Cedarville University

The largest graduating class in Cedarville University's 137-year history celebrated its academic accomplishments Saturday during the university's 128th commencement in the Doden Field House. This class of 995 graduates includes 846 undergraduate and 149 graduate students, representing a 4.6% increase from last year's class. Cedarville held two ceremonies to most effectively honor the graduates. The ceremony at 10 a.m. awarded degrees to undergraduate and graduate students in the schools of allied health, education, engineering and computer science, nursing, pharmacy, psychologyand social work. The afternoon ceremony at 2 pm presented degrees to graduates in the schools and departments of art, design, and theatre; biblical and theological studies; business; communication; English, literature and modern languages; history and government; interdisciplinary studies; music and worship; and science and mathematics. During the commencement programs, four students were highlighted for their accomplishments as they were presented with the President's Trophy, given annually to graduating seniors who have excelled in academics, leadership, service, and Christian character. President's Trophy Recipients

Taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, a Cedarville University student discovered her calling while sharing God's love with those who need it the most - individuals incarcerated in an area jail. Marissa Lykins, a junior from Cincinnati, Ohio, found her passion through prison ministry. Her experience from the jail ministry has not only positively impacted the lives of some inmates, but it's changed Lykins' passion for life. Lykins was in her freshman year when she joined the university jail ministry a campus organization that engages in ministry to the incarcerated. During her time with the ministry, she has experienced many opportunities to share the gospel with the inmates.

Washington D.C. is not an easy place for outsiders, but one Cedarville University student overcame the odds. Claudia Gemmel, a sophomore majoring in molecular biology, landed a spot in the fall 2023 D.C. semester and became an outlier among nine juniors and seniors majoring in history or government. Every fall, a select group of students spend the semester in Washington D.C. along with a professor from Cedarville's history and government department. Students serve as interns on or near Capitol Hill and complete coursework led by the attending professor. Due to the location and subject matter, the program generally attracts students studying history or political science, but Gemmel has proven the semester in Washington D.C. is open to students of all majors and classes.

After discovering the impactful work of the Karanda Mission Hospital, four Cedarville University senior mechanical engineering students - Andrew Yerkey (Dublin, Ohio), Sarah Kepner (Shepherd, Michigan), Brooke Dodson (Danville, Indiana), and Peter Tsibours (Westerville, Ohio) -- felt compelled to support the hospital's mission by designing a much-needed earth-mover device. The concept was for their senior capstone project. The Karanda Mission Hospital has been serving local people in Zimbabwe, Africa, for 64 years by providing medical services and spiritual engagement. Throughout the medical care, they have created gospel opportunities through Awana clubs, Reach4Life, and community outreach programs.

CEDARVILLE, OHIO - Seeing an opportunity to meet some needs in Dayton's homeless community spurred Cedarville University's Integrated Business Core (IBC) students to make an impact. The student business organization, through creating and selling its own merchandise, donated $6,300 to Target Dayton Ministries on Saturday, March 30. Each year, business and marketing students connect their classroom instruction with an entrepreneurial mindset and manufacture products they market and sell. This year's IBC group, made up of sophomore and junior business students, created and sold product lines featuring jewelry, notebooks, board games and apparel.

CEDARVILLE, OHIO - Stories are powerful, and telling them is an art. Cedarville University students majoring in broadcasting, digital media and journalism spent their spring break helping Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) missionaries in Spain tell their stories for evangelistic purposes. The trip was part of Cedarville's Global Outreach program that regularly sends students and faculty each year on mission trips. The students had only a few days to film and edit six missionary testimonial videos that ABWE could use in their attempt to share the gospel.

CEDARVILLE, OHIO- Siblings share a bond for life and Cedarville University students Deidra and Connor Hall of Pawcatuck, Connecticut, have only grown closer through their love of speech and debate. Both are members of Cedarville's forensics team. Their affinity for forensics began in childhood when the brother and sister team began competing in elementary school. As young students, they performed well, but have come a long way since those early days.

CEDARVILLE, OHIO - Aspiring songwriters had the opportunity to display their talent in the 13th annual Cedarville University songwriting contest. The event, which was sponsored by Cedarville's Department of Music and Worship, saw senior Ellie Giordano, from Clarkston, Michigan, and junior Emma Haylett of Aurora, Colorado, win for their song, "My Soul Sings." There were 26 entries, and each musical selection was required to be suitable for congregational church worship and written individually or with other students. All of the songs were evaluated by singer/songwriter Andrew Osenga, music producer/songwriter Chris Clayton and producer/songwriter Bailey Hager based on creativity, originality, musical details, the singability of the melody and the theology of the lyrics.

CEDARVILLE, OHIO -- Divas are known for their amazing talent and temperamental self-importance. Ava Ramsey, a senior at Cedarville University majoring in theatre, defies this stereotype. Ramsey, a gifted actress from Peoria, Illinois, quietly set a Cedarville University record when she completed her 110th performance on The DeVries Theatre stage with the close of "12 Angry Jurors" on April 21. Cedarville's theatre program mounts three mainstage productions annually, each having a run of 10 performances. Students who graduate in four years can appear on stage a maximum of 120 times if they audition and are cast in every show - an unlikely scenario.

CEDARVILLE, OHIO - International diplomacy is an exercise in tenacity and tact - qualities displayed by Cedarville University's Model United Nations team, which received the Outstanding Delegation honor in the Model U.N. international competition in New York City. The closing ceremony was held at the United National General Assembly hall. The Model U.N. event is an educational simulation where college students represent a United Nations member state. The students presented papers, drafted resolutions and served on committees as they attempted to solve relevant issues for their assigned country. Cedarville represented Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia.

Amid the sea of graduates preparing to receive degrees at Cedarville University stand four young men committed to defending freedom. Thadeus Kreuger, Matthew Crum, Brent Whitley, and John Thomson are on their way to becoming pilots in the United States Air Force. While completing their coursework at Cedarville these brave young men tackled the additional responsibilities of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC), necessitating early morning activity while the rest of the campus was sleeping.

CEDARVILLE, OHIO - Nurses and entrepreneurs have something in common - they meet the needs of others. Vida Boafo, founder of the Fairfield, Ohio-based Vebcom Healthcare Services, is combining her entrepreneurial mindset with her education in nursing from Cedarville University to meet the health care needs of senior adults and individuals with developmental disabilities. Boafo, formerly of Ghana, West Africa, earned a nurse practitioner master's degree from Cedarville in 2015. With financial support of a $643,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Aging, Boafo recently expanded her company's services to include an adult day center for seniors. The project is expected to be completed within the next six months.

CEDARVILLE, OHIO - Adoption is not a foreign concept to Cedarville University junior Ashlyn DeVries. As a child, she knew that her maternal grandparents raised 14 children - all adopted. Her family's legacy combined with her experiences on a university-sponsored trip to assist children's homes in Mazatlan, Mexico, intensified her fire for adoption advocacy. DeVries, a computer science major, partnered with Back2Back Ministries, an international orphan and family care organization headquartered in Mason, Ohio, on a global outreach trip that added fuel to her passion for adoption advocacy work. On the trip, she encountered children living with the trauma of being orphaned - and DeVries wants to help solve this problem.

CEDARVILLE, OHIO - Students at Cedarville University spend approximately 1,000 days during their four years on campus. During this period, Dr. Thomas White, president, encourages each student to participate in a mission trip. Based on the feedback from other pharmacy students who had served in Guatemala on previous mission opportunities, Thomas Bonifield, a second-year pharmacy student, agreed to serve at a free, four-day clinic in Los Dolores, Guatemala. This experience transformed his perspective on medical care and spreading the gospel.

Struggles are essential for future success. This is a lesson Felipe Mayta is learning as he studies economics and finance at Cedarville University. What once felt like a dream slipping away has turned into an opportunity of a lifetime for Mayta. The college junior from Peru was awarded a summer internship with the World Bank Treasury in Washington, D.C. - a role he will begin on May 28, 2024. Securing the internship was daunting for Mayta, as 16 students - less than 1% - were selected from the pool of 2,400 applicants.

The music of Motown in the mind of Soraya Ashleigh, a sophomore studying music at Cedarville University, is on display with the release of her first song, "Tattoos." The suburban Detroit, Michigan, resident's song is an expression of her musical abilities, and it taps into her experiences and emotions as a college student. "My whole goal is to impact others with this song, and ultimately all music that I create," said Ashleigh, who is from Waterford. "Every face has a story and people deal with things differently, and I have gone through many times in my life where I've thought, 'I'm the only one dealing with this,' and that is just not true. Hopefully, my songs will help others along their journey."

In the heart of industrial innovation, one student's creative prowess shines bright in Columbus. Nathan Gobrogge, a senior hailing from Oxford, Michigan, emerged as a standout contender in the Columbus Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) Student Merit Awards Selection Night. The industrial and innovative design program at the International Center for Creativity (ICC), partnered with Cedarville University, has been participating in the Student Merit Awards since they were invited by Ohio State University (OSU) and the Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD) in 2014. This year, the event was held at Ohio State University and included student representatives from the ICC, OSU and CCAD. Last year, the event was hosted by the ICC.

Every year, senior mechanical engineering students at Cedarville University complete a capstone project, a requirement before graduating. These projects allow the students to combine their book knowledge with practical skills they will use in their professional careers. Throughout the years, projects have varied from building race cars and rockets to creating a medical device that can save a person's life after experiencing a severed carotid artery - which is currently pending FDA approval. But Jared Ritzo, a senior from Virginia Beach, Virginia, knew that he wanted to complete a project that had never been done successfully at Cedarville - building an underwater, remote-operated, vehicle (ROV).

Liftoff! After nine months of rigorous building and testing, Cedarville University's Rocket Team will launch its full-scale rocket prototype at the NASA Student Launch competition on April 10-14 in Huntsville, Alabama. The NASA Student Launch provides middle school, high school and college and university students from across the nation with the opportunity to design, build, test and launch vehicle and payload components that support the Space Launch System and Artemis missions. Competing in the NASA Student Launch is a rigorous and selective process. Teams must submit a proposal to the Student Launch Challenge - University Student Launch Initiative and participate in a series of design reviews that simulate the NASA engineering design process. Not all teams that apply are admitted into the competition.

Cedarville University's forensics team continues to stand out among the competition. In its competition at the Novice National Tournament in early March just north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Cedarville's team won the national championship in debate. One week later at the National Christian College Forensics Championship in Nashville, Tennessee, Cedarville placed third overall but came home with several individual honors.

It was a reunion for Viv Wheeler and her birth mom when the Cedarville University sophomore visited Guatemala on a recent trip to her native country. It was the first time Wheeler met her birth mom, as she was put up for adoption in 2004 - a few months after her birth. "The meeting with my birth family was sweet," said Wheeler, resident of Portsmouth, Ohio, upon returning from the international trip. "I was able to reassure my family in Guatemala that I'm all right and that my birth mom made the right decision in giving me up to my adopted family."

What do you want to be when you grow up? For Joshua Thomas, a senior at Cedarville University, his answer was an engineer. His dream will become a reality on August 12, 2024, when he begins his career as a software engineer at Google.

The success of an academic program can largely be determined by graduation rates, rankings and professors, but the true measure of success resides in the students. For students in Cedarville University's mechanical engineering program, success is no anomaly, and this year is no different. Already, the class of 2024 from the school of engineering is boasting graduates who will work at some of the nation's leading companies, including Honda, General Dynamics and Procter & Gamble.

In an era where electric cars are gaining more interest among U.S. consumers, there's still a place for gas-powered vehicles. That's why Cedarville University has built a car that could get up to 2,000 miles to a gallon, which it will test in the weekend's Shell Eco-Marathon Americas competition at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The competition is from April 3-7. This year's team of Cedarville University engineering students marks the 33rd consecutive year of students building and designing a supermileage car for the national competition. Last year's team finished fourth as its car reached 1,355 miles per gallon.

Professor Jay Kinsinger and a team of senior mechanical engineering students from Cedarville University are gearing up for the Grassroots Motorsports $2,000 Challenge in Gainesville, Florida. The competition is set to take place on April 6-7. The team, composed of six senior mechanical engineering students, has been diligently working since the start of the 2023 fall semester to construct a competitive race car within a budget of $2,000. They have turned a junked Mercedes into what they believe will be a winning car in the national competition. This ambitious endeavor serves as a practical exercise in cost-benefit analysis, providing students with invaluable real-world experience.

In February 2022, Thad Burson of Cedarville, Ohio, didn't fully believe studying abroad was going to be an option. Now, a year later, as the recipient of the State Department's Benajmin A. Gilman International Scholarship, he is studying foreign policy at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England.

The "diplomats" on Cedarville University's award-winning Model United Nations (U.N.) team excelled at the regional Dayton Model United Nations Conference (DAYMUNC) held at Sinclair Community College earlier this month. Eight members from Cedarville's 16-person team won individual awards.

Combining health care with missions was the reason several students from Cedarville University's School of Pharmacy attended the 2023 Global Mission Health Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, this past November.

Cedarville University's forensics team came out on top at the Ohio Forensics Association Novice State Championship tournament on January 26-27 at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

The following students were named to the Dean's Honor List at Cedarville University for Fall 2023. This recognition requires the student to obtain a 3.75 GPA or higher for the semester and carry a minimum of 12 credit hours.