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Each year, Pacific Union College welcomes a small group of musicians for the Academy Keyboard Festival. The students, who mostly come from Northern and Central California academies, spend three days rehearsing, participating in master classes, enjoying demonstrations, and performing. This year, the Festival took place April 3-5, with 11 students. Lynn Wheeler, chair of the PUC music department, led the ensembles and master classes, with assistant music professor Rosalie Rasmussen leading the handbell choir and associate music professor Bruce Rasmussen doing a demonstration session on the Rieger organ. The students performed their solos, group keyboard pieces, and bell choir pieces on Sabbath evening, including such works at Schaum’s Battle Hymn of the Republic, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, and Mendelssohn’s If With All Your Hearts. For more information about the Academy Keyboard Festival or other music events, call the music department at (707) 965-6201....

The first service at the Pacific Union College Church commences with the rich tones of the Rieger organ. Not long ago, this “early service” started at 8:45 and housed a very small congregation, mostly white-haired. Now the first service is called the Majestic and starts at 10 a.m. It is purposeful in presenting a quality traditional service, and is more intergenerational and attended by about four times as many people as before. These positive changes are part of a larger picture that includes both worship services (the Majestic and the Gathering, which meets just after noon). Led by senior pastor Tim Mitchell, worship and outreach pastor Jessica Shine, and campus chaplain Roy Ice, the church recently began to take a good hard look at the weekly services and the congregational community. Some of the problems they faced were low attendance at the early service, frustration with the blend of elements in the second service, and the need for a sense of community that carries over from week to week. “We asked ourselves, what does the congregation need?” Shine recounts. Church members filled out surveys; and focus groups made up of people from a wide spectrum of ages and roles met...

David Trim, a history professor from Newbold College, much-published author, and preacher, has come to Angwin from England for a one-year stint at Pacific Union College, financed by the Walter C. Utt Endowed Chair of History. This visit is no vacation stay, however; as Utt Professor for the 2008 calendar year, Trim is teaching one class each quarter, giving two lectures, and engaging in research and writing for several in-depth history projects. Trim was asked to come to PUC by the board of the Utt endowment, the college’s only endowed professorship. The endowment was established after the 1985 death of its legendary namesake, a PUC history professor who left a legacy of mentorship, brilliant lecturing, and authorship. Now, the professorship memorializes Utt and fosters Adventist scholarship by bringing great teachers to PUC and giving them time to focus their energies on research and writing. A number of conferences and book editing and essay-writing projects, along with the Utt lectures and preaching appointments, are on Trim’s agenda during his time as the Utt professor. He’ll complete the editorial on a volume of essays on European Warfare, write an essay on the history of chivalry after the Renaissance, and write a paper...

In an inconspicuous commercial area at the end of a tiny strip-mall, a door opens into a hubbub of young voices. It's 3:40 and the Angwin Teen Center has been filling up with the after-school crowd of junior high and high school students, bearing their earphones, their backpacks, and a lot of energy. PUC student Larissa Ranzolin is sitting at a small table in the thick of things, surrounded by kids and discussing a can of pumpkin pie filling with the dad of one of the teens.It's a surprisingly familial atmosphere for a teen hang-out, and that's the result of a very intentional commitment to mentorship. "Here," says executive director Tom Amato, from a couch against one wall, "the relationship is not based on behavior, performance, or production. We'll be unconditional. We help [the teens] to realize we're family."That's a big deal for many of these young students, explains PUC student Georgiana Tutu, who works as a supervisor at the Center. "Some of their home lives are pretty crummy, so it helps to know that they can come to a place that is always going to be there… it helps to know that the people that work there are always...

On March 5, students and faculty packed Alice Holst theater for the world premier of Bryonn Bain’s one-man show We Are and So I Am, a 76-minute performance that blends hip-hop and spoken word to tell the story of his experience with an unjust prison system, racism, and how to move forward despite the existence of both. And how the different influences in his life have come together to make him who he is. Bain is a spoken-word poet and prison activist. He’s a Nuyorican Grand Slam Poetry Champion; founder of the Blackout Arts Collective, a grassroots organization that brings workshops and performances to public schools and prisons; and current host of BET-J’s current affairs talk show “My Two Cents.” He’s also an actor and world traveler. He is currently performing off-Broadway in the production From Auction Block to Hip-hop and is the “Poet-in-Residence” at New School University in New York. Bain experienced the unjust hand of the law when he was taken in for a crime he didn’t commit. His only crime: being black and in the wrong place at the wrong time. The experience he had proving his innocence and dealing with the prison system greatly impacted him...