Blog Posts by Westmont

Westmont sociology professor Ron Enroth is no stranger to some of the world’s most unusual religions. In fact, he’s appeared on numerous television and radio broadcasts, including NBC Nightly News and Oprah as an expert cult consultant. Enroth penned, “Youth, Brainwashing and the Extremist Cults” six months before the Jonestown massacre in 1978, the mass suicide that put the word “cult” on the map. He warned of other dangerous religions before the tragedies in Waco and with Heaven’s Gate. In 1982, he received the Leo J.

Several Westmont students have returned home following a trip to Sri Lanka to help children who lost their parents in the December 2004 tsunami. Four Westmont students joined Professor Thomas Jayawardene and his wife, Jasmine, on the month-long summer service trip. The group left July 3 to meet a team of 14 to serve with the Jayawardenes’ The Children of Joy. The organization is founding a new home for about a dozen orphaned children. It’s also set up a children’s center to provide food, clothing, medical care and school needs to 150 kids.

More than three dozen Westmont students are returning to the United States after spending a month of their
summer serving overseas. Different groups visited Tanzania, Rwanda and Indonesia. Meantime, three teams remain in Guatemala, Russia and Sri Lanka. The students have been involved in building classrooms, teaching English and serving at orphanages.

Students in Westmont’s art department have received a $10,700 Worship Renewal grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, Mich., for a project titled “Stations of the Life of Christ.”

Students will create a series of 14 images interpreting moments in Christ’s life that speak to Westmont’s identity as a Christian liberal arts college.

“The Power of WORD,” a theme show judged by Art Historian Richard West, will be on exhibit May 19 through June 30 in Reynolds Gallery. An independent curator, West is the former director of both the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Frye Museum in Seattle. An artists’ reception, open to the public, is 4-6 p.m. May 19 in the college Art Center, on the lower Westmont campus.

English Professor Marilyn McEntyre will give a lecture, “Loving Words,” in conjunction with the exhibition at 4 p.m., May 19 in the Art Center room 101.