The Bluffton University softball team moved one step closer to its fifth-straight berth in the four-team Heartland Conference tournament with a split at Anderson University on Saturday, April 23, 2011. The Beavers took game one by a 5-2 count before Anderson recovered for a 7-2 victory in the nightcap. Bluffton moves to 17-14 overall and 9-5 in the HCAC, while AU stands 18-12 on the season and 8-4 in conference play.
The Bluffton University baseball team scored in just one inning, but a seven-run eighth was all the Beavers needed to take down Defiance on Thursday, April 21, 2011. Bluffton improved to 13-17 overall and 5-10 in the Heartland Conference, while Defiance fell to 5-25 on the season and 1-14 in the HCAC.
Fourth graders from Bluffton Elementary School got a dose of Japanese culture on April 19. But they also gave in return-$570 that they raised in just over a week is being donated to Mennonite Central Committee for disaster relief in Japan.
Making the donation is Louise Matthews, director of Bluffton University's Lion and Lamb Peace Arts Center, in honor of the "Children to Children" program that 22 Japanese children on spring break from Findlay City Schools brought to their Bluffton peers at a meeting on the university campus.
Bluffton University's Peace Education and Action Community Endeavor (PEACE) Club and university senior Maggie Rose Stover, an intern for the Bluffton Fair Trade Task Force, will show the film "The Dark Side of Chocolate" at 9 p.m. tonight (April 20) in Stutzman Lecture Hall in Centennial Hall. The screening is free and open to the public.
The 45-minute documentary is about the cocoa supply chain in the Ivory Coast, West Africa, and the chocolate produced by children there.
Bluffton University presented three athletics awards to four recipients on April 19.
Sharing the Kathryn E. Little Award as the university's outstanding senior female athlete were basketball player Kim Miller of Delphos, Ohio, and volleyball player Shauna Rowland of Bucyrus, Ohio.
Dr. Robert L. Hewitt, Professor Emeritus of social work at Shippensburg (Pa.) University and a Bluffton University alumnus, will return to Bluffton as commencement speaker on Sunday, May 8. The ceremony will begin at 2 p.m. in Salzman Stadium.
Hewitt, who received his bachelor's degree in social work from Bluffton in 1969, was a member of the university's board of trustees from 1995-2001.