Student Profile: Lindsey Ferguson ’09

When Lindsey Ferguson came to visit Hope as a high school student, she quickly realized that the college was where she wanted to be.

“I fell in love with the character of the school,” she says. “Everybody was so friendly, so welcoming and passionate about what they were doing. It was really contagious and inspiring.”

Since then, Hope has proven to be the inspiring place she thought it was. Lindsey has particularly grown to love the department of dance through her dance major. “The dance department has a lot of outside resources, and they really encourage you to not just stay within the campus, but to experience the dance world outside of Hope,” she says.

Lindsey has utilized many of those resources. Over her past three years at Hope, she has become involved in the student dance concerts, Hip Hop Club, InSync Dance Theatre, dANCEpROjECT, and a locally produced children’s television show Come On Over!, in which she has guest-starred twice to teach children about dance and exercise. She also looks forward to participating in the New York Arts Program as a senior.

While she has appreciated Hope’s resources, Lindsey also values that the college does not merely hand opportunities to students. “You have to work to get them,” she says. “Hope demands a lot of integrity from the students, and it makes us stronger.”

In addition to the opportunites outside of Hope, Lindsey appreciates the faculty on campus. In contrast to the stereotype that professors won’t care if students hand in homework or do well in class, she has found Hope’s faculty extremely committed. “The professors really do care, and they want you to be successful and to be passionate about what you’re studying,” she says. “They don’t just expect you to regurgitate information on paper. They really want you to be an individual and think for yourself.”

As an involved student, Lindsey has learned more about the contagious inspiration that she first felt as a prospective student, and she has come to realize what sets Hope students apart from their counterparts elsewhere.

“Hope College has a way of attracting students who are ambitious,” she says. “It’s easy to follow the crowd and wait for something to happen, but to be a person that makes things happen—that takes a special kind of personality and work ethic. I think a lot of students at Hope have that, and that’s the major difference between our student body and other campuses’.”

This profile was written by Danielle K. Johnson, a 2008 Hope College graduate from Kalamazoo, Mich., for the 2008-09 Hope College Catalog.

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