Senior Features

As the 2022-2023 academic school year reaches its end, the VU Voice wants to highlight the seniors who have contributed to the newspaper throughout their time at Vanguard University. Each student has been responsible for writing articles, taking photos, and creating content for social media. They have all assisted in building up the newspaper, expanding engagement, and helping one another with their work. The VU Voice is thankful for the time and effort they have provided and we wish them good luck as they graduate this May.

Jazmin Aguilar

Years serving as VU Staff: Spring 2022

1. Jazmin plans to stay in Costa Mesa post-graduation. She plans to search for job opportunities within broadcast journalism. She hopes to move in with roommates as she mentioned “I am just not ready to let go of the collective community that Vanguard has.” She wants to be involved in the community whether that is in a church setting or extracurricular activities. 
2. Her favorite thing about being a part of the VU Voice is Professor Amanda White and the freedom she let everyone have. “Everyone collaborated but also had different niches of the newspaper that they worked on.”
3. The article that she enjoyed writing the most was titled “Living Well Center Takes Action.” Jazmin states how she felt like a reporter as she was able to construct the article from start to finish. She conducted all the interviews and fully immersed herself in every part of the process.

https://vanguarduniversityvoice.com/2021/11/18/living-well-center-takes-action/

Bertha Cuellar

Years serving as VU Staff: Spring 2022

1. Bertha plans to go into crisis communication within the police force. She is very excited as there seems to be a job opportunity opening up in her hometown. Additionally, she plans to build her credit and work towards becoming more independent so she can save up for a house. She wants to eventually go back to school for ministry.
2. Bertha loved the aspect of having creative liberty within VU Voice. She was in charge of design, graphics, and artwork. She loved to write stories based on her passions and enjoyed writing features of people’s stories.
3. Her favorite article she published on the VU Voice was her cover of Joni Prado. She has been a professor at Vanguard for twenty years, there was a big concert that was held in Joni’s honor and she was very excited to be a part of that.

https://vanguarduniversityvoice.com/2022/03/14/celebrating-20-years-of-pursuing-music/

Isabel Flores

Years serving as VU Staff: Spring 2023

1. After graduation, Isabel wants to find a good-paying job, start a children’s choir at her church, become more involved in helping with the church website, go to the gym, and save up to buy a new bed. 
2. A couple of things that Isabel enjoyed most about being a part of the VU Voice were getting to meet all of the staff and how cool it was to find her writing again about different topics. She felt it was freeing but also challenging. 
3. Her favorite article she wrote was “What Would a Gate Do?” 

https://vanguarduniversityvoice.com/2023/01/27/what-would-a-gate-do/

Jenna Kallal

Years serving as VU Staff: 2021-2022, 2022-2023

1. After graduation, Jenna is going to apply to positions within social media/journalism and hopes to travel to Europe.
2. One thing Jenna enjoyed most about being a part of the VU Voice was learning about journalism in a professional sense. She has also enjoyed getting to learn more about the campus and different departments through writing articles.
3. Her favorite article she wrote is, “What it Means to Run for Student Government… and Lose”. 

https://vanguarduniversityvoice.com/2022/04/11/what-it-means-to-run-for-student-government-and-lose/

Megan Luebberman:

Years serving as VU Staff: 2021-2022

1. After graduation, Megan hopes to get her MFA in creative writing! She doesn’t know what school she is going to yet but she is excited to grow more as a writer. She is really looking forward to writing workshops and sharing her work with new students in grad school. Whatever happens, she is trusting in God to guide her path and future—letting Him lead her wherever she is meant to be.
2. During her time as part of the VU Voice, she enjoyed experimenting with the different types of articles and pushing herself to write things outside her comfort zone. When she first started, interviewing people really scared her, and she didn’t want to interview anyone. However, she has grown in confidence, and am more sure of herself as a journalist. She is ready to continue in her journey as a writer.
3. My favorite article that I wrote would have to be “What Can We Do with Denominational Conflict,” because it addressed issues that our faith struggles with. I received good feedback from this article, and I’m glad that it made people think about being united under Christ regardless of our denominational differences.

https://vanguarduniversityvoice.com/?s=What+Can+We+Do+with+Denominational+Conflict

Isabella Perez

Years serving as VU Staff: 2021-2022, 2022-2023

1. After graduation, Isabella plans to work full-time in human resources and search for opportunities within the marketing department there. She also wants to dedicate time to her personal blog.
2. As a part of VU Voice, she most enjoyed interviewing people and getting to know people’s stories. 
3. Isabella’s favorite article that was published on VU Voice was “Goodbye Summer, Hello Fall: How to Shift to a Slower pace during the fall season.”

https://vanguarduniversityvoice.com/?s=Goodbye+Summer%2C+Hello+Fall%3A+How+to+Shift+to+a+Slower+pace+during+the+fall+season

Michael Robles

Years serving as VU Staff: 2020-2021, 2021-2022

1. Michael plans on pursuing an MFA in Writing in the fall. The school right now is to be determined as he waits for decisions, but so far, his leading choice is the University of New Hampshire. Though, that may change. Michael plans to refine his craft in writing while taking the steps to teach college-level writing and English. 
2. Michael enjoyed the atmosphere and experience of being part of a news staff. Music and the arts have always been a passion he held close to his heart, so to be given a chance to apply that to his experience in The Voice was very important to him. He also had the pleasure of acting as an anonymous theater critic for The Voice, and it gave him a newfound appreciation for theater, both on the writing side and on the production side. Overall, he feels The Voice ignited parts of his passions that he wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. 
3. For his favorite piece he has written, he thinks it is a tie between “Albums: A Dying Medium?” and his critiques of VU’s theater productions. He always found the difference between music albums and music playlists interesting, so exploring that in a piece for The Voice was something he really enjoyed.

https://vanguarduniversityvoice.com/?s=Albums%3A+A+Dying+Medium

Macy Stemm

Years serving as VU Staff: Spring 2022

1. After graduation Macy plans to eventually work at Vanguard. She is currently working on applications for a staff position. Macy has worked at Vanguard before, as an Academic Success Coach, but has recently been considering her next steps after graduation would be to work at Vanguard again. She also had the privilege to get her internship hours done at Vanguard at the Living Well Resource Center during the summer. It was during this internship that she was able to meet the staff who came by. After her internship is when she became an Academic Success Coach. One of the reasons she worked as an Academic Success Coach was because she would get to help fellow students in their academic journey. She has enjoyed helping fellow students with their work throughout her academic journey.

So when the common question, “What are you going to do next?,” was asked, Vanguard was always in the back of her mind because it would still give her a chance to help students. Initially, she wasn’t sure if Vanguard would be the place for her, but it didn’t take her long to seriously consider working at Vanguard. After a little more thought and some prayer, she decided that if she was given the opportunity to work at Vanguard that she would take it. Her past experiences working at Vanguard have definitely played a positive impact on her applying. As for now, she hopes and prays that she can work at Vanguard, but if this doesn’t pan out the way she thinks then she would say that her alternate plan is to stay home with family. She has a lot of siblings and she helps out when she can. So she would be at home taking care of the little ones if her current plan did not work out but Lord willing, it does.

2. The thing that she enjoyed most about being a part of the VU Voice is the experience of journalism. She has always been interested in reading the news so when she took an Intro to Journalism course she was excited to learn. Getting to be a part of the process gave her a greater appreciation for the work that journalists do to get an article published. She mentioned the atmosphere that the VU Voice created was amazing. It was positive, uplifting, and full of journalists who respected each other’s work.

3. Her favorite article that she wrote for the VU Voice was Christmas Senses because, by the time she wrote it, she had learned a lot about journalism. The process was familiar and she felt confident in her ability to write a good article for the Christmas issue. Another reason why it was her favorite was that it was Christmas time! It’s one of her favorite times of the year and she was glad to get one more article written before starting her last semester at college.

https://vanguarduniversityvoice.com/2022/12/02/christmas-senses/