Beacon Family Newsletter - Fall 2020: 2nd Edition

Beacon Family Newsletter Fall 2020

(2nd Ed.)

Commencement: Virtual Celebration Rallying to Embrace the Community Family Weekend: COVID-19 Blessings The Inaugural ASBU America, a First-Gen. College Student Psychology and CMHC Merge

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Commencement - A Virtual Celebration for a Real Life Accomplishment By: Tiffany Boss, administrative assistant to the vp for academic affairs As we have faced a myriad of unexpected challenges this year we have also learned to adapt and adjust quickly.

The administration of Bushnell University elected in advance to follow wisdom and move our December Commencement to an online format. As we have seen in recent weeks and as circumstances are changing quickly, this was indeed the best decision for our campus community, graduates, and their families. With that early decision made, we have been able to gather a team comprised of representatives from Student Life, Music & Arts, Academic Affairs, Marketing, Registrar, President’s Office, IT, and the December Class of 2020. This committee has been preparing creative solutions to celebrate with our Fall graduates.

When we discuss options for an online commencement, we are examining the elements of the traditional celebration and asking how we can translate those personal and congregational feelings of joy, excitement, pride, and hope for the future, into a virtual celebration for this significant real-life accomplishment. Our graduates have displayed fierce persistence against the odds, they have worked diligently despite enormous challenges and they have succeeded at reaching their goal.

In a traditional graduation ceremony, the personal aspects of joy, hope and pride are on display as each graduate takes the stage for a moment of honor. This is also their opportunity to shine for those who have shaped and supported them. They walk as representatives of their families, hometowns, heritages and all those who have nurtured them along the way to this very special day. In order to foster feelings of excitement in our graduates, we are preparing individualized Celebration Boxes for every graduate to use as they prepare submissions for our virtual commencement. They can also use the contents to celebrate with family and close friends. The contents of these boxes include a variety of fun surprises, which I cannot disclose! Trust me; these will be a special gift to aid in your individual festivities!

We longingly anticipate a boisterous celebration together.

This togetherness will be experienced in an online event, where students, friends and families across the world can come together to celebrate simultaneously. We may be far away from one another, but for this moment, let us feel close as we join together to cheer and encourage each graduate as they “take the stage”. The contents of the celebration boxes will play a role, as students will have submitted personal media to be included in our virtual commencement. Each graduate who submits the requested media will have a truly personal moment for all of the virtual participants to enjoy.

What else can we expect in this online event? Our Music & Arts department has been working tirelessly to contribute to the festivities by sharing with us several musical performances. Our administration and academic deans will also deliver words of encouragement and blessing as they send off the class of 2020.

It is our great hope that the friends and families of the Bushnell Class of 2020 would sense those same feelings of celebration from the safety of their homes, as they shower their much deserving graduates with honor and well wishes on this important day. Romans 5:3-5 tells us that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope”. This hope is a gift from the Lord. Although we know that none of this is how we intended to honor our students for their dedication and success, our circumstances and challenges do not supersede the fact that these graduates have poured themselves into these final semesters and they are deserving of this celebration. There is a hope to be held, our graduates have a bright future and we anticipate good things for their lives. We, at Bushnell, truly hope this virtual ceremony will be special and memorable for the December Class of 2020.

We are proud of all our graduates, but we are especially proud of the 119 members of the first graduating class of Bushnell University for their perseverance through trying times and deep determination to finish well. May their persistent and hopeful spirits be an example to us all.

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Rallying to Embrace the Community By: Jennifer Little, coordinator for campus ministry

It seems that Covid has adjusted just about everything in our lives, and Campus Ministry is no exception. Embrace the Community (ETC) Day is one of Campus Ministry’s signature events – on one (usually) sunny Tuesday in September, afternoon classes are cancelled and students are invited to serve at one of over 20 locations all over the Springfield/Eugene area. This is one of my favorite events of the year. We get to work with amazing community partners that are always SO excited to have a willing group of college students make serious headway on projects they haven’t been able to get to. We order cool shirts for everybody from Agape International Mission that rehabilitates, trains, and employs women who have been rescued from sex trafficking in Cambodia. Students get to spend time with children and the elderly, play with cats and dogs, harvest vegetables, spruce up park trails, paint buildings – all when they would usually be in class!

It’s basically all good news for everyone involved!

Cue 2020. Covid numbers are on the rise again and college students feel to many like more of a threat than a blessing. Some of our community partners have had to shut down, or at least change operations significantly. The week before ETC Day was scheduled, the entire state of Oregon went up in flames. Now, we’re not supposed to be inside (for Covid reasons) AND we’re not supposed to be outside (because we were breaking records for unbelievably bad air quality). And yet, somehow in the midst of all the bad news, cancelling the event completely felt like the wrong move.

So, we rallied. ETC Day was postponed until October.

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The Community Service Club mobilized student involvement in the evacuation relief stations in Eugene in the meantime. We continued to coordinate with each community partner individually on what a safe service project would look like in their context.

We sent smaller groups of students and encouraged them to travel (masked) with people they lived with.

We invited students who were unwilling or unable to wear their mask the whole length of the service project to stay home. Organizations figured out how to accomplish their projects outside. They came up with more tasks that could be done individually. A few (especially any organization working with the elderly) needed to opt out for this year. Flexibility and caution ruled the day.

In the end, in spite of the circumstances, it turned out to be a really special day. In a season where it has felt like everything is reduced to isolation and disconnection, we got an opportunity to (safely) come out of our rooms and be a part of something. It’s so easy to get caught up in our needs, our safety, our cynicism, and our agenda – it was good for all of us to be focused on someone else for awhile. I was reminded of the passage in Galatians 5: “Serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (v. 13-14). After the event, my inbox was flooded with gratitude from the organizations who continue to serve our community but have themselves experienced a significant dip in available volunteers. And as we move forward into the spring, we look ahead with hope. We will continue to evaluate every decision carefully, and work to provide safe opportunities for our students to love our neighbors.

Now more than ever, it takes a careful balance of both wisdom and faith to serve well, in the name of the one who came “not to be served, but to serve” (Matthew 20:28).

Family Weekend: COVID-19 Blessings By: Caitlin Bowen, senior, teacher education and english major For many of you, the Bushnell Family Weekend 2020 that you experienced this year has been similar to the Family Weekend that I have experienced my past three years. I am a current student at Bushnell University, but before moving to Eugene in August 2017 to attend Bushnell, I had been living in the Middle East with my family for eleven years. In fact, my family is still living in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), due to my father’s job. So up until this year, my family and I have never really been able to participate in Family Weekend tradition. For me, Family Weekends meant doing what I would do on any other weekend- work on homework, write a lot of papers, and binge on coffee (or tea, if I really wanted to mix things up!).

Since I became a Beacon, our normal annual family rhythm involved travelling to Abu Dhabi during the winter break, and my parents and sister would come to the US for summer break. Then all of our lives changed drastically in 2020 due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. I’m sure many of you had your summer plans derailed, too. COVID-19 has significantly changed pretty much everything for everyone in some way or another. For me personally, the COVID outbreak meant a total change of plans for what my family and I had planned to do over the summer break. Like many other countries, the UAE went into lockdown. I could not travel to Abu Dhabi, and my family could not leave because they would not be able to get back in if they left. Not being able to see my family over the summer was a big disappointment. Not having my dad able to come to the US and help me move back on campus just felt odd and empty. I had never felt the physical distance between my family and me so much. However, there may be hope for a Christmas visit. UAE entry restrictions have eased a little, and as I write this, my mother and I are trying

to piece together a pathway to visit them in Abu Dhabi for winter break. So far it involves 18 hours on 2 flights, being fitted with a tracking device at the border between Dubai and Abu Dhabi for 2 weeks of quarantine in my old bedroom, and 5 COVID tests. It’s a little daunting, but doable, and certainly nothing compared to heartbreaking consequences of this pandemic for so many families.

However, amidst all of this craziness, I have been reminded that I should never take things for granted and that I need to pay more attention to and give praise for the blessings that come into my life because of the trials. One such blessing was Zoom. Zoom was approved for use in the UAE only because of the pandemic. Before COVID-19, trying to stay in regular contact with my family was challenging. Skype and VPN’s are not allowed for personal use in the UAE, which meant you were sending messages through WhatsApp or making expensive long-distance phone calls. While seeing my family over the screen isn’t the same as being with them, I am extremely grateful that I can see them when we are talking and that I don’t have to worry about ending up with a large phone bill! Another blessing was the “Family Weekend” care package that I received from my parents. With my parents halfway around the world, it took extra planning between Princess Fox and my mother, but they found a way to make the surprise happen. There are no words to describe the level of joy I felt and how happy my parents were to finally be able to participate in the modified-for-pandemic observance of Bushnell Family Weekend by sending this surprise care package. If this is what other students feel like when family weekend comes around, I now understand why it’s such an important Beacon tradition.

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The Inaugural Associated Students of Bushnell University By: Amber Whitehead, ASBU controller, junior, teacher education major Hi there! My name is Amber Whitehead, and I am the Controller for the Associated Students of Bushnell University this year. I am a junior here at Bushnell University, and this is my second year being the Controller for ASBU. Being the Controller for ASBU, my role involves taking minutes during the meetings, managing the budget, and helping organize the clubs on our campus.

All members of the Executive Cabinet are returning members, which has helped in getting a lot of our projects and events up and running early in the school year. Building from their experience, the team set goals for the student body and the campus that help move the university forward in multitude of ways. Our team works great with one another, and we bounce ideas off each other.

All of our class representatives have either had an event so far or are in the process of planning for their event. Our freshman class representative, Sophia Castillo, is in the process of planning a stress-free Christmas party for the freshman class during dead week. Our sophomore class representative, Jane Tanoue, took the sophomore class out to a local pumpkin patch in town and is in the process of making a personal “You Got This” note to every sophomore for motivation during finals week. Our junior class representative, Jordyn Ramos, has been in contact with some faculty advisors about what the Junior Class Retreat will look like this school year. Finally, our senior class representative, Hannah Bucher, has been thinking of ways to host the senior banquet as well as other possible ideas for graduation, in case the COVID-19 restrictions take us to spring. We also have two atlarge representatives, Hannah Lemly and Awbrie Ammons-Jackson, and they have planned a de-stress activity in the rug room during midterms for all of campus.

The Senate is comprised of three committees: Activities, Environment, and Academics. Each committee has a list of goals that they want to achieve. The activities committee had a successful Halloween movie night celebration. Normally, we would have had our annual Halloween dance, but due to COVID-19 regulations, we could not host

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that event. Ben Womack, the VP of Activities, worked together with our advisor, Princess Fox, to brainstorm ideas of a possible event to do instead.

They came up with a movie hopping night. During this event, five different locations around campus played different movies, and each room was decorated according to which movie was playing.

There was a great turn out, and the event went smoothly. Our academic committee has been in the process to see how can increase the width of faculty/ staff evaluations that are done by the students.

Regularly, faculty receives feedback after a course has been taught to help improve teaching practices.

The academic committee is hoping to find ways to give similar feedback to other members of the staff on campus. They are also in the process of planning what the faculty banquet will look like in the Spring an annual event that the student government puts on to thank our faculty and staff. Last, our environment committee has big plans for this campus. Their first project is furnishing the Goodrich Conference Room. Previously President Womack’s office, this space is now used for student club meetings and small groups. One of the outcomes of the COVID-19 protocols for classroom sizes is the use of a couple of big tents outdoors for class/dining use. These have proven to be popular with all the students, therefore the environment committee is now working with our administration to pursue getting permanent outdoor covered areas for the campus.

Lastly, we have two major events that will be happening before we head home for winter break.

The first event is a Thanksgiving celebration.

Adjusting to the 2-week freeze that the state governor gave, ASBU is collecting ‘thankful notes’ from people to spread gratitude to friends, faculty, and staff and will be delivering these with prepackaged Thanksgiving gifts (originally, we were going to hand out pumpkin pie while students come together to write their notes – we are now doing all of these on-line). Our second event will be a tree lighting ceremony. We partnered up with our groundskeeper crew, and they are willing to help us decorate a large tree outside with Christmas lights and ornaments. We will have packets of hot cocoa and candy canes for students to pick up so they can enjoy a warm beverage while they watch a LIVE virtual lighting ceremony from their living areas. We hope that this event will bring our small community together and bring in the Christmas joy.

Associated Students of Bushnell University

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Katia Burke, ASBU President Ben Womack, ASBU VP for Activities Natalie Martin, ASBU VP for Academics Meagan Mollahan, ASBU VP for Environment Amber Whitehead, Controller Hannah Lemly, At-Large Representative

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Awbrie Ammons-Jackson, At-Large Representative Sophia Castillo, Freshman Representative Jace Tanoue, Sophomore Representative Jordyn Ramos, Junior Representative Hannah Bucher, Senior Representative

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America, a First-Generation College Student By: Sarah Reinecker, senior, communications major

Roughly 15% of our traditional undergraduate student population consider themselves to be a first generation college student.

While the experience of attending college is common in many families, in others it has never been done before. First generation students are from families where neither of their parents have any college experience, or have completed 4-year degree, or even those whose parents had graduated from colleges outside of the United States. The road to college is a hard path to follow when it is a path that is unknown. There is a newfound sense of accomplishment a First-Gen student feels when he or she finally walks across the stage on graduation day.

On November 8th National First-Generation College Student day was celebrated, and Bushnell University was proud to applaud over 60 First-Gen students.

This day emphasizes the great accomplishments students have made by reaching it to a new chapter in their lives. To each student the meaning is different yet still valuable because of the varying hardships each family had to go through. What does it truly feel like to be a First-Generation College Student?

Freshman women’s basketball player America Jeffreys has the honored distinction of being the first in her family to attend college and recently discussed the opportunity she has in front of her. Jeffreys is a first-generation college freshman at Bushnell University, and is majoring in psychology. America was asked about her journey to Bushnell, and what it meant to her to be a first-generation college student.

“My parents wanted to provide me with the best education and life they could, even if they did not get to experience that themselves. The sacrifices my family has made and the drive they have instilled in me, are what means the most. Their work to properly prepare me for life after high school, have set me up to reach my college goals and strive in my career after college,” said America.

America grew up on the Kenai Peninsula in Nikiski, Alaska, but she was born roughly 20 minutes away in Soldotna, Alaska. Nikiski is over 170 miles Southwest of Anchorage, which is one of the largest communities in Alaska. America is the oldest of four, making it her job to set the best example for her

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younger brother and sisters. She attended Nikiski Middle/High School, a 3A school with approximately 160 students in her graduating class. There she played basketball, volleyball, and soccer. America also played basketball for a travel AAU team called the Alaska Stars, however she loved playing high school basketball the most. “My high school basketball teammates consisted of my childhood best friends, nothing was better than playing with them,” said America. Her favorite memories of high school basketball were made off the court, going to team camps and spending time with her teammates throughout the summer.

America chose to come to Bushnell because she felt that it was the best university for her. She already had some family in Oregon, and it was also an opportunity for her to experience living far from home in a new state where she could play college basketball. “I realized Bushnell would be a great fit for me because I could continue to play basketball for a great program in an area that was similar to home,” said America. So, she connected with Bushnell Women’s head basketball coach, Chad Meadors.

Coach Meadors explained, “It is an honor to be the first person in a family to graduate from college. I am excited for America as she sets out to accomplish her goals, navigating college is a challenge for everyone, but when you are the first in your family, you must blaze the path not yet traveled. America has the courage and determination necessary to be a successful college graduate, and I cannot wait to see the impact she is going to have on the community of Bushnell and the sense of pride the Jeffreys family will have the day we call America a college graduate.”

The recruitment process was difficult for her, because no one in her family had ever applied to college before. The progression of applying, contacting coaches, and visiting different universities was unfamiliar to her and her family. There was no one that had done it before her who could walk her through the process. However, her parents worked hard to understand the procedure to help her further her education. “The hardships they have went through to get me here, makes my experience of being a first-generation college student that much more meaningful,” America said.

In March of 2020, two days before her senior night game, America had the worst experience that most

athletes pray never happens. She tore her anterior cruciate ligament, ending her season. Though this was a traumatic experience, it reinforced her drive and passion to reach her goal of playing basketball in college. “Making the decision to attend Bushnell was such an amazing opportunity for me; I was determined to not let my last basketball game I ever played, end like that,” America said.

“Being a first-generation college student is really important to me because I get to do something that my parents have always wanted me to do and that they never got the opportunity to achieve. I’m really appreciative for all the sacrifices they have made that have helped pave the way for me to go to college,” said America.

America hopes her experience at Bushnell gives her a great college basketball experience, where she can continue to play the game she loves. Just eight months removed from her injury, she is still recovering but continues to work hard each day during physical therapy sessions in order for her to be cleared to compete with her team. The goal is for her to be stronger than ever and play for the Beacons

this season. Determination and drive shown through the stages of this injury, are the same determination and drive she displayed when getting accepted into college.

America expects to build great relationships with new friends, teammates, and coaches. As if being the oldest of four siblings wasn’t enough, the basketball team has given her sixteen new sisters. Now she has a second family away from home. She is proud and joyful that she has made it to Bushnell, but she is not done yet. The ultimate goal is to graduate and become the first college graduate in her family.

America plans to major in psychology, and potentially go into criminal justice in the future.

“My goal is to have a career, that does not feel like a job. I want to love what I am doing and not have to worry about financial issues,” described America.

America’s parents have done so much to help get her to college; she wants to do everything she can to make them proud. “While it hasn’t been easy, I have never stopped working to get to where I am today and will not stop until I become a college graduate,” said America.

“My goal is to have a career, that does not feel like a job.

I want to love what I am doing and not have to worry about financial issues.

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The Psychology Department and the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Programs Merge By: Dr. Ryan Melton, associate dean of psychology and counseling

You may have noticed there is a new School on campus. The Psychology Department and the Clinical Mental Health Counseling (CMHC) program have merged forming the School of Psychology and Counseling. This decision was made by Dr. Dennis Lindsay Vice President for Academic Affairs in June just prior to the transition to Bushnell University. The decision was made following consultation from key Bushnell faculty and President Womack. All of whom were in full support of this new direction for Bushnell.

This is an exciting merger filled with amazing potential! The merge allows for Psychology undergraduates that are interested in a career in Clinical Mental Health Counseling access to the CMHC faculty and resources well before they graduate. The hope is to create bridging courses in the future that will allow those

students take graduate level classes during their undergraduate years. Thus allowing for a quicker path to a graduate degree while saving on tuition. These students will also continue their relationships with the Psychology Faculty they have built such strong bonds. On the graduate side CMHC students will have access to the expertise and resources in the Psychology program. One recent example of this was a presentation on autism by Dr. Winter-Messiers to the CMHC Honor Society.

The new school is under the leadership of Dr. Ryan Melton. Dr. Melton was formerly the dean of the CMCH program at Bushnell. Dr. Melton has advanced degrees in both Counseling and Psychology making this merger a natural fit based on his education and passion.

We are looking forward to the integration of the Graduate and Undergraduate students and Faculty in terms of mentoring, teaching and research. We are envisioning a synchronous relationship that only further fosters the Bushnell mission of Wisdom, Faith and Service.

Making snow angels in 2019

We h o p e y ou h a v e a

Merry Christmas We will continue to provide COVID-19 updates as they come. Please check our website for more information.

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