Students partner with a not-for-profit organization to learn about market research. A Dordt student stands in the lobby of a department store, scanning and meticulously cataloguing the toys that have been placed in a Toys for Tots collection box. She’s not a store employee, nor is she a Toys for Tots employee—she’s a third-party market researcher. Courtney Bloemhof (’19), a …
Wind & Butterfly Population
JOSCELYN WIND FOCUSES ON DECLINING BUTTERFLY POPULATION Driving down any Midwestern highway, you’ll likely spot clusters of milkweed planted in the ditches for the benefit of monarch butterflies. If you drove down a Northwest Iowa highway last fall, you may also have spotted Joscelyn Wind, a senior biology major, along the roadside, inspecting the milkweed for monarch larvae and tachinid …
Breadbasket to the Bronx
Adam Vander Stoep’s home community in Lyon County, Iowa, is different from New York City in most every regard, but Vander Stoep (’15) feels prepared for his new job as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx. Like many born-and-bred residents of Northwest Iowa, Vander Stoep graduated from Western Christian High School in Hull, Iowa, in 2011 before enrolling at …
Chuck De Groat
The 2018 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award Dr. Chuck DeGroat (’92) began his college career studying aeronautics at Dowling College on Long Island. But, after a year and a half, he realized that his vision and his mathematical abilities would prevent him from becoming a pilot. “My pastor at the time was a graduate of Dordt,” says DeGroat, “and …
Teaching Biosecurity
Handwashing may seem too trivial a habit to address in a college-level lab, but for agriculture students, handwashing is a significant biosecurity precaution required in their field. Biosecurity is basically implementing “procedures to protect humans or animals from disease or pathogens outside of their normal living situation,” explains Steve Bogaard, natural sciences lab coordinator. “For both four-year and Pro-Tech agriculture …
Off-Campus in Paraguay
ROSKAMP CREATES HIS OWN OFF-CAMPUS OPPORTUNITY What do you do if you are a Dordt College agriculture major itching to get some international field experience, but Dordt doesn’t offer an ag-specific off-campus program? You design your own, of course. Senior Sam Roskamp worked with his academic adviser, Dordt’s global education office, his parents, and local contacts to arrange a semester …
Here Goes Nothing
KENDRA BROEKHUIS Kendra (Potgeter) Broekhuis (’11) “embodies what it means to be hospitably reformed, and she does so in a way that is open and honest,” says Brandon Huisman, Dordt’s Director of Alumni Relations. Broekhuis is the first Dordt alumna to be given the Alumni Association’s Horizon Award. “The most significant things I learned at Dordt were not facts or …
Foldscopes
AN UNASSUMING TECHNOLOGY WITH A BIG IMPACT The two-by-six-inch folded origami-like paper lying on Professor Jeff Ploegstra’s desk does not look like it belongs in a lab. And it doesn’t. It is a Foldscope, and it belongs out in the world. A Foldscope is a microscope that can magnify objects by up to 140% and slip easily into a student’s …
Engineering and Art
ENGINEERING AND ART STUDENTS CREATE MOVING SCULPTURES TOGETHER. At Dordt College, it’s not unusual for departments to collaborate on cross-disciplinary projects. Few have been as original as the partnership between the engineering and art departments, who recently teamed up to engineer art. This spring semester, an electrical engineering class joined a sculpture class to create interactive kinetic sculptures. “This was …
Michelle (Bootsma, ’98) Bekkering
MICHELLE BEKKERING HAS KNOWN SHE WANTED TO WORK IN THE GOVERNMENT FOR MOST OF HER LIFE. As a young girl, she was surrounded by women interested in politics—a grandmother who wrote “scores of letters” to her elected representatives, an aunt who invited her to caucuses, and a mother who brought her to meet former President Gerald Ford. As a young …