Campus Corner

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Asbury Seminary Celebrates 100 Years

On Wednesday, April 19, Asbury University held an outdoor joint worship service with Asbury Theological Seminary as part of the seminary’s Centennial Celebration. The service commemorated H.C. Morrison’s founding of Asbury Seminary while he was still president of then Asbury College. Asbury Seminary President Dr. Timothy Tennent and Asbury University President Dr. Kevin Brown spoke at the service and Bristol House, a collective of young worship leaders in the Wesleyan tradition, led worship.

Dr. Brown presented Dr. Tennent with a historic photo of H.C. Morrison during the seminary’s Centennial Celebration.

Later that evening, a worship and prayer service led by Bristol House was held in the university’s Hughes Auditorium. For more information, visit asburyseminary.edu.

AsburyGives Helps Fund Scholarships

Asbury celebrated its inaugural AsburyGives day in April. Giving focused on Scholarships, Honors Program, Choral Room Renovation, Academic Programs, Reunion Gift 2023, Outdoor Venue, Athletics, Set Apart Retreat and Other.

Thanks to the generosity of donors, alumni, students and parents, alike, a total of $287,624 was raised from 446 donors. All of the funds directly benefit Asbury and its current and future students. To learn more, visit asbury.edu/give.

Math Professor Receives NASA Kentucky Grant to Encourage STEM Learning

Professor of mathematics Dr. Duk Lee received a NASA Kentucky Space Grant for a series of aeronautic workshops for elementary, middle, and high school students and teachers in April and May. “Flying Activities with Walkalong Gliders, Paper Planes, and Tumble-wings” were held in the Luce Auditorium in the Shaw Collaborative Learning Center. Lee, who began teaching at Asbury in 2001, received his master’s degree and Ph.D. in mathematics from Arizona State University. He serves as the chair of the Kentucky Section of the Mathematical Association of America (KYMAA) and as president of the Kentucky chapter of Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association.

Famous Multimedia Journalists Visit Campus

The Asbury Journalism Department welcomed two renowned journalists in the spring, Cal Thomas and Deroy Murdock. They discussed news reporting, working in the industry as a Christian, and shared memories from their seasoned experience in the media industry. Thomas was a Fox News regular, a writer for USA Today, and has become one of the most widely syndicated columnists in the country.

New York-based political commentator Murdock gave students an inside glimpse into the media world. Murdock is a Fox News contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, a former Media Fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow with the Atlas Network. his weekly column — “This Opinion Just In…” — appears in the New York Post, The Dallas Morning News, The New Hampshire Union Leader, and other newspapers across America.

Art Department Showcases Seniors

Throughout the spring semester, senior art students displayed their talents. Art and Design senior Caitlin Donner ’23 shared her artistic perspective with a black and white image collection, Immersion, which featured water-inspired images displaying the spiritual and physical dimensions of water.

Asbury Theatre Performs Doubt: A Parable

Theatre students performed another challenging, relevant drama in the Greathouse Theatre in late February. The immersive story follows Catholic School Principal Sister Aloysius who suspects an inappropriate relationship between parish priest Father Flynn and a young student, but is Flynn as clearly guilty as Sister Aloysius believes him to be? Along with the audience, the cast was challenged to work through the themes of the story. “Doubt definitely touches on some sensitive subjects, but it ultimately shows the difficulty of obtaining truth, and the consequences people may face as a result of their actions,” said senior theatre student Andrew Cox ’23.

Communication Arts Celebrates Highbridge Weekend

On Saturday, April 13, Asbury’s School Communication Arts dedicated the John DeCuir Production Design Study Center, named after renowned Hollywood art director and production designer John DeCuir Sr. in the Andrew S. Miller Center for Communication Arts.

Film production designer John DeCuir Jr. attended the event, autographed prints and presented Asbury with an Oscar award from The King & I. Additionally, DeCuir Jr. served as a judge for the Highbridge Film Festival (HBFF) at 7 p.m. that evening.

The John DeCuir Collection is part of the Asbury University Production Design Studies Center that features thousands of Hollywood production designs, sketches and storyboards from films dating from the 1930s to present.

The department later hosted a successful HBFF in Hughes Auditorium, showcasing the work of talented young film creators. Taking the award for Best Picture was ‘TOAST.’

The weekend also was punctuated by the first awarding of the Blake and Shannon Bailey Senior Storytelling Project to Ian Wang ’24. The Bailey Senior Storytelling Project — named in honor of donors Blake and Shannon Czaplinski ’92 Bailey — awards $5,000 to one junior Communication Arts major for the production of a film project their senior year.

Asbury Hosts Speakers on Biblical Literacy in Relation to Tradition and Culture

During March and April, Asbury University hosted two academics whose research interests surround biblical literacy in relation to tradition and culture: Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson and Dr. Karen Swallow Prior. Wilson spoke at the annual SEARCH Symposium, and Prior spoke at the Honors Program Colloquium Speaker Series. Both authors shared about their upcoming books, namely Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice (Wilson) and The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (Prior).

Wilson serves as the inaugural Seaver College Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University, and Prior most recently served as the Research Professor of English and Christianity and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Wilson shared about her book which conveys ways in which Christians can grow in their faith journeys.

Prior articulated the significant role language plays in daily life.

“Words, language, and literature are connected to real life: the ways that we think, communicate, and live,” Prior said. “Literature teaches us how to think better and live better, how to ask better questions, and how to live more faithfully.”