Preserving Trinity’s College Campus

Ashley Nwaokolo’s life was shaped by her experience studying abroad through Trinity Christian College’s Semester in Spain program. Years later, when she learned the college in Palos Heights, Ill., would permanently close at the end of the 2025-2026 academic year, she and her husband felt compelled to use their skills to preserve the memories and meaning the campus has provided for generations of students, graduates, staff, supporters, and others.

“My dad’s college shut down in the 1990s, leaving him with no physical campus to ever go back to,” she said. “I couldn’t bear the thought of that same erasure happening here.”

Ashley and her husband, Shalom Nwaokolo, are the founders of Egents, a virtual-experience company launched in 2020. Six years into building immersive digital spaces, they found themselves presented with an unexpected opportunity.

“We realized we had a unique opportunity to preserve the Trinity campus for the future,” Shalom said. “We proposed this vision to the administration and entered into an official preservation partnership authorized by Trinity’s leadership before the final commencement this past May.”

Trinity Christian College announced on November 4, 2025, that it would cease operations at the end of the 2025-2026 academic year—leaving a narrow window to complete the project.

“We talked about how once the school closes, the opportunity to do something like this generally disappears,” Ashley said. “So we asked, ‘How can we preserve that? How can we keep that going so that future generations can still experience Trinity in its own way?’”

In just two field visits, the couple drove more than 2,560 miles from Iowa to Illinois and logged over 200,000 steps documenting the 60-acre campus. Their work captured all 18 buildings, including dorms, hallways, outdoor spaces, and even smaller, often-overlooked areas, in full 360-degree detail.

“The vision is that for anyone whose story happened on campus, they should be able to visit that anytime they want—and share that history with their kids or grandkids,” Shalom said.

“We even have some janitors’ closets in there—so it’s in-depth. Probably more information than people even want, but it’s there,” Ashley added.

The permanent virtual version of the campus will live on a dedicated platform, perduras.com. A preview of Ozinga Chapel on the Trinity campus is currently available online for users to explore from a phone or computer.

“Every institution holds history,” Shalom said. “When that institution is gone, that history is not just gone for the school—it’s part of the broader history of the country as well.”

The full virtual experience is set to launch Oct. 4, 2026, at the time when Trinity would usually host its homecoming festival.

“We’re releasing in October around homecoming time so that people can [virtually] come home again,” Shalom said.

Click here to explore the virtual preview of Trinity Christian College’s digital preservation.