Hendrix Alumni Blogazine

Inspired by a public lecture at Hendrix College given by Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, Hendrix professor Jay McDaniel has written a new book to help readers learn about world religions as a way to find both personal and world peace. 

The 160-page book, Gandhi’s Hope: Learning from World Religions as a Path to Peace, is published by Orbis Press and is available at most bookstores and at Amazon.com for $15.          

“Whether we are Christians or Jews, Muslims or Hindus, Buddhists or Sikh, we face five serious challenges,” said McDaniel, author of several books on religion and ecology. “These challenges are to live compassionately, to live self-critically, to live simply, to live ecologically and to welcome religious diversity.”  

Gandhi’s Hope treats all of the challenges, but is aimed specifically at helping spiritually interested readers respond to the last challenge of welcoming religious diversity. Guided by a form of philosophy called process philosophy, McDaniel shows how people from different religions can cultivate a culture of peace by learning from the various world religions, even as they remain rooted in their own.       

“Each religion contains truth relevant to a flourishing of life,” McDaniel said, “while no religion contains all the truth, which is always more than any individuals or communities experience.” In this sense, McDaniel said, the book follows Gandhi who believed that the heart of religion lies in seeking truth in companionship with others, not in claiming to have all the truth.   

McDaniel, who holds a doctorate degree from Claremont School of Theology, said the book emerged out of his 20 years of teaching world religions at Hendrix.                  

The professor hopes that the book is helpful to individual readers and also to groups of readers who are engaged in a study of the religions in the context of a college classroom or a community of faith.     

A member of the First United Methodist Church in Conway and an oblate at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery in Erie, Pa., McDaniel is involved in inter-religious dialogue, especially Christian-Buddhist dialogue. His other books have included With Roots and Wings: Christianity in an Age of Ecology and Dialogue; Living from the Center; Spirituality in an Age of Consumerism; Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life; and Earth, Sky, Gods, and Mortals: Developing an Ecological Spirituality.         

It’s easy to speak in superlatives when talking about Lucile Esmon Shivley ’32.  She makes phrases like contagious enthusiasm, inspiring role model and a joyful giver come to mind.

 A loyal supporter of Hendrix College since 1950, Mrs. Shivley is known for the engaging
spirit of her philanthropy. She looks at her donations to Hendrix as an investment in the future – a point she made again on May 17 when she accepted the Stanley S. Kresge Award at a banquet in her honor on the Hendrix campus.

The Kresge Award is given annually by the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation. The Foundation established the award in 1987 to honor “a United Methodist who embodies two important characteristics of the late Staley S. Kresge: dedicated membership in The United Methodist Church and unselfish support of United Methodist Higher Education.”

President J. Timothy Cloyd nominated Mrs. Shivley for the honor, noting that “She has supported her alma mater with not just her financial gifts, but also with her enthusiasm and joyful presence. She has used her gifts to help build a culture of philanthropy at Hendrix.”

About 100 of her admirers gathered in Hulen Ballroom for the tribute to Mrs. Shivley. Dr. Thomas Sidney Yow III, president and CEO of the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation, traveled to Hendrix to present the award. The award includes a medallion, a framed certificate and a $10,000 gift to the College’s endowment to establish a scholarship in Mrs. Shivley’s honor.

“I knew we’d made the right decision,” Dr. Yow said, “when we signed the scholarship agreement and Mrs. Shivley said, ‘That’s one more we can help.’

Her belief in the life-changing power of a liberal arts education is what drives Mrs. Shivley’s philanthropy. She sees her gifts not only changing the lives of those individuals who receive scholarships and grants with the dollars she has given, but also benefiting all those who come in contact with future Hendrix graduates. This ripple effect multiplies the impact of every gift.

Over the years, she and her late husband Charles have given Hendrix more than $1 million, most of it in the form of challenge grants encouraging others to join her in giving. Most recently, she has established the Lucile Esmon Shivley Fund for Global Service in support of the Odyssey program. Her gift will provide funding for student projects that incorporate service learning into international travel or study aboard experiences.

In addition to her support of Hendrix. Mrs. Shivley has been a lifelong Methodist. At 93, she still occasionally teaches Sunday School at Highland Valley United Methodist Church in Little Rock, where she has been a member for nearly 20 years, and volunteers at Camp Aldersgate, a United Methodist campus near Little Rock. Her pastor, Dr. Kurt Boggan, gave the invocation at the Kresge Award banquet.

Other speakers included Bishop Charles N. Crutchfield, bishop of the Arkansas Area of the United Methodist Church; Mitchell Boone ’07, a Rockwall, Texas, a United Methodist Youth Fellowship Scholar and student pastor of Springfield United Methodist Church; Kelly Simon ’97 of Little Rock who responded to Mrs. Shivley’s most recent challenge grant to increase membership in the Young President’s Club; and President Cloyd. Rock Jones ’80, executive vice president for Advancement, was master of ceremonies for the evening.

Hendrix College broke ground on May 6 on a 100,000-square foot Wellness and Athletics Center that is expected to open in 2007.

Total cost for the new center and for surrounding playing fields will be approximately $18 million. New fields for competitive and intramural sports will be built for sports including baseball, softball, track and field, soccer, tennis, lacrosse and field hockey.

Hendrix President J. Timothy Cloyd detailed the plans at a groundbreaking ceremony on the site of the future Wellness and Athletics Center, which is on the north corner of Harkrider and Siebenmorgen streets.

The center and the athletic fields will span the length of Siebenmorgen from Harkrider almost to I-40.  Kirchner Architecture of Little Rock is project architect, and SportsPLAN Studio of Kansas City, Mo., is facility designer.

“The focus of all fitness and athletic programs at Hendrix, as well as other liberal arts colleges, is to cultivate the student as a whole person,” said Cloyd.  “This state-of-the-art center will offer students and the campus community more space and better facilities for their total development.”

Cloyd said he is grateful to those who have already provided financial support for the Wellness and Athletics Center, including the Mabee Foundation which issued a $2 million challenge grant last November for the project.

Hendrix Board of Trustees Chair R. Madison Murphy ’80 said the center is an investment in the future for the college. “Hendrix has already claimed a national leadership position in higher education, and the new Wellness and Athletics Center marks a further commitment by the college to enhancing the value of academics and campus life for our students.”

The Wellness and Athletics Center will include a competition gymnasium for basketball and volleyball; a recreational gymnasium with two full courts for intramural programs; an aquatic center for competitive and recreational swimming and diving; a fitness center; an exercise studio; a kinesiology lab and classrooms; a rock-climbing wall; locker rooms, and staff offices.

The center will be built on the property currently occupied by the soccer field, which is being relocated east of the center off Siebenmorgen Street. Construction of the soccer field has begun and will be completed in time for this fall’s soccer season.

The Wellness and Athletics Center, which will replace Grove Gymnasium built in 1961 when student enrollment was about half of what it is today, will be positioned facing the campus on the center line to Hendrix’s main campus entrance on Harkrider Street. The property site for the center will need to be raised about six feet to align with the campus entrance.

The college currently has 17 athletic teams that include men’s and women’s programs.  More than 20 percent of Hendrix students participate in non-scholarship NCAA Division III sports, and more than 60 percent of the students participate in one or more intramural sports programs.

By Judy Williams
Director of Media Relations

It comes as no big surprise that Jay Barth ’87 includes Hendrix students in the acknowledgments of his latest book, Arkansas Politics and Government.

A winner of four different Hendrix senior classes’ Faculty Appreciation Award, the politics professor is a master at weaving students into all aspects of his work.

“I cannot thank enough the students at Hendrix College who have brought such joy to my professional and personal life through their enthusiasm for the study of politics and for their deep civility and kindness to me,” writes Dr. Barth. “The academic skill of the students with whom I have had the opportunity to work in my life as a professor is evidenced by the fact that several works written by them are cited in this book.”

Arkansas Politics and Government is the second edition of a book written by the late Diane D. Blair, a prominent professor of political science at the University of Arkansas who died of cancer in 2000 soon after beginning the revision. The newest edition, co-authored by Barth and released in April, discusses the shifts in Arkansas politics and government.

Barth also credits Grant Cox ’02 with providing important research assistance on the book, which is available most Arkansas bookstores, the Hendrix bookstore and from the publisher, University of Nebraska Press, www.nebraskapress.unl.edu.

Numerous book signings, including a reception on June 13 in the Georgetown home of Jonathan Rhodes ’98, the Hendrix alumni representative for Washington, D.C., have connected Dr. Barth with Hendrix alumni, colleagues and friends and have given him a platform to talk about his passion, Arkansas and Southern politics.

The book’s publication has also attracted media attention to Barth and Hendrix, including the cover article of the May 22 High Profile section in The Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

Barth used the book as a textbook this past semester for an Arkansas Politics Seminar. In addition to the class work, the 15 seminar students got practical experience working at a variety of political and governmental jobs, including the attorney general’s office, the American Civil Liberties Union, Arkansas Advocates and the Democratic House.

“A lot of political scientists tell themselves they shouldn’t get involved outside the academic arena because it threatens their objectivity,” said Barth in the High Profile article. “I think I’ve been able to achieve engagement in things I care about without losing my objectivity. What I hope to show my students is that you learn a lot from being in the public arena, but that you also have the responsibility to maintain that objective distance.”

The newest edition builds on Blair’s work which highlighted both the decades of failure by Arkansas’ government to live up to the state’s motto of Regnat Populus (“The People Rule”) and the positive trends of democracy. The book chronicles the development over the past 15 years – the two-term U.S. presidency of native son Bill Clinton, the retirement of players who defined the state’s politics in the nation’s most extreme legislative term limits, the complete overhaul of the state’s court system and the declaration that the state’s public education system was unconstitutionally inadequate and inequitable.

Barth, a central Arkansas native and a leading analyst, author and academic authority on the politics of Arkansas and the South, is a magna cum laude Hendrix graduate in American studies. He received a master’s degree in 1989 and a doctorate degree in 1994 in political science from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

His public affairs interest led him to a 1989 internship for Clinton in the governor’s office and to paid work in Clinton’s 1990 gubernatorial campaign. In 1992, he was a precinct captain in Orange County, N.C., for Clinton’s first White House race.

Barth has been a member of the Hendrix faculty since 1994 and is a member of the Inaugural Faculty of the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service. He chairs the Hendrix Odyssey Task Force which has helped developed the new curricular program, Your Hendrix Odyssey: Engaging in Active Learning.

He currently serves on the board of directors for the National Council on Community and Justice and is a national board representative for the American Civil Liberties Union.

By Judy Williams
Director of Media Relations

Ten students from Hendrix are forging new territory while on a study tour this summer in East Asia.This is the first time Hendrix has sponsored a student tour to East Asia, and it is the first time American students have studied at Heilongjiang University in Harbin, an industrial city that has historical ties to former Eastern Bloc nations.

The entourage left Little Rock July 3 for a 15-day tour known as "The China Odyssey." Hendrix Professor Jay McDaniel is leading the tour, which begins in Beijing. For their first four days, students will tour the Great Wall and visit the Forbidden City, a Taoist temple and a Buddhist monastery.  They will also meet with students from Beijing Normal University, which is a teaching college. 

From Beijing, they will take an overnight train ride to Harbin where they will stay in apartments provided by Heilongjiang University.  Hendrix and Chinese students will participate in a four-day morning course, "Process Thought and Chinese Thought in an Age of Globalization," which Dr. McDaniel will teach at the university.  In class, students will study and discuss process thought, higher education and globalization.  Dr. McDaniel expects 200 Chinese students to participate in the class, which will use four common texts, each of which is in English and Chinese.

During the rest of their 10-day stay in Harbin, students will visit with religious and cultural leaders, learn about sports and music in China, meet with local entrepreneurs, and take a two-day tour of Inner Mongolia. Their Harbin hosts will be Professor Li, a faculty member at Heilongjian and editor of the well-known journal Qui Shi (Seeking Truth), and Guo Sheng Tie, one of Li's assistants.

The trip is sponsored by the Steel Center for the Study of Religion and Philosophy and the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Hendrix.

Student participants include three Arkansans, Zach Beal of Conway, Emily Morgan of Cabot, and Josh Wilson of El Dorado; four Texans, Mitchell Boone of Rockwall, Ingrid Geisler of Dallas, Katie Howard of Denton and Laura McKain of Pleasanton; Robin Bischol of Bloomfield, Mo.; Dana DeMilt of Bartlett, Tenn.; and Elise Stangle of Athens, Ga.

The China Odyssey is the brainchild of McDaniel, who has taught world religions for the past 20 years at Hendrix and is a process theologian. Last year, he was invited to Harbin to participate in a conference on Process Thought and Cultural Thought in China. McDaniel gave a public lecture on ecology and process thought and met the president of the Heilongjan University. The seed was planted for the summer tour.

The China Odyssey title refers to the fact that China, the oldest living civilization, is on a journey or odyssey into the future, which now involves an intensive dialogue with the West. It also refers to the journey the students are taking.

McDaniel said the study tour is an important experience for Hendrix students because China is becoming a key player in world history and in world economy.

"Increasingly we realize that China, the world's oldest and most enduring civilization, is ascending to the position of a world power. The 21^st century will be, in many ways, the China century," he said. "I am taking students from Hendrix to see the future."

Still, the primary purpose for the trip involves friendships, the professor said. "Our aim is to make friends and meet people," he said. "Most importantly, we want to take students to meet other students, to see how they think, and to return with possibilities for continued interchange vis-à-vis discussions that transpire with help from the Internet.  Meanwhile, each student also has much to learn in terms of personal interests."

Ingrid Geisler, a Hendrix biology major who plans to become a veterinarian, said she hopes to explore traditional Chinese medicine while on the trip, along with learning about the culture and religion.

"I am particularly interested in Taoism and Taoist healing," she said. "Continuing my study of the Chinese language will also be an important part of being in China."

Hendrix senior Emily Morgan said she is interested in learning about what it's like to be a college student in China and how that is different from America. "And I would love to visit a zoo!" she said.

Hendrix students have created a Web site for The China Odyssey www.chinaodyssey.org with more details about the tour, including a full course description, a profile of each student, a page published in Chinese for Chinese-speaking friends in China and other parts of the world and a forum for discussion.