'Vagaries of History and Faith' topic of 'last lecture' at Hope College Thursday

Wed, Dec 2, 2009    to del.icio.us

HOLLAND — Dr. Ion Agheana, professor of romance languages at Hope College, will present the address "The Western World: The Vagaries of History and Faith" at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Maas Center auditorium.

The public is invited and admission is free.

Agheana will be speaking through the "Last Lecture Series" organized by the college's Alcor chapter of the national Mortar Board honorary society to feature members of the faculty.

The title of the series, which the chapter initiated during the 2008-09 school year, is rhetorical. The lectures are not literally presented as the last that the speakers will deliver at Hope, but are meant to highlight the advice that they would most want to share if the event was indeed the final opportunity for them to address the college's students.

The professors are being asked to reflect on their careers and lives, and to think deeply about what matters to them and about what wisdom they would like to impart.

The concept was inspired by the "Last Lecture" delivered at Carnegie Mellon University by Dr. Randy Pausch on Sept. 18, 2007. Pausch, a member of the Carnegie Mellon faculty who had terminal pancreatic cancer, presented "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." He died July 25, 2008, at age 47.

Agheana is a native of Romania and graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1961. He came to the U.S. in the late 1960s, and completed his master's degree and doctorate in Spanish at Harvard University.

He joined the Hope faculty in 1979 after previously teaching at Dartmouth College. He primarily teaches Spanish; but has also taught French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.

The Maas Center is located at 264 Columbia Ave.