Cedarville University

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.

Kaicheng Ye, a junior from Beavercreek, Ohio majoring in cyber operations and computer science at Cedarville University, however, can claim winning the 2022 National Security Agency's Codebreaker Challenge. For the past couple of years, Ye has made an enduring impact on the cybersecurity program at Cedarville. He is a fellow for Cyber Exercises, which is a leadership position that manages, researches, and organizes practices for future cyber competitions that Cedarville students compete in. The National Security Agency (NSA) holds the annual codebreaker challenge competition every year, allowing participants to use their technical skills in mission-centric scenarios-which is similar to the work of the NSA.

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.

As Mason Buch searched for a summer internship between his junior and senior years at Cedarville University, he found not only help, but genuine support from Cedarville's career services staff.

In the heart of a busy college campus, Matthew Black, a 19-year-old sophomore at Cedarville University is developing his own videography business, one that he hopes will afford him opportunities to tell heart-warming stories through videos and pictures.

Cedarville student Crissa Esse has combined her love of writing and biology for a highly anticipated summer internship with Answers in Genesis (AiG). Esse, a junior professional writing and information design student from Southgate, Michigan, recently accepted a content writer internship with AiG, located in Hebron, Kentucky, that will take place in the summer of 2024.

Many students at Cedarville University have found themselves graced by the angelic singing or haunting flute melodies of Tim Barnes. Anywhere around campus, whether along the sidewalk by the lake or in line at the dining hall, he has a musical bit to share that causes heads to turn and mouths to smile. Who would have thought that a doctor once told him he would never talk?

The political pipeline from Cedarville University to Washington, D.C. has brought another graduate from rural Ohio to the nation's capital. This time, it's Benjamin Mays, who recently began his career as a legislative correspondent for Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley.

Katie Eubank began modeling with clay when she was 5 years old. Now, 17 years later, she has written, illustrated and published her first book - "Clover's Crafty Day" - based on her most cherished clay creatures: snails.

What Kelly Olson thought was just a phase in her son's life has turned into a championship-caliber accomplishment for Grant Olson, a senior majoring in mathematics at Cedarville University.

If you saw most Cedarville University students on their computers, you would likely assume they were studying. But one freshman business management student, Addi Melvin, is also likely to be found teaching virtual riding lessons from her residence hall room.

The following students were named to the Dean's List at Cedarville University for Fall 2023. This recognition requires the student to obtain a 3.5 GPA or higher for the semester and carry a minimum of 12 credit hours.

The smell of sugar and almonds wafted through the air as the warmth from the oven basked the kitchen in a comforting embrace. Even more heartwarming, though, was the joy that 10-year-old Eve Welhener shared with her grandmother. The pair had just baked macarons, a French sandwich cookie that is notoriously difficult to make, for the first time - and they tasted perfect.

For the first time in Cedarville University history, a mock trial team competed in a collegiate tournament and finished the competition at St. Bonaventure University as one of the top teams. Overall, the two Cedarville teams of 19 students total, won four out of eight judges' ballots.