Morningside Connect

The Morningside College athletic teams have been busy with the start of the spring season well under way and the ending of winter seasons at NAIA Nationals.

The dance team finished fourth at the NAIA Competitive Cheer & Dance National Invitational. The team finished with a score of 105.81 points. The team also had three members receive the Daktronics-NAIA Scholar-Athlete award – senior Kara Bentz, junior Jackie Bossman, and junior Brianna Harding. To be eligible for the Daktronics-NAIA Scholar-Athlete honors, a person must be of at least junior academic status and have a minimum GPA of 3.50.

The women’s basketball team made it to the quarterfinals of the NAIA II Women’s Basketball National Tournament. Three members of the team – junior Lexi Ackerman, senior Allison Bachman, and senior Jessica Tietz – were named 2016 Daktronics-NAIA Scholar-Athletes. Tietz was also named to the NAIA Division II Women’s Basketball National Championship All-Tournament Second Team and to the first team of the NAIA Division II Women’s Basketball All-American team.

The men’s basketball team had three members named Daktronics-NAIA Scholar-Athletes. They were senior Joseph Christen, junior Matthew Klemme, and junior Blake Van Ginkel.

The wrestling team’s Steven Garcia finished fourth at the NAIA Wrestling National Championships. Four other wrestlers qualified for nationals – senior Jared McCoy, freshman Keegan Hessler, freshman Kyle Fowler, and freshman Dakota Drenth.

The men’s bowling team finished 24^th at the Intercollegiate Team Championships Sectional Qualifier tournament. In the singles competition, they had four bowlers compete – junior Tyler Lane, sophomore Dylan Malcom, sophomore Alex Eukovich, and freshman Tanner Hansel. Sophomore Katie Pearson and freshman Haley Mathes competed in the women’s singles competition.

The annual all-campus student art show will be on display from Friday, Feb. 5, to Thursday, March 3, in the Eppley Art Gallery.

The show will feature drawings, paintings, graphic design, photography, printmaking, ceramics, sculptures, illustrations, and mixed media artwork.

The show was judged by Sioux City painter Pauline Sensenig and photographer Robert Gillespie. Awards were given out during a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 17, in the art gallery for the top three pieces in three categories: studio art, photography, and graphic design/interactive media.

The top awardees for each category were Anna Ryan, studio art; Jesseca Ormond,  photography; and Lauren Lehmkuhl, graphic design/interactive media. Overall best of show was awarded to Jesseca Ormond for her photograph.

The Eppley Art Gallery is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Studio art titled Breathe Between by Anna Ryan.

Graphic design titled From The Farm Annual Report by Lauren Lehmkuhl.

Photograph titled San Antonio Hues by Jesseca Ormond.

Morningside College hosted a young alumni event on Friday, Feb. 5, 2016, at the Tyson Events Center for the Sioux City Musketeers vs. Chicago Steel hockey game.
Alumni and students got the chance to meet and enjoy the hockey game together.

Students Hunter Renn , Sarah Yankowski , Shannon Westerfield , and Austin Naylor.

Bryce Nielson, Ryan Peters, Brian Vander Berg, and Alex Schmitz.

Adam Lloyd, Mary Lloyd, Karissa Meyerhoff , Kaitlin Woods , and Tyler Woods.

Leave your answer below in the comment section. At the end of the month if your answer is correct, we will be in contact with you through the e-mail address you leave (an e-mail address is required to be able to post a comment and only we can see it.) Be sure to use an e-mail address you check so we are able to find out where to send your prize! The correct answer will be posted in the next newsletter along with the winners.

The English and Modern Languages programs—combined into one department in 2014-2015—keep things lively on the third floor of Lewis Hall. Department activities alumni remember are still going strong.

Friday is Writing Day continues to celebrate campus writing every week, and students (and sometimes alumni) travel to Spring Green, Wis., in the fall to see classical plays at American Players Theatre. The student-edited Kiosk has garnered awards from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and the American Collegiate Press Association. Sigma Tau Delta sponsors spoken word slams, soup days, service projects, and trips to the national conventions. More recently, English students have created a Writers’ Guild organization.

The English program has sponsored other trips to explore graduate schools, see other theatre productions, and visit literary sites such as Willa Cather’s Red Cloud, Neb. Students in both programs have presented research and creative writing at the college’s annual Palmer Undergraduate Research Symposium and at the other local, regional, and national conferences. Spanish Club is going strong, recently sponsoring a Carnavale event in Dimmitt Hall.

Our students graduate from Morningside College to pursue a variety of careers, and others head for graduate school in law, literary studies, creative writing, and interdisciplinary fields. While at Morningside College, many pursue the college’s increasing number of study abroad opportunities.

Faculty and Staff News

Steve Coyne, Amber Harris-Leichner, and Marty Knepper (English) and Gail Ament and Patrick Blaine (Modern Languages), along with invaluable administrative assistant Marcie Ponder, model for our students the value of travel, research, and creative writing.

Marcie Ponder graduated in December 2015 from Morningside College. Steve Coyne’s novel, It Turns Out Like This, will be published through New Rivers Press in October Marty Knepper’s The Book of Iowa Films, co-authored with John Lawrence, appeared in fall of 2014, and Marty is featured as a commentator at the State Historical Museum of Iowa’s Hollywood in the Heartland exhibit in Des Moines, through June, 2017 (www.bookofiowafilms.com). Amber Harris-Leichner had two poems published last year in Scholars and Poets Talk about Queens.

Patrick Blaine has written a chapter for a book, which is a wide-reaching study of the political documentary in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. Blaine’s chapter discusses the 40-year career of Chilean documentary filmmaker Patricio Guzmán, and the cinematic strategies that he uses to represent absences in post-dictatorial society. Gail Ament’s translations of several poems by Honduran writers were published in Honduras: Women’s Poems of Protest and Resistance (2009-2013): Spanish-English Bilingual Edition, ed. María Roof.

Our faculty members, with Marcie’s assistance, have recently sponsored semester-long or May Term trips to Italy, Guatemala, Cuba, Ireland, England, and Vietnam and Cambodia–and have traveled themselves in and outside the country for conferences and for professional development, including Gail Ament’s summer trips to Oaxaca, Mexico.

We Welcome News of Your Activities

We would love to hear from our alums. Please send your news to Marcie Ponder.

Ruth Hickman ’53 recently published her book, “A Daily Teaching Devotional from God’s Word”, on Oct. 19, 2015. The book is a teaching devotional that covers the 365 redemptive chapters in the Bible with the opportunity to journal your thoughts.

Hickman has been teaching Bible studies for 35 years. She and her husband, Chuck, founded the Bible-teaching ministry, Abundant Word Ministries, in 1980. Abundant Word Ministries is committed to offering in-depth understanding and application of God’s word.

Hickman has traveled all over the United States and Canada teaching in churches, at women’s groups, and at retreats. She has also led groups to Israel six times and made the trip overall ten times. Hickman has been invited to speak at luncheons, seminars, and conference retreats all across the nation. She was a guest on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and the television program “It’s A New Day.” Hickman has also taught a weekly radio series and has a video and audio study series available on a wide variety of topics.

Hickman has published several books, including “Hope for Hurting People,” which was published in 1987.

Hickman graduated from Morningside College in 1953 with a bachelor’s degree. She started off teaching in Anthon and Holstein, Iowa, from 1953 until 1957. She moved to Denver, Colo., in 1957, where she currently resides today. For 12 years she worked for Singer Sewing Machine Co. and has a sewing skills television program on KRMA-TV, an affiliate of PBS.

Morningside College is hosting a young alumni event on Friday, Feb. 5, 2016, at the Tyson Events Center for the Sioux City Musketeers vs. Chicago Steel hockey game.

The night will start off with a reception at 6:30 p.m. in the Party Zone, with the game following at 7 p.m. Cost of the night will be $15, which includes the game ticket, food, and soft drinks.

For more information or for questions, please contact Shiran Nathaniel at nathaniel@morningside.edu or 712-274-5295.

Welcome to the New Year! For those of us in the upper Midwest, it’s been down-right cold! But as Dr. Dan Flanagan reminds us, there are only 20-some days until somebody starts playing baseball!

The close of 2015 allowed many of us to reflect on what had taken place at the college the first semester and to begin to execute our plan for this semester.

This semester finds us working with the choral director on plans to take the choir on tour to Kansas City, Kan.; Denver, Colo.; Laramie, Wyo.; Arvada, Colo.; and Omaha, Neb. Alumni in those areas will be notified when and where the choral concerts will take place.

Additionally, we are working on putting together another great Homecoming. Do mark your calendar – Sept. 30 to Oct. 2. Our honored classes will be 1956, 1966 and 1991. In addition, we will honor those who participated in jazz band, cross country and track while at the college. Be sure to mark your calendar.

For our friends in the Twin Cities, mark your calendar! Sunday, April 10, 2016, we will be coming your way with another of our super alumni gatherings! A committee of your friends are working with the Alumni Office to put that together. Watch your email and snail mail!

We are working on a host of other fun activities that involve the GOLD group –Graduates Of the Last Decade. We recently had an event in Omaha and will have a similar event in Sioux City at the Musketeer Hockey game.

On a closing note, I want to thank all of you who requested a yearbook on our recent quest to divest ourselves of books sitting on a shelf gathering dust. In my 30-plus years at Morningside, I have given away one book. With the announcement of this effort, we gave over 500 books to 200-plus alumni! Again, many thanks!

Gene Ambroson