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This fall quarter, incoming freshmen will enroll at Pacific Union College with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and new schedules. Yet they will still share at least one thing—all will have received and read sustainability activist Annie Leonard’s book, The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health—and a Vision for Change. This jumpstart for college is part of PUC Reads, a new program designed to engage the campus in shared discussion of critical issues. Every spring quarter, PUC Reads will invite PUC faculty, staff, and students—including incoming freshmen—to read a chosen book (this year, The Story of Stuff) over the summer (incoming freshmen will be mailed a copy in advance). Throughout the following school year, the book will be featured as part of the ENGL 101 and COMM 105 curricula, as well as integrated where appropriate into other classes, especially freshmen-level courses. All are encouraged to participate in discussion groups and find ways to connect with others, in order to develop a “learning community.” The year’s emphasis will culminate in a spring colloquy meeting featuring the author or another speaker connected with the book of the year. “It’s a lot...

The Huffington Post this week joined the parade of Internet commentators that have recognized Pacific Union College for excellence in website design. In a brief article on the problems with most higher education websites, Huffington Post writer Randall Munroe singles out puc.edu as one of 25 school sites getting it right. The list of 25 outstanding school websites is from an earlier article posted on EduDemic.com, a website devoted to digital media in higher education, and is the latest such ranking for puc.edu. Earlier commendations come from vandelaydesign.com, an online web design resource; educheckup.com, a video blog about educational websites that devoted an entire episode to puc.edu and gave it an A rating; and eduStyle.net, a site for campus web designers. Launched in its current form in July 2008, PUC's website was produced and is maintained entirely in-house as a cooperative effort by the college's public relations staff. ...

Academically outstanding 7th-9th-graders got their first taste of college life July 25-30 at PUC’s PacificQuest, an annual program designed to expose middle school students to college-level coursework and encourage them to aspire to higher education. Students participated in two courses, a core class and an elective. This year’s core class was Telling Tales, which abandoned written documents to explore history through oral tales, photographs and artistic images, and everyday objects. Students also chose between Pushing Boundaries, an art course that explored non-traditional techniques using graphite, ink brush, charcoal and pastel, and Chemistry, in which students learned a fun way to understand the periodic table and engaged in lab experiments. Both electives challenged students. The goal of Pushing Boundaries was to inspire visual creativity. This was accomplished through unusual activities, such as drawing standing up with ink brushes attached to the end of long sticks and paper on the floor, copying an image that begins blurry and becomes progressively clearer, and drawing expressive lines. Deangela Samonte a ninth-grader from San Francisco Adventist School, recalls drawing expressive lines with her feet. “It’s not as easy as it looks,” she says. Instructor Thomas Morphis, a fine art professor at PUC, comments, “[The students]...

PUC prep alumna Brittany Brown has been named the new Pioneers women’s volleyball coach at Pacific Union College. “It is exciting to invite Brittany Brown back home,” says Pioneers athletic director Robert Castillo. “She will bring a wealth of knowledge and experience, giving our program some much needed stability, not to mention her energy and focus, needed to return our program back where it belongs.” Born and raised in the Napa Valley, Brown has spent the last five years involved volleyball in Southern California. She is looking forward to returning to the familiar surroundings of her home community and the gym where she carries many fond memories. She is excited about the future of PUC volleyball and has lots of experience to bring from her time down south. As a player, Brown played collegiate volleyball at Azusa Pacific University, an NAIA school outside of Los Angeles, as a starting outside hitter and libero. While at APU her team attended and competed twice in the NAIA national tournament. She was named the NAIA player of the week her freshman year in 2005, and also went on to set the current record for digs in a single season with 524. Before college...

It is summertime at Pacific Union College once again. The hustle and bustle of the regular school year has died down as many students have left to study abroad, visit family at home, work at summer camps and gain valuable experience through internships. Although much of the PUC family has dispersed, the school has a wide variety of academic goings on every summer—from very unique learning opportunities to general and continued education courses. The flexibility of the summer schedule allows for a number of exciting classes that would not be possible to hold during the year. Many of these are among students’ most memorable educational experiences. “Ashland is the perfect atmosphere to fall in love with Shakespeare,” says English professor Cynthia Westerbeck. That is why she is excited to take her Shakespeare in Performance class to Ashland, Oregon to enjoy three days of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This year’s class will watch “Twelfth Night,” “Hamlet,” Part I of “Henry IV,” and “Throne of Blood” (a Japanese adaptation of “Macbeth”). PUC held a two-week painting class at its Albion Field Station, a perfect location for artistic inspiration. Fine arts and graphic design major Amador Jaojoco comments that “A painting a day...