For a guy well beyond the age of 30, Michael Dean Ester sure knows a lot about 21st cen­tury uni­ver­sity life.

Or, at least, that’s the impres­sion the come­dian gave dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion on April 19 at Williams Auditorium. (more…)

I have been many things in my life. I’ve been a stu­dent, a writer, a reporter, an actor, a pizza deliv­ery dri­ver, a cashier, an assis­tant man­ager, a heavy metal vocal­ist, a car­toon­ist, a poet, and a friend. This semes­ter I added a new title to my reper­toire: Daddy.

It is not an uncom­mon site. Unplanned par­ent­hood is not restricted to spoiled high school girls on MTV pro­grams. Even those con­sid­ered socially respon­si­ble find them­selves in this unex­pected sit­u­a­tion. (more…)

Efforts are in place by Ferris State to include anti-terrorism train­ing in its expand­ing law enforce­ment instruction.

Public Safety Protective Training, or PSPT, and Ferris will be work­ing together to train and sup­ply law enforce­ment offi­cers from across the state to rec­og­nize ter­ror­ist activ­ity and react accord­ingly. (more…)

The American Welding Society has awarded Ferris State instruc­tor Jeff Hardesty the District 11 District Educator Award for the 2009-10 school year.

Hardesty, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor in the College of Engineering Technology, has been in weld­ing tech­nol­ogy pro­fes­sion­ally for 22 years, the last seven of which at Ferris State. (more…)

By this fall, Ferris State will have added a new degree option focus­ing on the many types of com­mu­ni­ca­tion within the sports industry.

Targeted toward stu­dents study­ing pub­lic rela­tions, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, sports mar­ket­ing and other related fields, the pro­gram offers a new approach to the many roles involved in this grow­ing mar­ket. (more…)

If a pic­ture is worth 1,000 words, what is the value of a draw­ing? For John Vestevich, Torch res­i­dent graphic artist and car­toon­ist, it’s worth $10,000.

That is because Vestevich, a stu­dent in the Graphic Design pro­gram, was recently awarded the Charles M. Schulz Award by the Scripps Howard Foundation for his illus­trated work for the Torch, and a cash prize of $10,000. The annual award is given to the nation’s best col­lege cartoonist.

“I had to read it a cou­ple times,” said Vestevich, refer­ring to the award announce­ment. “It’s still slowly sink­ing in.” (more…)

Since its unveil­ing last January, the Tabu Lounge—a members-only club that offers exotic dancing—immediately caught pub­lic attention.

Located within Fantasies Unlimited, just south of town in Big Rapids, the lounge offers patrons—18 years and older—what had pre­vi­ously been miss­ing in the area: live, adult enter­tain­ment. (more…)

Traveling to Grand Rapids may become easier—and cheaper—due to a shut­tle bus ser­vice cur­rently being pro­posed by Ferris State.

The ser­vice would likely include a small fleet of pas­sen­ger buses escort­ing stu­dents, fac­ulty and city res­i­dents sev­eral times daily through­out the week between the cam­pus of Ferris State in Big Rapids and key loca­tions in Grand Rapids. (more…)

Visitors at the Student Recreation Center can stop hold­ing their breath—new equip­ment has arrived and is in use.

Five new machines were deliv­ered Feb. 15—three recum­bent exer­cise bikes and two upright bikes to replace some of the bro­ken car­dio equip­ment. (more…)

With New Years res­o­lu­tions still in recent mem­ory, many stu­dents are find­ing them­selves at the stu­dent recre­ation cen­ter to burn off the still lin­ger­ing “fresh­man 15.”

Some of these stu­dents swim. Some run on the track. Others, how­ever, run into some dif­fi­culty. (more…)