The Song has stopped singing for AU. After announcing last December that the university planned to sell its radio station, 98.7 The Song, AU is now “in the homestretch” of finalizing the sale to the Educational Media Foundation according to Ryon Kaopuiki, vice president for enrollment and marketing. The sale presently rests in the hands of the Federal Communications Commission. “Assuming all goes smoothly during this period, the process of finalizing the sale with the FCC could take … [Read more...]
Enrollment up by more than 10 percent
Preliminary new student enrollment numbers for the fall indicate an almost 12 percent increase in class size from last year—from 420 new students to 470 this year. According to Ryon Kaopuiki, vice president for enrollment and marketing, this jump is the result of aggressive marketing strategies and campus support. “The success we had in our admissions recruitments this year is really about a collective university effort,” he said. “We started saying last year that enrollment is everybody’s … [Read more...]
Nine new faculty join university
Amidst a sea of faces flocking to campus this fall, there are nine faculty members likely feeling freshman flutters all over again. Over the summer, AU finalized the hiring of new faculty for the 2018-19 school year. The flutters they’re feeling? According to the new professors, they’re eager, and maybe a little nervous, to get into the classroom. “I am most anxious and most excited about meeting all of my students,” said Earlene Masi, assistant professor of exercise science. “I hope that … [Read more...]
Realizing you’ve lost your way
College is both beautiful and destructive, simultaneously formative and calamitous. I realized recently that college has been damaging me. I have five tattoos, and three of them are strings of words that have impacted my life so strongly that I declared them worthy of staining my skin forever. The first of these is a gentle request: “may my soul resist the rush.” The second, lyrics to my favorite Billy Joel song, reminds me that it’s okay to live in the here and now: “Vienna waits for … [Read more...]
Q & A with Liz Ranfeld
Professor Liz Ranfeld has taught in the English Department at AU since 2011. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from Taylor University and a master’s in creative nonfiction from the University of New Hampshire. She, her husband and their two children live in Albany; in her free time, Ranfeld enjoys traveling, gardening and reading. When did you realize that you wanted to be a writer? In kindergarten, even before then, I was stapling together construction paper into a book. And I … [Read more...]
First-year enrollment expected to surpass 500 this August
In the coming fall semester, AU is projecting at least a 23 percent increase in first-year enrollment compared to the 2017-2018 academic year. Enrollment in August 2017 included 406 first-year students, and according to Vice President for Enrollment and Marketing Ryon Kaopuiki, current projections estimate at least 500 new students will take to campus this August. “Our goal is to get to 550, which is a very aggressive goal—probably unheard of aggressive,” Kaopuiki said. “We’re pushing … [Read more...]
Jim Ragsdale settles in as VP for Finance
When newly-appointed Vice President for Finance Jim Ragsdale was but a student at Anderson College in the early 1980s, he had no idea where his life would take him. “Graduate school looked like it was going to be next, but I ended up never leaving Anderson,” he said. “I stayed.” Ragsdale began work as VP for finance on March 12, the Monday of spring break. “It was a great time to come into the community with a little less pressure,” he said. After working in his last job for more … [Read more...]
Arts and worship collide during Vision Revision week
It’s Vision Revision week on AU’s campus. Vision Revision, which has been part of AU’s spiritual life since at least 1980, is “an intentional week to focus on faith through the arts,” said Becca Palmer, director of spiritual formation. This year, Vision Revision planning has been led by senior family science major Payton Lantz. Lantz said that she had “had no idea how much planning, collaborating, scheduling and emailing it would take in order to pull off a good service for … [Read more...]
Q &A with Allie Kolb
Allie Kolb is from Placentia, California. She enjoys running, going to the beach and trying new foods. Her first big adventure came when she traveled to Indiana to attend AU, and she is currently in the midst of a semester-long journey abroad in Christchurch, New Zealand, where she is studying at the University of Canterbury. She is blogging about her adventures at www.alliegoesabroad.weebly.com. What inspired you to want to study abroad? Studying abroad was always a secret dream of mine. … [Read more...]
Influenza cases increase on campus
Each year, the influenza virus kills thousands of people. In Indiana alone this season, 107 people have been confirmed to have lost their lives to the flu. To date this year, only two people under the age of 24 have died from the flu. Although AU’s Health Services could not confirm the number of cases that have been treated so far this semester, they did confirm via email that they have “seen an increase in the number of patients with flu-like symptoms.” According to Dr. Kimberly … [Read more...]