Students showcase their creative skills at the annual business market

On Sept. 17, Grand Valley State University students gathered on the Kindschi lawn to put on display their art, jewelry and other creative skills. The Student Business Market invited 25 students this year to decorate their own tables and showcase their creative work.

The students were selling their hand-crafted items from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., garnering attention from people walking by. Every student had their own creative spin on their items.

Maisha Marriott, a freshman, sold handcrafted jewelry made by wire wrapping crystals and other small items into necklaces. She started making this jewelry when her grandmother handed down a lot of her vintage jewelry to her. She upcycled the pieces to give them a modern twist, which caught the attention of her friends and family and has been making jewelry ever since.

Read more of Clemence Daniere’s coverage of the Student Business Market here.

GV food gets rebrand with Laker Food Co

Laker Food Co., formerly Campus Dining, has recently been re-established as the brand new food service at Grand Valley State University.

Despite there being numerous bumps in the road with this corporation over the past two years such as poor feedback from students or the COVID-19 outbreak, the company has made efforts to turn it into a positive experience.

“Like most businesses, supply chain issues, labor shortages and reduced populations made for challenging operations,” said Deb Rambadt, Marketing Director of Laker Food Co. at GVSU.

To read more about Campus Dinings rebrand to Laker Food Co read Lea Gaetto’s coverage here.

GV Renaissance Festival brings students to the past

This past weekend Grand Valley State University held its yearly, and much anticipated, renaissance fair. The grassy area around the clock tower was overrun by tents and people who share their love for the event.

Merchants, entertainers and visitors gathered to immerse themselves in the renaissance era for just a few days. This event, which was held by the GVSU Renaissance Festival Club, was the 26th annual festival.

Throughout the club’s time, it has shrunk in size some years and grown in others, but the tradition of the festival has continued on despite attendance levels. This year, the club has about 20 active members, which allowed them to set up a sizable festival.

To read more on the coverage of this festival, read Clemence Daniere’s story here.

GV student broadens knowledge on healthcare in Italy

Many students choose to study abroad over the course of their time at Grand Valley State University. One student who took advantage of this opportunity is pre-physician assistant senior Lauren Carabio, who traveled to Milan last May for two weeks to shadow doctors in a hospital while being a part of a fellowship.

This fellowship, Doctors in Italy, was a program established in 2018 with the intent for students from all over the world to learn from medical professionals with a hands-on shadowing experience in fields such as surgery, medicine, orthopedics, cardiology, oncology, pediatrics, emergency medicine and more.

“Throughout the time that I was there, I was able to rotate amongst different specialties within the hospital,” Carabio said. “So I was assigned to emergency, ophthalmology, OBGYN and endocrinology.”

For a deeper look into Melia Williams coverage on GVSU students studying abroad in Italy, read here.

GV professor sends a poem to space

Patricia Clark, a professor emerita of writing at Grand Valley State University and former poet laureate of Grand Rapids from 2005-2007, is having one of her poems sent to the moon in a time capsule as part of the Lunar Codex project sent by NASA.

The time capsule is set to launch to the Moon’s Nobile Crater Nov. 2024. Clark said there were several editors for the project, each being assigned to particular continents so the program could include poems from around the world.

The poem being sent to the moon, which is available on her website, is titled “Astronomy in Perfect Silence,” as all poems in the time capsule had to be about the moon, the stars or the sun.

To read the full story on Patricia Clark’s poetry being sent to space, read Sabrina Rihtarshich’s coverage here.

GV hosts Last Lecture event on campus

Earlier this month, Grand Valley State University’s Student Senate held its annual Last Lecture event. This event gives professors an opportunity to talk about what inspired them to become a professor and continue their teaching careers at GVSU.

The event showcased the ever-changing human culture at universities and highlighted the relationship professors have with their students and their field of study. This year, the professors nominated were Michelle Miller-Adams and Melba Velez-Ortiz, accompanied by her guide dog, Professor Chad.

“Last Lecture is held at universities across the nation, inspired by a speech delivered in 2007 by a cancer-stricken Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch titled ‘The Last Lecture,’” said Lina Haas, vice president of educational affairs for the Student Senate. “It focused on celebrating the life he had always dreamed of instead of concentrating on death. He died at age 47, almost a year after giving the speech. This event is a student nominated event where professors give what would be their last lecture.”

To read more of Isabelle England’s coverage of this event series, read here.

GV organizations participate in Five Days of Service

With the help of over 20 community service organizations from both Grand Valley State University and surrounding communities, the Office of Student Life hosted its first “Five Days of Service” event from March 20-24. Each day was focused on its own theme.

“We wanted to produce an event that was accessible service,” said Bri Slager, assistant director of Student Life.

This week-long event gave students the opportunity to find out about and potentially join various organizations on campus.

“(It) provides an opportunity for students to learn about all the organizations that we partner with, as well as highlight all the student organizations that do a lot of really cool things,” said Philip Brzezinski, grad assistant for Civic Engagement.

For more on this story, read Melia William’s coverage here.

GV celebrates Trans Week of Visibility

This year, Grand Valley State University celebrated Trans Week of Visibility with several events aimed to raise awareness of the LGBTQ community. The week of events ended with the celebration of National Transgender Day of Visibility.

To start the week of events, the Milton E. Ford LGBTQ Resource Center hosted the “Femme Queen Chronicles,” a comedy series about the lives of three Black trans women navigating their lives in the city of Detroit. The movie screening was accompanied with a discussion with the film creator, Ahya Simone, followed by a feature harp performance from Simone.

The center’s mission is to advocate for institutional equity, promote community-building and provide educational opportunities. Further, they aim to create an informed and cohesive campus where community members of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities feel supported and welcomed.

For the whole story on Trans Week of Visibility, read Isabelle England’s coverage here.