Cole Allee – The Hilltop Monitor

Katheryne Baker accepted to four graduate programs for vocal performance

Cole Allee — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 13:00:51 +0000

William Jewell College senior Katheryne Baker, vocal performance major, has been accepted into all four graduate programs for which she auditioned. Baker was offered auditions at The Boston Conservatory, University of Missouri – Kansas City Conservatory, University of Colorado Boulder, Westminster Choir College at Rider University and Florida State University (FSU). Baker decided not to audition at FSU due to a change in faculty.

Baker explained the audition process as “dual-step.” First, a student must apply and be accepted to the university itself, and then he or she may apply to the music department. Baker said this supplemental application was the difficult part, due to the varying requirements among schools. What every school did require was a formal video submission of Baker, and her accompanist, performing about 20 minutes of music.

“It’s super hard, because you can’t edit your recording, so they have to be nearly perfect in one take,” said Baker.

The specific requirements for the repertoire sung in these videos varied among schools, but in general, Baker said that within 20 minutes of singing, her music had to represent four languages, three musical eras and specific types of song requirements, meaning arts songs and arias.

After Baker submitted her videos, she was accepted to five schools for live auditions, which consisted of 15 minutes of singing. This acted as an audition both for the school and for scholarships.

“You get no feedback about any of the music. You just either get accepted or declined. It’s pretty cutthroat,” said Baker.

Baker has not decided which school she will attend next year but has until April 15th to do so. She knows she will be continuing her study of vocal performance and emphasizing in opera studies. Baker says she plans audition for professional opera companies after receiving her graduate degree.

“My future goals don’t involve settling down; in fact, just the opposite. My dream is to travel the world singing opera,” said Baker.

AFE: The Mcdonald’s Commercial: Redone

Cole Allee — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 13:00:10 +0000

The original, 2010.

The Hilltop Monitor Version, 2016.

Libraries and research facilities near Jewell

Cole Allee — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 14:00:41 +0000

Many classes at William Jewell College require students to conduct research. The online and physical resources provided through Curry Library are a great place to start, but there are some places Jewell students may not have thought to look for their research.

Kansas City Public Library – Central Library

Central Library, the main branch of the Kansas City Public library, is located at 14 West 10th Street in Kansas City, Mo. It is open Monday through Wednesday 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., Thursday and Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1-5 p.m. Parking is free on the weekends and on weekdays for the first hour with validation from library staff. After that hour, parking is $1 for every 20 minutes before 5 p.m. and $2 after 5 p.m. with a maximum charge of $8 per day.

Features of Central Library include a total of 66 computers for various age groups, four study rooms, four meeting rooms, six special event spaces and the Missouri Valley Room.

The Missouri Valley Room is an archive that “provides historians and genealogists with a unique setting in which to conduct research.” There are three collections of resources held in the Missouri Valley Room: the Missouri Valley Collection on local history, the Ramos Collection on African American history and materials on Western expansion. For more information on this archive, visit its page on the Kansas City Public Library website or call 816-701-3427.

Central Library is open to the general public, but to access computers, check out materials and access certain areas of the library you must apply in person for a traditional library card at one of the many branches of the Kansas City Public Library. You must be a current resident of Missouri or Kansas to apply for a traditional library card. If you are a resident of the Kansas City metropolitan area, you can apply online for an eCard, which will only grant you access to the library’s digital collections.

For more information on Kansas City Public Library as a whole, visit its website or call 816-701-3400.

The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum

Some people may not be aware that one of the 13 presidential libraries currently in existence is located in the Kansas City area. The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum specializes in American politics and history in the Truman era or simply President Truman himself. The library and museum are located at 500 W. U.S. Highway 24 in Independence, Mo., just 20 minutes from Jewell’s campus. The library and museum are open Monday through Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 12-5 p.m., and is closed on New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.

While the Truman library and museum are open to the general public. Admission is not free.The fee is $8 for adults, $7 for seniors, $3 for children six to 15, and free for children five years and under. Once you have paid you will gain access to the library as well as all the museum’s temporary and permanent exhibits and attractions.

Any person who is at least 14 years or older, or is accompanied by a person who is 14 years of older, can access over 99 percent of the library’s vast archives. According to the Truman Library Institute, the resources held by the library and museum combined include “15,000,000 pages of manuscript materials, 100,000 still pictures, over 500 hours of disc and tape recordings, 400 motion pictures, approximately 500 oral histories, 75 hours of videotape recordings, 30,000 books, 10,000 periodicals and 1,400 microfilm copies of printed materials” as well as approximately 30,000 objects associated with President Truman including 1,300 letters between him and his wife. Researchers can access this material in one of the library’s research rooms, which are open Monday through Friday 8:45 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. and closed on all federal holidays. It is highly encouraged for you to inform the library staff that you wish to use a research room prior to your arrival. You can do so by calling 816-268-8200 or sending an email to truman.library@nara.gov.

For more information visit The Harry S. Truman Library and Museum website.

The Clay County Archives and Historical Library

For those looking for primary sources regarding Liberty or Clay County, the Clay County Archives and Historical Library may be useful. Located just several blocks east of campus at 210 E Franklin, the Clay County Archives are open Monday through Wednesday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6:30–9 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month. It is closed on holidays and the entire week of Christmas.

Research can be conducted on-site or through correspondence. On-site research is free for members of the archives and is $5 daily for non-members. If you are interested in becoming a member of the archives, you can apply to do so online. The cost of the membership is $15 annually.

The mission of the archives is “procure, preserve, restore, maintain, study, and promote manuscripts, instruments, records, charters, evidence, and documents of a public or private nature which may have statistical, legal or historical significance to Clay County, Mo., its government or residents, or such documents as might be desirable to the association and to encourage public interest therein.” Their collection of material includes birth and death records, census records, circuit court records, county court records, tax lists, deeds, maps and atlases, resources on black history and much more.

For more information visit the Clay County Archives and Historical Library website or call 816-781-3611.

Meet the Department: Religion and Culture

Cole Allee — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 16:00:11 +0000

Critical Thought and Inquiry (CTI) classes allow students to learn subjects outside of their major and get to know professors in other departments. However, you take only one class in each of the CTI categories, so there are some faculty you may not know. This is the second part of a series of articles highlighting different departments on campus so one can become familiar with the faculty at William Jewell College.

Dr. Brad Chance

Chance is the head of the religion department. He received his bachelor of arts from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, his master of divinity fromSoutheastern Baptist Theological Seminary and his doctor of philosophy in religious studies from Duke University. Chance’s area of expertise is in Christian origins, primarily in the books of Luke and Acts. He is also very interested in how religion and culture work together.

“I’m very interested in how religion works socially and particularly the kind of social cultural environment that religion can create to then influence and shape people within that environment,” said Chance.

Chance said that he loves that Jewell is “an interdisciplinary exploration of our ideas.” He also thinks that the caliber of students at Jewell gives him the opportunity to present them with some challenging curriculum and some challenging texts. He likes his colleagues and enjoys Jewell’s environment.

Chance’s favorite class to teach is CTI 238/REL 270 Religion in the Modern Age, because it has the “deepest roots.” The course was once called Religion and Meaning and has been through many changes. He sees this class as important because he believes that one cannot discuss most major issues in today’s world without talking about religion.

“Religion is everywhere whether people like it or not,” said Chance.

Dr. Milton P. Horne

Horne received his bachelor of arts from the University of Missouri, Columbia, his master of divinity from Midwestern Theological Seminary and his doctor of philosophy in theology from Oxford University. His area of expertise is the Hebrew Bible, more specifically the wisdom texts, including the apocryphal books of Ecclesiastics and Wisdom of Solomon.

While Horne is still very interested in the wisdom texts, he finds that he has also become interested in economics’ influence on religion.

“I think economics and religion, for instance, dovetail a lot more than people are aware of,” said Horne.

Like Chance, Horne enjoys the interdisciplinary environment that Jewell creates as well as its students. He also likes the size, because it is a close community.

“They like that kind of close conversation, they like to work with professors, they like interesting research ideas, they like co-curricular activities where you’re talking about the applications of what you might be talking about in the classroom,” said Horne.

He doesn’t have a favorite class, but the three he enjoys the most are CTI 239/REL 272 Judaism, Christianity and Islam, CTI 236/REL 275 Science, Magic and Religion; and CTI 407 The Economics of Well-Being. He likes these three classes for different reasons, but he sees students engage in these classes in a way that he doesn’t see in others.

Dr. Brendon C. Benz

Benz has his bachelor of arts from Taylor University, his master of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and his doctor of philosophy in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East from the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. His area of expertise is the Hebrew Bible and context, specifically the history of the Ancient Southern Levant and the history of the Ancient Near East as a whole.

Benz said that he’s still working with the topic of his dissertation. In fact, the first book that will come from his dissertation is in the final stages of publication. However, he has become more interested in what he refers to as “a hermetic of relationship,” which means reading the Bible in a way that influences the way an individual forms relationships with others.

Similar to Chance and Horne, Benz likes Jewell because the students’ ability to engage in study in a close and critical way. He also likes that, while Jewell doesn’t reject its history of religious affiliation, it is not defined by that history.

“You can teach the Bible in a critical way and there’s no party line that has to be held and so in that way as opposed to many institutions that I have been affiliated with or know about it is an institution of higher learning,” said Benz.

Benz says his favorite class to teach is REL 110 Introduction to the Bible, because the students are able to suspend their own judgments and embrace new ideas in a way that “really blows their world open.”

“I also like Christianity and Tyranny because at the core of that class is promoting healthy relationship and it’s something that goes beyond knowledge,” said Benz.