bit about that decision in this video, so you can understand the reasoning that ultimately led him to decide on Grove City College.
If you are on the fence in your college search, I hope this video will give you some added insight into what campus life can be like here. I also want it to show you a look into the type of student you could be here if you want to. Ben is taking full advantage of his college years, and it is certainly worth listening to his perspective. Enjoy, and if you are interested, feel free to check out other episodes of Reel Life for videos similar to this.
