The link between Mountain Lake and Fresno Pacific University continues to strengthen with the appointment of D. Merrill Ewert as the university’s next president.

When he becomes FPU’s 10th president in July of 2002, Ewert will join fellow natives Arthur Wiebe, president emeritus, and Jonathan Dick, chemistry faculty. Ewert’s family operates a farm near Mountain Lake, and he remains involved in the enterprise.

It’s UNtraditional

It’s UNpredictable

It’s Unconcert.

FresnoPacific University and Sunnyside High School join forces for an annual event that’s never the same thing twice. Unconcert will be at 8 p.m. Friday, January 26 and Saturday, January 27 at the high school auditorium, near the corner of Peach and Kings Canyon avenues.

Track facilities at Fresno Pacific University were enriched today by a gift from Save Mart Supermarkets.

The grocery chain donated over 25 tons of compost to help with seeding the area around the Bill Cockerham Track, part of the Steinert Athletic Complex. The first event on the new track, planned for this spring, will be the university’s first true home meet in more than 25 years. When complete, the $2.5 million complex will include the Max and Charlotte Steinert Soccer Field, scheduled for play in the fall of 2001.

A new scholarship program at Fresno Pacific University reaches out to students from the Mennonite Brethren tradition.

Beginning in the fall of 2001, up to $7,450 per year in aid will be available to qualified students entering the traditional undergraduate college. Participants must be members of a Mennonite Brethren congregation, or consider such a congregation their home church. Freshmen must have a high school grade-point average of at least 3.1 and transfers must have a GPA of at least 2.4.

Choirs, bells, flutes, harp, brass and strings will celebrate the season during the Classic Christmas Concert hosted by Fresno Pacific University.

The music begins 7 p.m. Sunday, December 3 in Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium in downtown Fresno. Admission is $5 for general audiences and $3 for students and those over 65.

The Sermon on the Mount links Fresno Pacific University with its ninth president.

Harold Haak made that passage the center of his installation remarks during ceremonies October 27 in the campus Special Events Center. In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in which he was brought up, Haak said he learned the fifth chapter of Matthew, which is the heart of Jesus’ great sermon. “It is memory work that often stands me in good stead among Mennonites,” he joked, “although they sometimes look puzzled by my proclivity to cite the King James Version.”

Recent meetings established a new level of cooperation between Fresno Pacific University and a university in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Professor Kidinda, president of Universite Chretienne de Kinshasa (Christian University of Kinshasa—UCKIN) and Professor M’buyamba, head of the university medical school, visited FPU the week of October 23. The meetings ended with an agreement “that shows the encouragement of the institutions to work together,” Kidinda said.

No change was good news for the Fresno Pacific University Board of Trustees.

The administration requested no revision in the 2000-2001 budget during board meetings Oct. 27-28. Spending last year had to be cut $1.1 million in response to overly optimistic revenue projections.

Reports on charitable trusts and scholarship endowments highlighted meetings of the Fresno Pacific University Foundation Board of Trustees Oct. 27-28.

The foundation currently manages and is named beneficiary of 45 trusts with assets totaling more than $13 million, according to Mark Deffenbacher, foundation executive director. The $3,362,918 in permanently and temporarily restricted endowments overseen by the foundation include about 54 scholarship funds.

The colorful, organic art of Bob Nugent graces Fresno Pacific Art Gallery through November.

Eight works of paint and ink on paper are being shown at the gallery, which is on the second floor of McDonald Hall, the campus’s main building. Many of the shapes resemble natural forms such as seed pods, expressing connection to the natural world.