
Saving the World with a Starship
On day one of PLU Professor of Mathematics Daniel Heath’s Designing a Starship class, students have no idea what they have signed up for — and that’s exactly how Heath wants it. The course is part of PLU’s International Honors Program (IHON), which means it…

Camp Songs: PLU music majors produce free music camp for Parkland students
It’s a warm summer morning and the scent of scrambled eggs drifts from the kitchen at Trinity Lutheran Church into an adjoining room where more than a dozen campers busily make beaded jewelry. Ranging from second to sixth grade, the kids are participants in the…

Questioning Barriers: Angela Pierce-Ngo ’12 understands post-secondary success requires questions
While at PLU, Angela Pierce-Ngo ’12 was worried by a troubling pattern. After the first year of college, many peers and friends — especially classmates of color — left school or took an extremely long break. Even as she worked as a diversity advocate and…

Music and Medicine: Elizabeth Larios ’21 returns to Namibia to research infections and teach marimba
Elizabeth Larios ’21 decided she was going to be a neurosurgeon in the fourth grade. That’s when her class took a field trip to a science museum and Larios saw an exhibit about the human brain. Returning home that day, she told her mom: “I’m…

Simulating for Success
A pair of nursing students in grey scrubs knock on the door, wash their hands, and greet little Jillian, who rests in a bed connected to beeping monitors. The child opens her eyes and whimpers, then coughs. As the students listen to Jillian’s lung sounds,…

No Mud, No Lotus
Social work major April Reyes ’21 loves to talk about her tattoos. She has 13 total, nine of which she received while studying at PLU. She struggles to choose a favorite but says she loves to flaunt the lotus flower on the back of her…

(Re)Building Community
The PLU Residence Hall Association, or RHA, brings students together for social events, community forums, and to advocate for residence hall-related issues. RHA president Hezekiah Goodwin ’22 thinks of his role in building a vibrant student community as a campus vocation. We met with him…

Timely Research
Translating the Enlightenment The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently awarded Professor of French Rebecca Wilkin a $133,333 grant under the Scholarly Editions and Translations interest area. Wilkin and her collaborator Angela Hunter, an English professor from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock,…

Housing Our Neighbors
Housing is something many of us take for granted. Much more than just a place to sleep and a structure to shelter us from the elements, our homes provide the space we need to maintain a functional life. It’s where we manage our mental health,…

Collective Impact: George Zeno talks Parkland, equity and community partnerships
Nearly a year into his new role as PLU Associate Vice President of Advancement, George Zeno and I took a walk through Parkland and discussed one of my favorite questions, #WhyPLU? Zeno is essentially a community matchmaker for social progress. Mentored at the University of…

People’s Gathering fosters timely conversations about race, perspective and inclusion
PLU Director of Multicultural Outreach and Engagement Melannie Denise Cunningham has an uncanny ability to get folks talking. In 2016, she noticed the community was yearning to discuss one pressing topic in particular. That summer, the news of Philando Castile, a Black man fatally shot…

Charged Up
PLU Chemistry professor Dean Waldow hopes to one day become useless. After all, as an educator, his job is to empower students to work confidently and independently in a field that is constantly innovating. He does this by bringing students into his lab to help…