An essay by President Vivian A. Bull: Another Linfield \u27Defining Moment.\u2

Bull, Vivian A.

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Linfield Magazine Volume 1 Number 1 Summer 2004 Article 4 Summer 2004 A View from Melrose Vivian A. Bull Linfield College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/linfield_magazine Recommended Citation Bull, Vivian A. (2004) "A View from Melrose," Linfield Magazine: Vol. 1 : No. 1 , Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/linfield_magazine/vol1/iss1/4 This article is brought to you for free via open access, courtesy of DigitalCommons@Linfield. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@linfield.edu. A phone call one rainy November morning in 1996changed everything.We were in the planning stages of a capital campaign,and were concerned about a proposed goal of $28 mil-lion.  Little did we anticipate the challenge of raising $65million, much less the possibility of reaching an extendedtarget of $70 million.  But then came that phone call,telling me that the Hewlett-Packard Company wouldclose its McMinnville plant. As we absorbed the implica-tions of this news, it became clear that Linfield hadreached an historic crossroads— a Defining Moment thatwould shape its next hundred years.  The vision of the campus doubling in size was excit-ing in 1996.  But nothing compares to the sense of won-derment today when standing among the completedKeck Campus buildings for the first time and seeing inthem the fulfillment of many dreams.While the new facilities are beautiful, buildings arenot ends in themselves.  The real significance of the newlibrary, theatre and fine arts center lies in the improve-ments they bring to the quality of life and learning forstudents and for all of us who work to make their educa-tion the best it can be. For example, we expected the newJereld R. Nicholson Library would be popular with stu-dents, and indeed most of the study areas are fully occu-pied all evening. We did not anticipate that demandwould be such that students would petition to havelibrary hours extended. We responded by doing so. I can-not imagine better testimony to the benefits this newfacility is bringing to our campus.I was fortunate enough to be present when the firststudents came into the new James F. Miller Fine ArtsCenter.  You could see the excitement in their faces asthey contemplated working in a place that is spacious,well equipped, and flooded with natural light from thefloor-to-ceiling north windows.  The exceptional workdisplayed in the spring senior art show must have drawninspiration from the new surroundings.I sometimes joked with the theatre faculty and stu-dents about losing their creativity once they no longerhad to cope with the hardships of Pioneer Hall. Well, justtake in a play someday soon, and you’ll see that far fromdulling creativity, the Marshall Theatre has created newpossibilities for some highly talented individuals.As important as the new land and buildings are, thecampaign addressed other priorities as well: growth in theendowment for scholarships, completion of the chaplain-cy endowment, enhanced resources for technology, facul-ty development and collaborative student-facultyresearch.  One can never anticipate exactly how all cam-paign gifts will be designated.  For instance, the goal forscholarships was $5 million and we received more than$15 million. That is a real joy!Every campaign ends with some objective unreal-ized. For Linfield, our immediate capital priority remainsa new facility on the Keck Campus for our outstandingmusic program.While there are always tasks for tomorrow, today wecelebrate an achievement undreamed of just a few yearsago.  I want to express my deep appreciation to all whohave worked for and contributed to the success of“Linfield—The Defining Moment.” The college isstronger because of your support. – Vivian A. BullA View from MelroseS U M M E R  2 0 0 4 -   54  -  L I N F I E L D  M A G A Z I N EAnother Linfield ‘defining moment’Forget the rocking chairs. That’snot what three Linfield employeeshave in mind as they retire June 30.The trio – Ted Henry ‘61, directorof Linfield’s academic computingcenter; Georgann Percival, associateprofessor of health and English as asecond language; and Everett Curry,director of planned giving – willwrap up a combined 67 years ofservice.It’s a second retirement forCurry, an American Baptist ministerwho has led churches in Oregon,California and Hawaii. “I actuallyplanned to retire four years ago,” hesaid, but son Kevin ‘92 had heardLinfield was seeking a planned giv-ing director. Kevin called and plead-ed, “‘Dad, they need you.’”“I’ve enjoyed seeing Linfieldwhen it is reaching some importantgoals,” he said, “and I meet reallyinteresting people who love the col-lege or they wouldn’t be talking tome.”Bruce Wyatt, vice president forcollege relations, described Curry as“a very warm, caring person. Hecame to us with a strong back-ground in institutional develop-ment, and he’s done a wonderful jobof working with alumni and sup-porters of Linfield.”Curry has promised his wife,No ‘feet up’ for these retireesEverett Curry Georgann Percival Ted Henry ‘61Barbara, to work fewer hours, but heplans to resume his consulting prac-tice. He also has offered to continueto be available to Linfield. “I’m not a‘feet-up’ retiree,” he said.  Neither is Percival. She joinedLinfield in 1976 to teach nutritionin the consumer and family studiesdepartment. When that programclosed, Percival shifted gears andearned a master’s in teaching ESL atPortland State University in 1991.She has continued to teach nutri-tion, as well as ESL. “I’ve been lucky enough towork in two departments with won-derful people,” Percival said. Sandra Lee, ESL director, saidPercival has bridged internationalstudents’ ESL and degree programsand has led the use of technology inlanguage classrooms. Taking students beyond theclassroom, Percival has gamelypitched tents in the rain, drivenunwieldy 15-passenger vans andchopped mounds of vegetables forJapanese curry cooked over a camp-fire, Lee said.Percival said she longs to visitJapan and parts of the United Statesshe hasn’t seen. She also wants toreturn to Colombia, where sheserved in the Peace Corps in 1968-69. Closer to home, she wants to dovolunteer work and nurture heryard. Like Percival, Henry has servedLinfield in multiple roles. He joinedthe college in 1969 as a math pro-fessor and assistant football coach.In 1974, he became the computercenter director. He and work-studystudents were the computer center.At the time, Linfield had a hulkingIBM 1620. Thirty megabytes ofdisk space, 96K of memory. Theybegan putting all administrative fileson the computer and by the time aconsultant’s report arrived sayingthat couldn’t be done, it was.In 1991, Henry retired fromcoaching along with head coach AdRutschman ‘54. “Developing youngpeople gave me as much pride aswinning football games,” Henrysaid. He has seen Linfield players getbigger as computers have gottensmaller but far more powerful. Irv Wiswall, Linfield’s chieftechnology officer, said he wonderedwhen he arrived 12 years ago whatit would be like working with “thissports guy.” He quickly realizedHenry’s understanding of Linfieldand people was invaluable.Wiswall said Henry has carriedthe team spirit that wins footballgames to his work in IntegratedTechnology Services. “Ted is anenormously hard worker, withpatience and tenacity,” Wiswallsaid.Henry is excited about hisnewest sport, golf. He and his wife,Elsie ‘89, also enjoy traveling andrecently visited Hawaii. Nope, no porch rockers forthese three.– Beth Rogers ThompsonPresident Vivian A. Bull, center, speaks with Catherine Dondlinger ‘05 aboutthe latter’s research during the Linfield College Science Symposium held onMay 14 in Murdock Hall. More than 20 Linfield students, including DavidMcAdams ‘04, presented research.

A View from Melrose

An essay by President Vivian A. Bull: Diverse Cultures Enrich Life

Linfield Magazine Volume 1 Number 3 Winter 2005 Article 4 Winter 2005 A View from Melrose Vivian A. Bull Linfield College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/linfield_magazine Recommended Citation Bull, Vivian A. (2005) "A View from Melrose," Linfield Magazine: Vol. 1 : No. 3 , Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/linfield_magazine/vol1/iss3/4 This article is brought to you for free via open access, courtesy of DigitalCommons@Linfield. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@linfield.edu. A View from MelroseDiverse cultures enrich lifeStudent ProfileLipkin wins Oregon Book AwardShelly Lipkin ‘05 made afew good friends as hepenned his recent award-winning play.Lipkin, of Lake Oswego,earned a 2004 Oregon BookAward for Vitriol and Violets,a play he co-authored withLouanne Moldovan andSherry Lamoreaux.“You kind of live it,”said Lipkin, of the story.“The characters becomeyour best friends, in a way.” Vitriol and Violets is set in the 1920s at Manhattan’sAlgonquin Hotel, where a group of writers – futurePulitzer Prize and Academy Award winners – gatheredeach day for lunch. The group, known as the AlgonquinRound Table, included writers like Dorothy Parker,Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Edna Ferber,Harold Ross and Harpo Marx. They played pokerand extreme croquet, and even bought a vacation islandtogether.“These were wild people who had lunch togetherevery day in the Algonquin Hotel,” said Lipkin, whoalso co-produced and acted in the play. “At the time,none of them were famous. They were broke, theAlgonquin was a pit, but they were brilliant writers. Thiswas the beginning of Broadway.”It took a year to write the play, which initiallyopened in 2002. Editing from early performances result-ed in the current version.Lipkin, who is working toward a humanities degreethrough Linfield’s Adult Degree Program, recently fin-ished writing a second play, Sylver Beach’s [sic], whichhas doubled as his Linfield senior thesis. He is nowwriting a third play, a comedy, focusing on how a mandeals with his brother’s suicide.“Literature has to entertain people, hold theirinterest and capture their imagination,” he said.“That’s what I think of when I write.”With Vitriol finished, another play newlycompleted and a third in the works,Lipkin is making his mark as a play-wright. He has been involved intheater since age 20, when hetook to the stage as a student atthe College of Marin and theU.S. International University School of Performing Arts.He put school on the back burner after being accepted toperform with the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. He spent the next 20 years in Los Angeles as a tele-vision and film actor, appearing in numerous movies,commercials and sitcoms, before moving to Oregon in1998. Most recently, he appeared in the SundanceFestival award-winning film Mean Creek. Lipkin was co-artistic director of CygnetProductions from 2000 to 2003 and served as co-artis-tic director of West Coast Ensemble Theatre. In additionto his theatrical work, he is an adjunct professor atMarylhurst University and teaches drama for LakewoodTheatre Company. He is also a teacher and consultant atNew Horizons Computer Center.Lipkin said he returned to school “for my soul. Iwanted to have a degree,” and found a good fit withLinfield’s flexible schedule, weekend classes and top-notch faculty.“I’d heard great things about Linfield,” he said. “I’vebeen able to fit it into my schedule. That’s the bestthing about it. It’s a great tool for people trying to dotwo things at once.”Barbara Drake, professor of English, remembersteaching Lipkin during a creative nonfiction workshop.“Here was this guy who could act and write andhad all kinds of theatrical experience,” Drake said. “Hehad such a knack for making his stories come alive.When he gave a reading in class it was a performance,often a very funny one. He really knows how to usevoice, on and off the page.”– Laura DavisShelly Lipkin ‘05W I N T E R  2 0 0 5  -  5Shelly Lipkin ‘05, left, as Robert Benchley andJane Ferguson as Dorothy Parker in a scene fromthe award-winning play Vitriol and Violets, whichhe co-authored.Not everyone on ourstreet was Swedish.In fact, in the smallmining and lumber town innorthern Michigan where Igrew up, within our blockwe had families who wereGreek Orthodox, German,Swedish, Finnish, OrthodoxJewish and Polish. Mostof the parents spoke theirnative languages, and thefirst-generation Americanstried to learn the languages, mostly so we could under-stand what our parents were saying to each other.Our hero was Adam Meliss from Poland, whoowned and operated the popcorn wagon all summerlong. We felt he had been the most successful immigrantof all on the block.What a rich learning environment, and what won-derful food we shared as we celebrated the traditions ofthe various cultures!In college in the early 1950s, I had my first oppor-tunity to study abroad. Much to the chagrin of mySwedish parents, I traveled to Norway to study for aterm, and that began my life-long love of travel andlearning about other cultures and other countries.That is when I began to understand howmuch we had to learn from each otherand how much our world needed thatshared understanding.  It still does.  My life has been richer for having known so manypeople around the world.  I have lived as a member of aminority in the world of Islam and the Jewish commu-nity in Israel. I have studied, traveled and taught inEurope. I am working with students at Africa Universityfrom 21 African countries, with 26 tribal languages.And it all began on that street in northern Michigan.Fewer American children nowadays grow up amidthe kind of diversity that my childhood playmates and Itook for granted. This makes it all the more importantfor them to be exposed to diversity later on and to learnto value it. We are living in a diverse world and it isimperative that we encourage our students to learn andexplore other countries and other cultures. We need tohelp them appreciate the importance of living andlearning in a multicultural environment.  If we can teach our students those lessons, they inturn can help others view the color of one’s skin, theaccent in one’s voice, the religious practices of one’sfaith, the special foods that we share as opportunities forgrowth, learning and enjoyment.In so many ways our alumni, students and faculty havehelped us, from the Reach Back Mentors group to thesupport group that our students provide for biracial families.Our Hawaiian alumni still come to roast the pigs forthe lu’au—an experience they want to continue to share.Our Japanese exchange students dress in their beau-tiful kimonos to entertain the school children and theresidents of a retirement home.Our Spanish-speaking students reach out in manyways to serve our changing community here in the valley.All of our international students, from over 20countries, come to share with us, as well as learn moreabout the complex, joyful and beautiful United States. Our faculty, through their research and outreach,have led many of us to a better understanding of the richdiversity that is becoming a part of our everyday lives.This issue of Linfield Magazine highlights the expe-riences of some of today’s Linfield students as theyencountered diversity in the college’s international pro-grams. The experiences themselves are diverse, as are theprograms that made them possible and the greatlyexpanded number of countries students can now visit aspart of their Linfield education. As varied as the experi-ences are, they all share a common denominator: thetransformational effect they have had on the way theseyoung people see the world, and sometimes themselves.– Vivian A. BullPresident Vivian A. Bull learning the pipa, a Chinese lute, at Wenzhou University4  -  L I N F I E L D  M A G A Z I N E

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A View from Melrose

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