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There’s a campaign underway in the Campus Ministries Center—a connection campaign. Though the chaplain’s office and Campus Ministries Center has a central location between the church and the Campus Center, the office doesn’t have a lot of visibility; and this year the various ministries leaders working there began to feel a little lonely. New campus chaplain Roy Ice, assistant chaplains Dustin Comm and Christy Ward, and the world missions and campus ministries leaders have been working energetically to connect personally with students and to be actively involved in campus life. But they feel that their ministry will be more effective if their office is a welcoming, happening place. “Before this year,” explains Comm, “a lot of students didn’t even know where the Campus Ministries Center was. Now we want it to be a place where the students feel like they can come and hang out.” So over Thanksgiving break, Ice and Comm went to work on some interior renovations. They took down old partitions, opening up the center office area, and painted one long wall a deep olive green. The addition of some simple leather furniture, black-and-white student photography of “hidden crosses,” and slick message boards have given the office...

A college is always tickled to welcome back its own alumni as faculty and staff members. So PUC is delighted to see Class of 1998 alumna Julie Z. Lee stepping into the position of public relations director. Lee also worked in the public relations office as a student writer and then as media relations coordinator following graduation, so she’s no stranger to the department. The wife of PUC visual arts professor Milbert Mariano, Lee most recently worked as director of communications for Maranatha Volunteers International in Sacramento. Meanwhile, after three and a half years as the public relations director, Michelle Rai (also a PUC alumna) has entered the teaching world as a full-time faculty member, joining Rosemary Collins and James Chase in the PUC communication department....

The music calendar at PUC is sprinkled generously with events from jazz band concerts to senior recitals; but this year a special concert series has joined the line-up. It’s the Rieger Organ Concert Series, featuring ten guest concert organists of impressive caliber who come from as close as Southern California and as far as Germany. These top-notch musicians will perform on the PUC Church Rieger organ, one of the largest mechanical organs in the western states. The organ was crafted by Rieger Orgelbau in Austria, then shipped to California and reassembled in the Angwin church in 1981. Since then, many famous organists have plied its 85 ranks and 58 stops, filling the building with grand expanses of sound....

As a follow-up to the emphasis last year’s student body placed on active involvement in college affairs and open discussion between students and administrators, several PUC students have established a new PUC PodCast radio program this year. The official purpose of the PUC Radio is that “by discussing the latest happenings and hot issues on-campus, we will become a forum for on-going dialogue between PUC students that up until this time has been non-existent.” The episodes are devoted to “PUC news and headlines from a distinctively unique angle, with topics and guests that are important to PUC.” Guests to the show have included Campus Security director Matt Garcia, college president Richard Osborn, and women’s volleyball coach Rhonda Ramos. And the thousands of listeners and active student feedback indicate that this new program is effectively fulfilling its purpose!...

Live piano music floats over the audience’s heads. The spotlight floods the stage, and a redheaded maid in chic black and white appears to exclaim, “Here it is the middle of August and the coldest day of the year. It’s simply freezing; the dogs are sticking to the sidewalks; can anybody explain that?” Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” is PUC’s latest stage production; and though it is showing on a small, somewhat unremarkable stage, its array of comic wit and incisively thought-provoking questions transcends the venue to move and delight audiences. “The Skin of Our Teeth” sports some of the same cast and directing team that produced last spring’s “Fiddler on the Roof” at Lincoln Theater. Students Cammie Wheeler, Tim Wolcott, and Rachel Reeves capably take on the leading roles, while other students and faculty play characters that range from a mammoth to a bingo parlor manager. The production is under the expert direction of San Francisco-based director and PUC Resident Artist Mei Ann Teo and dancer and choreographer Casey Delaney. While this production of Wilder’s play keeps viewers laughing and engaged, it also delivers a bundle of powerful and timely messages about humanity and hope; it sends...