TECHNOLOGY UPGRADES. Over the past few months, the Office of Strategic Internet Technology has undertaken the first major technology upgrade the campus has experienced in many years. Improvements include a new secured campus-wide wireless network, re-wired network with faster bandwidth, cloud-based operations now in a 900,000+ square foot state-of-the-art data center, updated email system for faculty and staff, the my.ITC Google Apps for Education platform, and most recently the highly anticipated PowerCampus 7.4 and Self-Service. PowerCampus 7.4 and Self-Service have replaced IQ Web. For more information about PowerCampus, go to www.itc.edu.

JCSTS ALUMNA AND CONGREGATION WIN PRESTIGIOUS AWARD. New Hope Presbyterian Church, in the Presbytery of Los Ranchos in Southern California, has been named winner of the 2012 Sam and Helen R. Walton Award. New Hope is the first viable African American new church development in the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii in 50 years. It has grown from a core group of 20 in 2007 to nearly 90, receiving 21 new members in 2011. New Hope’s organizing pastor is JCSTS alumna Chineta Goodjoin. To read the full article from the Presbyterian News Service, click here: http://www.pcusa.org/news/2012/2/21/2012-walton-award-winner-announced/.

JCSTS TRUSTEE PUBLISHES TOME. Congratulations to the Rev. Dr. Kenneth E. Kovacs, a JCSTS trustee since 2010, on the publication of his book The Relational Theology of James E. Loder (Peter Lang Publishing, New York). The book has received great reviews. Marilyn McCord Adams, Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at UNC Chapel Hill, has written, “Truth, profundity, clarity: Loders work traffics in deep truths. Kovacs’ work brings thems up to clarity.”