Once upon a time, the place was a school for hairstylists, strangely enough. Dozens—well, hundreds—of students, most of them young women, came in to learn to cut and trim and set, then graduated and went back out to make the world a prettier place. When Stewart School of Hairstyling moved away from its downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota, location, they …
A Step of Faith to Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
In January of 2013, President Erik Hoekstra visited Grace Christian Reformed Church in Burke, Virginia. A small group of Dordt graduates who lived in the Washington, D.C., area had gathered to hear Hoekstra share his vision for what Dordt might become. At the end of the talk, Ken Verbrugge (’69), a program manager at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab …
The Vision of Mary Medema Wilmeth
It was 1965, a time in her life, she says, for a major decision. For a girl born and reared in Grand Rapids, even thinking about coming to Dordt College—and where was that again? in Iowa?—was more than passing strange. But there were reasons that maybe, rather than Calvin College (she grew up in Calvin’s backyard), she’d hike out to …
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 …
The Kibbutz
“The scariest part was cooking,” or so Clarence Witten (’78) remembers. “I’d never cooked a meal in my life, probably didn’t even boil an egg, and suddenly there were nine hungry guys coming to the table expecting to be well-fed.” In housing almost unknown to Dordt College students today, for years scores of their predecessors lived off-campus, many in sometimes …
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 …
Emily Hageman
CRITIC’S CHOICE Emily Hageman is exactly what Dordt College wanted, way back when. Ordinary folks from a region called Siouxland understood the time had come to build an institution of higher education right here on the continent’s most fertile ground.They were thinking about hundreds of Christian school teachers needed for the crowd of “covenant children” soon to be school age, …
Kristin Kobes Du Mez
1995. It’s evening in Dordt’s library. Off to the side, near the journal shelves, are the carrels. A group of students from a variety of majors are tucked into desks, bent over their books, sipping coffee from Dordt-issued recyclable mugs. It’s a quiet space—except when it isn’t. Students lean over one another’s desks. Conversations on a host of topics waft …
Two, Three, Four or More
In December, I signed nearly 50 diplomas. It is one of the great joys in my role as president. As I did so, I thought about meeting some of these students when they were freshmen and watching them grow and develop during their years here. It gives me joy to watch them launch into service in Christ’s kingdom. The stack …
Merissa Harkema
AGENT OF RESTORATION IN A BROKEN WORLD Merissa Harkema (’13) is a planner. Even before she attended Dordt and majored in psychology and exercise science, she knew that she wanted to work in occupational therapy. She ended up at Washington University in St. Louis for graduate school; from there, she set her sights on using her skills to help others. …