January 23 – Deborah Lew – Stories and Songs from the Broadway Stage – 12:30 p.m.

Calvin College January Series 2012 – Remote Live Webcast

Underwritten by Peregrin Financial Technologies, Portland, OR
Ms. Lew is an actress who played the role of Belle in “Beauty and the Beast” on Broadway and appeared in the Broadway revival of “The Threepenny Opera”.   Most recently, she was part of Bartlett Sher’s acclaimed revival of “South Pacific” at Lincoln Center.  Other off-Broadway shows include “Cinderella,” “Candide,” “Cupid and Psyche,” “No, No, Nanette,” “Up in the Air,” “West Side Story” as Maria, “Amour” as Isabelle,  “Les Miserables” as  Cosette, “Miss Saigon” as Kim,  “The King and I” as Tuptim, and “Myth” as Elizabeth. Deborah has been a concert soloist at Jazz at Lincoln Center and, nationally, with the Asian Americans on Broadway concerts.  She grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and is a Calvin College graduate from the class of 2000. Her father, a Christian Reformed minister, is the chaplain at Grand Rapids Community College and at the Kendall College of Art and Design, also in Grand Rapids. Her mother teaches American history and English at Grand Rapids Christian Middle School. She is married to Sean Farell.
 

Calvin College January Series 2012 – Remote Live Webcast

Underwritten by Miller Johnson
 Ralph Edmund was born into privilige in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. That is a rare thing indeed, but rarer still is the fact that Ralph, with opportunity to live in luxury in North America, has chosen to give his life in changing the country he loves for the better. After High School in Haiti, Ralph graduated magna cum laude from Baruch College in New York and returned to his native Haiti to develop a homegrown pharmaceutical company.
Farmatrix started with $2,000 in funding and 3 employees. At the time of the earthquake in 2010 the company had over 80 employees and grossed over $2 million. What is most remarkable about Ralph and his partner Alain Vincent is the way they do business. They determined from the beginning that they would not participate in the common Haitian practices of paying bribes, cheating on taxes, etc… As Christians, they would build their business “the right way.” The result has been remarkable.
However, being successful in Haiti carried with it some very real dangers. Gangs are rampant, and prey on people of means. Kidnapping, robberies, even murder are common occurrences. Ralph’s life has been in jeopardy numerous times. On one occasion, while stopped at a busy intersection, a man with a 9 mm gun ran toward his car and began firing. Four bullets went into the car, one almost hit his spine and his chaffeur was hit and almost killed. On different occasions both his sister and sister-in-law were kidnapped and held for ransom. Their families have since left Haiti, yet Ralph stays.
With Ernso Jean-Louis and Sylvie Theard, successful Christian entrepeneurs, Ralph established Haiti Partners for Christian Development, a branch of Partners Worldwide. Their goal is to connect rich and poor through mentoring partnerships. Ralph has worked in some of the toughest areas of Port-au-Prince, promoting dialogue between gang members, businesspeople and political leaders. He also spends time mentoring young entrepeneurs, amid the constant challenges.
When asked what keeps him in Haiti he responds, “I am building things… I have hope.” He also said, “I don’t want to run from the problem – I want to be part of resolving it. Even though I may have only 10 businesspeople who will stand with me, we will stand together as part of the solution for Haiti.”
Why would we call Ralph heroic? Because he willingly places himself at risk for the sake of creating positive change in his country. No-one would blame him for leaving; for finding safer environs and building a personal fortune. Even after the 2010 earthquake damaged his factory, Ralph chose to stay and has rebuilt. He has larger goals in mind. “My interest is the time we spend sharing our lives, so that we can build a community together. Then if that community becomes a healthy and strong country, that is up to God.” This is how God’s kingdom is built – one person at a time.
(Above story was taken from marshilltop.blogspot.com )

Calvin College January Series 2012 – Remote Live Webcast

Underwritten by the Peter C. and Emajean Cook Foundation
David Gergen is a senior political analyst for CNN and has served as an adviser to four U.S. presidents. He is a professor of public service at the Harvard Kennedy School and the director of its Center for Public Leadership.
In 2000, he published the best-selling book, Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton.
Gergen was born in Durham, North Carolina, where his father taught mathematics at Duke University. He graduated with honors from both Yale College (1963) and Harvard Law School (1967), and served as an officer in the U.S. Navy for nearly three and a half years, posted to a ship in Japan.
Gergen joined the Nixon White House in 1971, as a staff assistant on the speech writing team, a group of heavyweights that included Pat Buchanan, Ben Stein, and Bill Safire. Two years later, he took over as director. Gergen went on to become the Director of Communications for Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, a counselor on domestic and foreign affairs for Bill Clinton and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, and an adviser to the 1980 George H.W. Bush presidential campaign.
In his private life, Gergen works as a political journalist and analyst. He was the first managing editor of Public Opinion, a magazine affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, and from 1985-1986 he worked as an editor at U.S. News & World Report, where he remains an editor-at-large. Gergen’s career in television began in 1985, when he joined the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour for Friday night discussions of politics. Today, he appears frequently on CNN as an analyst for Anderson Cooper 360 and Situation Room.
Gergen joined the Harvard faculty in 1999. He is active as a speaker on leadership and sits on many boards, including Teach for America, the Aspen Institute, and Duke University, where he taught from 1995-1999. He is a member of the Washington D.C. Bar and the Council on Foreign Relations, and holds 18 honorary degrees.
Gergen lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife Anne, a family therapist. They have two children, Christopher and Katherine, and four grandchildren.

Calvin College January Series 2012 – Remote Live Webcast

Underwritten by Holland Litho Printing Services
Joel Salatin is a fulltime alternative farmer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.  He writes extensively for agriculture magazines and is a popular speaker who defends small farms, local food systems, and the right to opt out of the conventional food paradigm.  His family’s farm, Polyface Inc, has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, Gourmet, and countless other radio, television and print media.  Profiled on the Lives of the 21st Century series with Peter Jennings on ABC News, his after- broadcast chat room fielded more hits than any other segment to date.  The farm achieved iconic status as the grass farm featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma by food writer guru Michael Pollan and more recently the movie Food, Inc.

Calvin College January Series 2012 – Remote Live Webcast

Underwritten by Spectrum Health
Adam Russell Taylor is vice president of advocacy at World Vision, USA. He recently completed a yearlong fellowship at the White House, and he formerly served as the Senior Political Director at Sojourners, where he was responsible for leading the organization’s advocacy, coalition building and constituency outreach. He has also served as the executive director of Global Justice, an organization that educates and mobilizes students around global human rights and economic justice.
Before cofounding Global Justice, he worked as an associate at the Harvard University Carr Center for Human Rights and as an urban fellow in the Department of Housing Preservation and Development in New York City. Taylor is a graduate of Emory University, the Kennedy School of Government and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology. He is also an ordained minister who recides in Washington, D.C..

Calvin College January Series 2012 – Remote Live Webcast
Underwritten by Barnes & Thornburg
After graduating from college with a Classics degree, Jennifer wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. She is drawn to the Appalachian Trail, a 2175-mile footpath that stretches from Georgia to Maine. Though her friends think she’s crazy and her mom worries about her safety, she sets out alone to hike the trail, hoping it will give her time to think about what she wants to do next.
The next four months prove to be the most physically and emotionally challenging season of her life. She quickly discovers that thru-hiking is harder than she had imagined: coping with blisters and aching shoulders from the 30-pound pack she carries; sleeping on the hard wooden floors of trail shelters or trying to put up a tent in the dark; hiking through endless torrents of rain and even a blizzard.
With every step she takes, Jennifer transitions from an over-confident college graduate to a student of the trail. She learns that she is stronger than she thought she was as she braves situations she never imagined before her thru-hike. The trail is full of unexpected kindness, generosity, and humor. And when tragedy strikes, she learns that she can depend on other people to help her in times of need. Read more about her 2005 AT journey in her adventure memoir, Becoming Odyssa. It is a drama filled, laugh out loud, coming-of-age story that will be enjoyed by both hikers and non-hikers.
Jennifer’s on-trail adventures:
2005 – Appalachian Trail Thru-Hike
2006 – Kilimanjaro Summit, Africa
2006 – Pacific Crest Trail Thru-Hike and Fundraiser ($10,000)
2007 – Hike for Habitat Fundraiser ($10,000)
2007 – Machu Picchu and Cotahuasi Canyon, Peru
2007 – Women’s Long Trail Record (7 days, 15 hours)
2008 – Unsupported Bibbulmun Track Record, Austrailia
2008 – Women’s Supported Appalachian Trail Record (57 days and 8 hours – an average of 38 miles per day.)
2009 – Colorado Trail
2010 – Foothills Trail, GR20, Tour du Mont Blanc, Pembrokeshire Coastal Path, West Highland Way
2011 – Overall Appalachian Trail Record (46 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes – an average of 47 miles per day)
Jennifer has hiked over 11,000 miles of Long Distance Trails. She has trekked on 6 continents and currently holds endurance records on The Appalachian Trail, Long Trail and Bibbulmun Track.

Calvin College January Series 2012 – Remote Live Webcast
Underwritten by the Gary & Henrietta Byker Chair in Christian Perspectives
Michael Gerson is a nationally syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in the Washington Post. He is the author of Heroic Conservatism (HarperOne, 2007) and co-author of City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (Moody, 2010). Gerson serves as Senior Advisor at ONE, a bipartisan organization dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable diseases. He is the Hastert Fellow at the J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy at Wheaton College in Illinois. He serves on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience, the Board of Directors of Bread for the World, the Initiative for Global Development Leadership Council, and the Board of Directors of the International Rescue Committee. He is co-Chair of The Poverty Forum and Co-Chair of the Catholic/Evangelical Dialogue with Dr. Ron Sider. From 2006 to 2009, Gerson was the Roger Hertog Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Before joining CFR in 2006, Gerson was a top aide to President George W. Bush as Assistant to the President for Policy and Strategic Planning. He was a key administration advocate for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), the fight against global sex trafficking, and funding for women’s justice and empowerment issues. Prior to that appointment, he served in the White House as Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Speechwriting and Assistant to the President for Speechwriting and Policy Advisor. Gerson joined Bush’s presidential campaign in early 1999 as chief speechwriter and a senior policy adviser.
He was previously a senior editor covering politics at U.S. News and World Report. Gerson was a speechwriter and policy adviser for Jack Kemp and a speechwriter for Bob Dole during the 1996 presidential campaign. He has also served Senator Dan Coats of Indiana as Policy Director. Gerson is a graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois. He grew up in the St. Louis area and now lives with his wife and sons in northern Virginia.

Calvin College January Series 2012 – Remote Live Webcast
Underwritten by The Christian Reformed Church in North America
Gabe Lyons is the author of The Next Christians: The Good News About the End of Christian America and the founder of Q—a learning community that mobilizes Christians to advance the common good in society. Additionally, he is the co-author of UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity and Why It Matters, a bestselling book based on original research that revealed the pervasiveness of pop culture’s negative perceptions of Christians. Prior to launching Q, Gabe co-founded Catalyst, a national gathering of young leaders. His work represents the perspectives of a new generation of Christians and has been featured by CNN, The New York Times, Fox News and USA Today. Gabe, his wife Rebekah, and their three children reside in Manhattan, New York.
This lecture will be broadcast via webcast at the Dogwood Center from 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.  Admission is free.

Calvin College January Series 2012 – Remote Live Webcast

Underwritten by GMB Architects + Engineers
Pedro Noguera is the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University.  Noguera is an urban sociologist whose scholarship and research focuses on the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions in the urban environment.  He holds faculty appointments in the departments of Teaching and Learning and Humanities and Social Sciences at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Development, as well as in the Department of Sociology at New York University.  Dr. Noguera is also the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and the co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Globalization and Education in Metropolitan Settings (IGEMS).  In 2008, he was appointed by the Governor of New York to serve on the State University of New York Board of Trustees.
Dr. Noguera received his bachelors’ degree in Sociology and History and a teaching credential from Brown University in 1981.  He earned his masters’ degree in Sociology from Brown in 1982 received his doctorate in Sociology from UC Berkeley in 1989.  Dr.  Noguera was a classroom teacher in public schools in Providence, RI and Oakland, CA.  He has held tenured faculty appoints at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (2000-2003), where he was named the Judith K. Dimon Professor of Communities and Schools and at the University of California, Berkeley (1990-2000), where he was also the Director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change.  He has published over one hundred and fifty research articles, monographs and research reports on topics such as urban school reform, conditions that promote student achievement, youth violence, the potential impact of school choice and vouchers on urban public schools, and race and ethnic relations in American society.  His work has appeared in multiple major research journals.  Dr. Noguera is the author of The Imperatives of Power: Political Change and the Social Basis of Regime Support in Grenada (Peter Lang Publishers, 1997), City Schools and the American Dream  (Teachers College Press 2003), Unfinished Business: Closing the Achievement Gap in Our Nation’s Schools (Josey Bass, 2006) City Kids, City Teachers, with Bill Ayers and Greg Michie (New Press 2008), and The Trouble With Black Boys…and Other Reflections on Race, Equity and the Future of Public Education (Wiley and Sons, 2008).  Dr. Noguera appears as a regular commentator on educational issues on CNN, National Public Radio, and other national news outlets.
Awards:

• 1997 Wellness Foundation Award for research on youth violence
• 1997 University of California’s Distinguished Teaching Award
• 2001 Honorary doctorate from the University of San Francisco
• 2001 Centennial Medal, Philadelphia University
• 2003 Forward Magazine Gold Award (City Schools and the American Dream)
• 2003 AESA Critics Choice Book Award (City Schools and the American Dream)
• 2005 Whitney Young Award for Leadership in Education
• 2006 Eugene Carrothers Award for Public Service
• 2008 Schott Foundation Award for Research on Race and Gender
• 2008 AESA Critics Choice Book Award (Trouble With Black Boys – Josey Bass 2008)
• 20098 Scholastic Corporation Education Hero Award

This lecture will be broadcast via webcast at the Dogwood Center from 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.  Admission is free.