Bethel Stu­dents Re­ceive Recog­ni­tion from Ox­ford Pro­gram

MISHAWAKA—Bethel af­fords its stu­dents many op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­pand their hori­zons and travel abroad, in­clud­ing var­i­ous se­mes­ter abroad op­por­tu­ni­ties. One of these op­por­tu­ni­ties al­lows stu­dents to study on lo­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Ox­ford in Eng­land, and last spring, two Bethel stu­dents were rec­og­nized for their aca­d­e­mic ex­cel­lence while study­ing there. 

Se­nior Suzie Mi­ley and ju­nior Abby Roeder re­ceived the dis­tin­guished de Jager Prize for ex­cep­tional aca­d­e­mic per­for­mance, an honor granted to only 10 stu­dents. The prize is awarded by SCIO (Schol­ar­ship and Chris­tian­ity In Ox­ford), a pro­gram that al­lows vis­it­ing stu­dents from CCCU (the Coun­cil for Chris­t­ian Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties) schools to study at Ox­ford. 

Mi­ley, an Eng­lish and Phi­los­o­phy dou­ble ma­jor, took courses ti­tled “Mod­ern Lit­er­a­ture” and “C. S. Lewis in Con­text” dur­ing the first eight weeks of her time in Ox­ford. 

“What I was do­ing was pretty much read­ing a novel a week, writ­ing an ar­gu­ment on that novel, and sub­mit­ting it,” said Mi­ley. 

Roeder is an eco­nom­ics and phi­los­o­phy dou­ble ma­jor, and she took courses in “The­o­ries of the State” and “Mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy.” 

For the fi­nal four weeks, Mi­ley and Roeder had an un­der­grad­u­ate re­search sem­i­nar and a British cul­tures course. Roeder fo­cused her re­search on the philoso­pher John Locke. 

“I was writ­ing on John Locke,” said Roeder, “com­par­ing his more well-known writ­ings with some of his lesser known writ­ings and in­ter­pret­ing them through each other.” 

Both Mi­ley and Roeder were pleas­antly sur­prised by the award. 

“I was very hon­ored to be rec­og­nized by some­thing like that,” said Mi­ley. “I think I was ex­cited at the fact that my work was rec­og­nized; I felt like I re­ally poured my heart and soul into my Ox­ford ex­pe­ri­ence.” 

“It was nice to be re­warded for some­thing I did in Ox­ford,” said Roeder. “I ap­pre­ci­ate it.” 

Mi­ley en­cour­aged other stu­dents to take ad­van­tage of this op­por­tu­nity if they can. 

“It was an ad­ven­ture, it was a jour­ney of growth and trans­for­ma­tion, and I am so grate­ful that I was able to go,” said Mi­ley. “I’m re­ally grate­ful to my pro­fes­sors and my clos­est peers for shap­ing me in a way that I was able to suc­ceed there, be­cause I could­n’t do it with­out every­one else.”