The Marion E. Wade Center 

Interim Director: Marjorie Lamp Mead ’74, executive editor of SEVEN: An Anglo- American Literary Review 

The Wade Center will host a book signing of the first Hansen Lectureship volume published by IVP Academic, The Messiah Comes to Middle-earth by President Philip Ryken ’88, on November 2. The 2017-18 Hansen Lectureship series will begin that evening with a talk by Dr. Christine Colón, associate professor of English: “Community or Chaos?: Searching for Clues in the Works of Dorothy L. Sayers.” Dr. Tiffany Kriner, associate professor of English, will be faculty respondent. This fall, the Wade Center will host the first two in a series of four lectures on literary works by C. S. Lewis titled “The Neglected C. S. Lewis” by Dr. Jerry Root and Mark Neal, on October 24 and December 5. There will also be a “Reading at the Wade” book group on Saturday mornings, among other events. Finally, the Wade Center published issue 33 of VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center. 

Learn more on the Wade Center's website.

HoneyRock—Outdoor Center for Leadership Development of Wheaton College 

Director: Dr. Rob Ribbe ’87, M.A. ’90, assistant professor of Christian formation and ministry 

HoneyRock welcomed nearly 1,000 youth during summer 2017 to participate in camper programs. Over 800 college students from around the world also gained hands on leadership experience through HoneyRock’s leadership schools, Wheaton Passage, and Student Leadership Development Week. This year, HoneyRock faculty expanded their summer camp employment research from 7 to 16 camps nationwide, and hosted Center for Vocation and Career Director Dee Pierce M.A. ’17 to assist students in articulating their leadership skills on their resumes. Also this year, 14 countries including India, Russia, Panama, Kenya, and South Korea were represented on HoneyRock’s summer staff as a part of the Global Initiatives Program. Finally, HoneyRock received a $150,000 grant to research and develop programming to be replicated at Christian camps across the country to meet the needs of fatherless youth. The project was launched in spring 2017 with a symposium in collaboration with Psalm68Five Ministries. 

Learn more on HoneyRock's website.  

The Center for Urban Engagement at Wheaton College (CUE) 

Director: Dr. Noah Toly '99, M.A. '12, professor of urban studies and politics & international relations; director of Urban Studies Program 

The Center for Urban Engagement celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Urban Studies and Wheaton in Chicago programs and its 20th year of programming in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood this year. At the same time, preparations are underway for Wheaton in Chicago’s relocation to Woodlawn, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. This fall, CUE will host a public lecture by Harvard sociologist Matt Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown, 2016), winner of the MacArthur “genius” grant, and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. Hannah Doan ’18 and Basye Peek ’18, both Wheaton in Chicago and Urban Leadership Studio alumni, took home two of Wheaton’s four prestigious Senior Scholarships for 2017-18. Dr. Christa Tooley, assistant professor of anthropology and urban studies, was awarded three grants to conduct research and writing on cosmopolitanism in an urban working class community in Edinburgh, Scotland. 

Learn more on CUE's website.  

Humanitarian Disaster Institute (HDI) 

Director: Dr. Jamie Aten, the Dr. Arthur P. Rech and Mrs. Jean May Rech associate professor of psychology 

HDI hosted a one-day workshop, “Pursuing Justice in the Wake of Disasters,” as a preconference event for The Justice Conference in June. This workshop trained participants on how to help disaster survivors in the immediate aftermath and long-term, to walk alongside those who are suffering, how to get churches involved, and how to understand how disasters fit into our understanding of God and why they’re one of the most pressing justice issues in our world today. Dr. Aten presented a keynote address on “Surviving Survivorship” at the 2017 Survivorship Conference, an event for cancer patients, survivors, caregivers, friends, family and health care professionals in Seattle, WA. Dr. Aten’s article “A Walking Disaster” appeared in the June issue of Christianity Today. In it, he shared how his research and his personal experience of surviving Stage IV cancer have shaped his approach to the intersection of disaster, trauma, and faith. 

Learn more on HDI's website. 

The Wheaton Center for Faith, Politics & Economics (FPE) 

Director: Captain David Iglesias ’80, Judge Advocate General’s Corps, United States Navy (Ret.) 

FPE awarded scholarship money to 14 students for summer internships across the globe, stationed from The Center for Public Justice in Washington, D.C., to the U.S. Department of State in China. Four FPE Scholars were also named for summer 2017 and collaborated with faculty to produce research projects. Iron Sharpens Iron 2017 brought students to the Czech Republic, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Berlin in June. Notable stops on the trip were meetings with Hermann Gröhe, the current Minister of Health for Germany; Henry Kabat, former Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic; and a visit to Auschwitz. The FPE will co-host the GC2 Summit on Mass Incarceration on October 25 in conjunction with the BGC and Center for Applied Christian Ethics, and plan to host events covering the politics of free trade and a separate topic of robotics and its impact on job structure and creation. 

Learn more on FPE's website.  

Billy Graham Center (BGC) 

Executive Director: Dr. Ed Stetzer, the Billy Graham Distinguished Chair for Church, Mission, and Evangelism 

The Billy Graham Center hosted Amplify 2017, a conference that hosted over 700 individuals for workshops and presentations on evangelism today, in June 2017. The BGC also hosted a webinar on Cultural Intelligence & Evangelism on August 14 led by Managing Director John Richards and Director of the Institute for Prison Ministries Karen Swanson. The BGC will host a GC2 Summit on Mass Incarceration on October 25, and plans to launch the SEND Institute for church planting in conjunction with the North American Mission Board (NAMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention this year. 

Learn more about the BGC on their website.  

Opus: The Art of Work 

Director: Dr. Chris Armstrong 

Assistant Director: Ben Norquist 

Opus sponsored ten Wheaton students to attend Praxis Academy, an immersion experience on theology, culture and entrepreneurship, in Los Angeles in August 2017. Opus’s new Staff & Faculty Vocation Seminar, successfully launched in fall 2016, will continue each semester, with 20 faculty and 20 staff served each year. Opus is also partnering with the Christ at the Core events committee and the Chaplain’s Office to plan a second annual Vocation Week chapel series to occur in fall 2017. Off campus, Opus Director Chris Armstrong spoke at Christian Study Centers at the University of Florida, Gainseville in March and at Duke University in April 2017. In May, Assistant Director Ben Norquist participated on a panel on Entrepreneurship in College: Educating the Next Generation of Founders at the Praxis Alternative Imagination Summit in Tarrytown, New York. Opus hosted a meeting of the national Consortium of Christian Study Centers at Wheaton in July 2017. 

Learn more on Opus' website.