eachable omentsLOVING GOD WITH THE MIND AS WELL AS THE HEART, PAGE 10

TEACHABLE MOMENTS, PAGE 14 • CHOOSING THE RIGHT SCORE, PAGE 22

SUMMER 2001

THE MAGAZINE OF GORDON COLLEGE

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EditorPatricia C. McKay ’65

Director of CommunicationsSarah Sams

Public Relations SpecialistChris Underation

Publication DesignLora E. Maggiacomo ’92

PrinterUniversal

Westwood, Massachusetts

Stillpoint, the magazine for alumni and friends of the united college of Gordon and Barring-ton, is published three times a year and has a circulation of 22,000.

Changes of address should be sent to the Development Offi ce.

Send other correspondence to:Editor, StillpointGordon College255 Grapevine RoadWenham, Massachusetts 01984mckay@hope.gordon.edu

Visit our website at:www.gordon.edu

Reproduction of Stillpoint in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

Gordon College is an equal opportunity institution and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, sex, or national or ethnic origin.

T.S. Eliot, in hispoem Four Quartets,

refers to God as the “still pointof the turning world.”

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ollege presidents must always be thinking 10 to 15 years into the future. Where will this college be? Will its mission change? Will its graduates be prepared to enter a world no one can actually defi ne? Eighteen months ago we reviewed our last strategic plan to determine what had been accomplished. We found our financial base was stronger and the learning experience for students signifi cantly improved. The externals are easy to count—10 building projects, several new undergraduate majors, a graduate program and rapid growth in the student body. But it’s harder to evaluate the human progress. We regularly ask students to participate in the planning process to ensure that students learn in the best possible environment. As a Christian residential college, we are committed to providing contemporary learning within an eternal framework. One of the ways we measure our success in this enterprise occurs each Commencement Weekend, and this year was no exception. At the senior breakfast, Class President Thomas Routhe said:

I have invested a large sum of money, not to mention four years of my life, into developing my mind. Was it worth it? Unequivocally yes. The investment I have made at Gordon College has indeed been a worthwhile one, and it will continue to reap benefi ts as long as I am a diligent steward of the gifts God has given me. . . . We of the Class 2001 are prepared to fulfi ll our calling to be men and women with purpose, to live lives that have consequence and worth, to be seeds in the Kingdom of God, to have souls deep enough to withstand the dry spells and to possess a confi dent peacefulness that comes from the assurance and hope we have in knowing the certainty of our salvation.

The accomplishments achieved by implementing the strategies of our last planning process are indeed measured when we hear the stories of Tom Routhe and hundreds of other Gordon graduates. Only then can we be sure our investment was worthwhile. But it’s time to start the planning process again. To ensure the future for another generation of Gordon students, we’re launching our next strategic planning initiative: “Planning 2001: Blending Tradition and Innovation.” A liberal arts education is broad by design, but we must also intensify our assistance to students in focusing on vocational choices and graduate studies. And we are committing ourselves to recruiting dedicated Christians who more richly represent the mosaic which makes up the Body of Christ. We’ll continue to develop a stronger fi nancial base and improve facilities to undergird the Gordon College of the future.

Blending tradition and innovation is part of our heritage and a key to our future. Our faith requires taking risks and discerning between the dangers and the opportunities always emerging on the educational horizon. With God as our Source of trust, we take risks, knowing that our graduates will be better prepared to face a world of rapid change and ready to fulfi ll the calling Christ gave us 2,000 years ago: to be salt where there is spoil and light where there is darkness. If our planning in 2001 is done well, graduates in the next decade will still be able to answer the question “Was it worth it?” with a resounding “Yes.”

Details on Gordon’s strategic planning initiative, “Planning 2001: Blending Tradition and Innovation,” and the implications on campus development will be summarized in the next issue of Stillpoint after fi nal approval by Gordon’s Board of Trustees.

Blending raditionandINNOVATION

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Volume 16, Number 3 Summer 2001

IFC UP FRONT BY PRESIDENT JUD CARLBERG

Blending Tradition and Innovation

2 ON & OFF CAMPUS BY CHRIS UNDERATION

4 Commencement 2001 BY CHRIS UNDERATION

A Snapshot of Memories

7 It’s about Original Thought BY PAT MCKAY ’65 Tim Wolfe ’01, encouraged by his professors to be creative and inventive, is

taking his original thoughts to the world beyond Gordon.

8 Her Story Is in Her Students BY CHRIS UNDERATION

Professor Muriel Radtke retires from 34 years of teaching at Barrington and Gordon.

9 Classroom Moves to Holland BY STEVE CROWE

Professor Steve Crowe reports on students who were scribes at a worldwide children-at-risk conference.

Teachableoments

10 Loving God with the Mind as well as the Heart BY JIM WATTERS

Wycliffe linguist Jim Watters talks about Dr. Kenneth Pike, for whom Gordon’s Pike Honors Program is named.

i–iv Partners Program 2001

13 BY ADMISSIONS BY ELIZABETH EAVES ’98 Sweating the College Search? Recruiter Elizabeth Eaves talks about the college search process.

14 Teachable Moments BY DAVID FRANZ ’45B Retired professor David Franz shares a few reminiscences and

photos of 43 years of European Seminar, the forerunner of all Gordon’s international programs.

18 PROFS & PROGRAMS BY TED HILDEBRANDT

Get Lost in Jerusalem Biblical studies professor Ted Hildebrandt takes his students to Jerusalem via virtual reality.

20 ALUMS AT LARGE BY LAUREL BRUNVOLL ’89 Taking Ahold of Life Alumna Laurel (Seiler) Brunvoll talks about her family’s

struggle with serious illness and the opportunities that have come from the devastating realities of life.

22 POINT OF VIEW BY HERMA WILLIAMS

Choosing the Right Score Associate Provost Herma Williams recounts her diffi cult deci-

sion to forfeit her career track to save her son.

BC EVENTS CALENDAR

College Choir’s European tour

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COVER PHOTO BY ROSE-MARIE SLOSEK: EUROPEAN SEMINAR TEAM IN VEZELAY, FRANCE, FAMOUS MONASTIC CENTER OF THE MEDIEVAL WORLD. ON THIS SPOT ST. BERNARD PREACHED THE SECOND CRUSADE TO TWO OF THE GREAT EURO-PEAN MONARCHS OF THE 12TH CENTURY, URGING THEM TO TAKE UP THE CROSS AGAINST THE MUSLIM OCCUPATION OF THE HOLY LAND, CIRCA 1146 A.D. MAP: USED BY PERMISSION OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY.

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BY CHRIS UNDERATION

NEW DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Sarah E. Sams has joined Gordon College as the director of communications, responsible for strategic communications planning, publications and media relations. Sarah has worked as a project manager and marketing consultant on interactive and multimedia projects the past six years for a host of Fortune 1000 companies. Prior experience in real estate includes marketing a large retail mall for Jones Day LaSalle and strategic planning and operations for a Dallas-based real estate company. Sarah graduated magna cum laude from the University

of North Texas with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and received a Master of Business Administration degree from Southern Methodist University.Former Director of Communications Rick Sweeney ’85 left Gordon in March to become director of marketing and communications at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, which is part of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

SENATORIAL PRIVILEGE

Alumna Townsend (Lange) NcNitt ’89 has taken a more high profi le role in Washington after being appointed by President George W. Bush to become a member of his legislative affairs team. In her new position she will act as one of the president’s representatives to the U.S. Senate. “Townsend is a talented and experienced individual,” Bush said in a press release. “As my eyes and ears in . . . the Senate, she will be an integral part of my plan to reach out to Congress on a bipartisan basis and enact a legislative package that lives up to the visions I laid out during my campaign.” NcNitt was featured in the Summer 2000 issue of Stillpoint. Prior to her new appointment she was an assistant and counsel to Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire.

NEW RESIDENCE—FULTON HALL

The new residence hall being built next to Tavilla Hall now has a name. It will be called Fulton Hall in honor

of Bob and Lil Fulton, friends of the College who have made a sig-nifi cant investment in the building. To rec-ognize the Fultons, Gordon planned a spe-cial ceremony in April during which the Ful-tons, students, faculty and staff signed some of the beams that will be used in the build-ing. Despite the brutal

late winter, it appears the residence hall should be largely complete and ready for students this fall.

Abbie Rabine ’02 nearly collapsed

with shock as she was crowned Miss

Massachusetts.

GORDON STUDENT CROWNED MISS MASSACHUSETTS

Abbie Rabine, a senior music education major, was selected Miss Massachusetts for 2001 during the Miss Massachusetts Scholarship Pageant held June 9 in the Arts Center of Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts. “It was unbelievable,” she said. In the last two years, Abbie has come close to winning the crown. In 1999 she was the fi rst runner-up, and last year she was also among the fi nalists. As Miss Massachusetts Abbie will receive more than $10,000 in scholarship money and will represent Massachusetts in the Miss America Pageant, to be held September 22 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and telecasted by ABC at 8 P.M. Her platform, “Making Disabilities Abilities,” grew out of her own struggle with a language-based learning disability (see the story on Abbie in the Spring 2000 Stillpoint). Leading up to the Miss Massachusetts Pageant, Abbie met with most of the state’s congressional delegation to push for full funding of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is supposed to fund 40 percent of special education funds but presently only funds 13 percent. During the summer she met with President George W. Bush to ask him to support full funding for the ADA.

ATHLETES IN EXCELLENCE

One of the high points of each spring is the release of the All-Academic teams in the Commonwealth Coast Conference. This year Gordon placed 30 athletes on the list—almost twice as many as any other school in the conference. Though we can’t publish the long list here, suffi ce it to say the list included students from nearly all the College’s athletic teams. Considering the demands of the classroom and the time investment required to achieve excellence in athletic competition, this is no small feat.

BODY TALK

Once again our annual Gordon College Symposium, sponsored by the Center for Christian Studies, proved to be popular with students, faculty and staff. Over 50 sessions, from discussion groups to fi lms to debates, were organized around the theme “Body Talk.” Presentations explored the

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ecternA sampling of faculty accomplishments and activities outside the classroom

GRAMMAR GATHERING—Jennifer Beatson, who teaches foreign languages, presented a paper at the North American Foreign Language Association conference at Wheaton, Illinois. Titled “Lord, Please Help Them with the Subjunctive!”, the paper is a unit meant to help students learn how to pray properly in Spanish.

FROM SUBJUNCTIVE TO SUBJECTIVE—Earlier in the year David Aiken, philosophy, presented a paper on “Subjectivity and Intellectual Eros: A Comparison of Kierkegaard and Lonergan” at the Society of Christian Philosophers meeting at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

KEYING IN—Music professor Stanley Pelkey presented a paper titled “Approaches to Sonata Procedures in British Keyboard Music from 1760–1820” at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society, held at the University of Virginia. Pelkey has also recently published a paper in the newsletter of the London Handel Institute called “Handel and Samuel Wesley: A Case Study in Handel Reception in the Later Georgian Period.”

HISTORY SPEAKS—In March Richard Pierard, who teaches history, was in Moscow to speak at the Moscow Theological

idea of what it means to be an embodied person and the many different ways we think of the body, from refl ecting on the Body of Christ to discussing the body politic. These symposia are recognized as a unique and valuable educational tool. The Gordon College Symposium was featured during one of the sessions at the recent National Forum on Christian Higher Education.

GRABBING THE GOLDEN GOOSE

With all due respect to the recently departed senior class, it appears the sophomores of 2000–2001 have the most class spirit. More than 1,200 students took part in the third annual Golden Goose class competition and cheered on their classes through a variety of stand-up comedies, dancing, skits and lip-sync routines. Each class was given points for each student who showed up in their class color, and at the end of it all the sophomores took home the gold-painted goose, at least for one year.

FROM SOUTH AFRICA TO WENHAM

During the spring semester the College welcomed Linda and Peter Biehl to campus to speak about the murder of

Linda (L) and Peter (R) Biehl withAssociate Provost Herma Williams.

their daughter in South Africa and the healing work they are doing in that nation in her memory. In 1993 Amy Biehl was stabbed to death by a mob in a suburb of Cape Town while she was working to help bring democratic reforms to the nation. The Amy Biehl Foundation Trust—which has helped some of those responsible for Amy’s death—is designed to provide food, education, job creation projects and after-school care for children in the highly impover-ished area where she was killed. “The truest act of benevo-lence is not char-ity; it is empow-ering someone to empower himself,” the Biehls said. The Biehls were part of the convo-cation series “Les-sons from the United States and South Africa: Case Studies in Trans-formation.” The series was initiated by Associate Provost Herma Williams.

Seminary of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. While there he taught the course Church, State and Religious Freedom in Christian History. In April he spoke at the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven, Connecticut, on “Baptists as Missionaries: What, When, Where and How?”

TAKING THE CHAIR—Bob Whittet, professor of youth ministries, has been assigned the chairmanship of the Student Ministries Committee of the Board of Directors of Covenant Discipleship. This is the educational ministry of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Synod. Whittet will be responsible for such things as denomination-wide youth ministry outreach and short-term mission trips.

TANTALIZING TWISTS—The Bulletin for Biblical Research has published an article by Elaine Phillips, professor of biblical and theological studies, titled “Serpent Intertexts: Tantalizing Twists in the Tales.” The essay examines how the Hebrew Scriptures make use of the ideas and interconnections from other textual sources.

EYES ON YOU—Kaye Cook, psychology, has published an article in the Winter 2000 edition of Adolescent titled “You Have to Have Somebody Watching Your Back, and If That’s God, Then That’s Mighty Big.” The article deals with the issue of the role the church plays in the resilience of inner-city youth.

LITERARY PORTRAYAL—Peter Stine, who teaches English, delivered the paper “White Missionaries in African Fiction” at the annual meeting of the African Literature Association in Richmond, VA.

eyond the

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DBY CHRIS UNDERATION

Wilson also told the graduates it’s important to have dreams that compel us to move forward in life. “Don’t be afraid to think big,” he said. “And don’t passively sit back waiting for miracles to happen. It is up to us to fi nd some area where there is darkness and take light there. Take good news; take integrity to politics that are too cynical; take healing where there is division; take ethics to business; make optimists out of pessimists.” But Wilson also cautioned against making dreams the singular goal of life. “It’s possible your dream may never materialize, but don’t get upset about that. We should still be able to see and be thankful that the Head of the universe counts us worthy to be part of His plan. Our question should not be ‘What if my dreams don’t come true?’ Rather, at the end of the day we should ask ourselves if, in pursuing our dreams, we have helped and enhanced God’s creation in

any way.”Wilson said the foun-dation of our dreams and service to others is found in the realm of conviction in our theological non-negotiables. “Today we’re led to believe everything is up for grabs and noth-ing is tied down,” Wilson said. “The best answer some people can give to questions of conviction is ‘Whatever.’ Don’t be afraid to uphold your convictions.”Wilson told the grad-uates that today many think religious beliefs are a matter of personal convenience. But they are much more than that,

r. Marvin R. Wilson, beloved professor of biblical and theological studies at Gordon, gave the Class of 2001 their fi nal test on May 19 during the 109th

Commencement Exercises.The test: three questions. Due date: at the end of the

lives of Gordon’s 354 graduates. The questions: What are your theological nonnegotiables? What is your philosophy of work? What are your dreams, and how do they relate to God’s big dream?

“Convictions do matter,” Wilson said. “Today we are told convictions and opinions are the same thing. But they are not. Opinions are something you hold; convictions are something that hold you.”

Reminding the graduates that at the end of their lives they’ll look back over their work and judge whether they’ve passed or failed, Wilson urged them to regularly refl ect on what they believe. They must know, he said, what they cannot compromise in their faith, what their dreams are, and whom they’re serving and why.

“Like Mr. Zimmerman—Bob Dylan—said, ‘We all gotta serve somebody,’” Wilson reminded students. “All professions can be done to the glory of God. If you’re called to be a journalist, be one to the glory of God. If you’re called to be an accountant, do it with God in mind. Have a unifi ed view of life. The Apostle Paul tells us we are to do everything to the glory of God. Your ethics will either be a credit or a discredit to God.”

Dr. Marvin Wilson tells 354graduates to be thoughtful, direct and fi rm intheir faith as they walk off the graduationplatform and onto life’s stage.

2001COMMENCEMENT

4 SUMMER 2001 5

Dr. Craig Barnes, senior pastor of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., delivered the Baccalaureate address

to graduates on Friday evening. He said many today believe we must look within ourselves and construct our own identities, and the preoccupation with

ourselves has become boring. But all our identity questions will be resolved if we have the right answer to the question “Do you love Jesus?” The mark of

maturity in an individual is being bound to and led by Him.The traditional candle lighting by seniors took place at the end of the service.

he said. “Be wary of people who say tradition is to be distrusted and despised. Tradition is honorable; it’s what has been handed down through the generations as being trustworthy,” Wilson said. “The Bible is a living tradition. It is not the dead faith of the living; it is the living faith of the dead.”

If students will settle their minds on the nonnegotiables and fi nd a place in which they can serve and build their dreams, the future will be bright, he said. “Over the last four years, a foundation has been laid in you. It is not important that you remember my name in a few years, but it is important that you remember the three questions. If you test well, you’ll be a millionaire in God’s eyes.”

Dr. Wilson taught at Barrington College 1963–1971 and has been at Gordon since 1971. He is Harold John Ockenga Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies and holds a doctorate from Brandeis University. His award-winning documentary fi lm, Jews and Christians: A Journey of Faith, will be aired this fall on public television stations across the United States.

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6 SUMMER 2001 7

Firefl ies

The stars are winkinggiving me that ‘but you and I’ know-ing look from their sparkling corners,all across this wet black fi eld.

So how can I help but pursue,tracking them with the pause (& dash) of the hunter,my paces molding to their fl ashes?

Holding one for a moment, it innocentlylights up my hand, before fl oating free

into the glinting night air, with a wink.

Tim Wolfe (June 2000)

Dr. Suzanne Phillips above) and Dr. Peter Iltis (right) received Distinguished

Faculty Awards fromDr. Mark Sargent, provost.

Distinguished Faculty Awards are based on teaching abil-ity, noteworthy scholarship and the quality of relationships professors have developed with students. Iltis and Phillips will each receive a $1,000 cash award and be honored by the full student body at a convocation to be held in the fall. Gordon also recognized three retiring professors: Dr. Diane Blake ’58, who served at Gordon for 40 years, both on the faculty and in directing off-campus and international programs; Dr. Muriel Radtke, who served a combined 34 years at Barrington and Gordon and was chairman of the Education Divisions; and Dr. Jane Wells, who served in education for 20 years as the director of teacher certifi cation. Following Commencement Exercises, guests celebrated the

naming of the Margaret Tweten Jensen Studio Theatre in the Barrington Center for the Arts. A popular author and storyteller, Margaret is a frequent visitor to campus and a loved mentor of students.

She is the mother of Jan Carlberg, wife of President R. Judson Carlberg. Her son Ralph and three of her grandchildren have attended Gordon. Jan and Jud, other family members, and friends have contributed generously in Margaret’s honor.

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Gordon’s graduate program in education presented its fi fth graduating class—13 area schoolteachers who received the Master of Education in Curriculum

and Instruction. The winners of the 2001 Distinguished Faculty Awards were Peter W. Iltis and Suzanne M. Phillips, who were honored at Commencement. Their selection was made on the recommendation of faculty associates and members of the senior class. Iltis, recipient of the Distinguished Senior Faculty Award, is a professor and the chairman of the Movement Science Department and has been at Gordon since 1983. He has published in many academic journals and is a member of the American College of Sports Medicine. In addition to his scholarly focus, Iltis is also a semiprofes-sional French hornist who plays with two orchestras and two chamber ensembles. Iltis holds a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. He and his wife, Anna, live in Salisbury, Massachusetts, with their two children, John and Kirsten. Phillips, an associate professor of psychology at Gordon since 1997, received the Distinguished Junior Faculty Award. She is a 1983 graduate of Gordon and holds a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Phillips has written extensively for psychology journals and presented papers at dozens of professional conferences. She has remained active in research, working on projects for the state university system of New York and several other public and private organizations. She resides in Ipswich, Massachusetts, with her son, Dexter.

6 SUMMER 2001 7

Firefl ies

The stars are winkinggiving me that ‘but you and I’ know-ing look from their sparkling corners,all across this wet black fi eld.

So how can I help but pursue,tracking them with the pause (& dash) of the hunter,my paces molding to their fl ashes?

Holding one for a moment, it innocentlylights up my hand, before fl oating free

into the glinting night air, with a wink.

Tim Wolfe (June 2000)

relieves the pres-ent need in the face of famine; but sustainable development deter-mines what caused the famine and provides solu-tions that will prevent future food shortages. Tim’s objective is to explore several areas of sustainable development before he goes on to graduate studies. He began his quest last summer when he attended AuSable Institute’s environmental study program, focusing on sustainable development at their Kenya site. A professor from Nairobi University offered valuable insights into the relationship of politics and economics to donor agencies and traveled with the students to evaluate businesses, government projects and social institutions, and see how they affect the land and the population. During the fall of 2000 Tim was an exchange student at Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya, where he particularly enjoyed a course in African Economic Problems. As students in the Daystar exchange program often do, Tim immersed himself in cultural courses to take the greatest advantage of learning about the country and its people. He recalls meeting a 17-year-old Masai male who was engaged to a 3-year-old child. “Being in Kenya was an awakening to the cultures around me,” Tim says. With a wide scope of interests, Tim has been described by campus leaders as a renaissance man. Not only was he a 4.0 scholar at Gordon, he also jumped with both feet into College activities. He loves to fence, is an avid ultimate frisbee player and a rock climber. He enjoys writing poetry, was on the Idiom staff (a student literary journal) for three years and was a resident advisor his sophomore and junior years. Tim admits, “It was challenging to learn how to approach 30 guys on 30 very different wavelengths. My goal was to get to know each individual—to be able to discuss classical music with the music major and play computer games with the guys next door. I wanted them to know they could come to me when they had problems.” Tim offered to take Friday night duty both years to ease the demand on his RA staff. “It was a bit of a sacrifi ce,” he says. Tim likes to watch how God is connecting the dots in his life. In March he went to a conference in the Netherlands with communications professor Steve Crowe and four other students (see page 9), who did volunteer media work for a large gathering of worldwide children-at-risk agencies. There Tim met a woman who invited him to work at a school for handicapped children in Nigeria this summer. The legacy of Kenneth Pike at Gordon was to give motivated students the opportunity to put their interests together for specialized study and career direction (see page 10). Tim believes the program served him well.

Recent graduate Tim Wolfe says at Gordon he was freed to do

more than imitate; he was encouraged to be creative and inventive

—to think original thoughts.

BY PAT MCKAY ’65

Tim with the friendly beasts in Africa.

In May Tim Wolfe walked across the Commencement platform with a lifetime of Gordon connections. “My earliest memories are of driving onto the campus with

my father—through the tall stand of pines—when I was 3 or 4 years old. I’ve always been comfortable at Gordon,” Tim says. His father, Dr. David Wolfe, taught philosophy here 1974–1987. Both of his brothers graduated from Gordon, Ben in 1998 and Jon in 1997. Nevertheless, Tim did a thorough investigation of other small liberal arts colleges before deciding on Gordon. He came for the reputation of the Biology Department’s premed program and its excellent rate of graduate acceptance into medical schools. His scientifi c bent and interest in helping people led him in that direction. Over time Tim began to have reservations about his plans to become a doctor, and with the insight of his mentor, biology professor Dr. Dorothy Boorse, Tim realized there were other possibilities to be explored. While taking a course in advanced ecology and doing research with Dr. Boorse, he discovered his passion for the environment and how people understand and relate to it.

“Dr. Boorse helped me free up my thinking in choosing a career path; it’s about original thought. It takes faith, courage, confidence, willpower and tremendous hope to carry through. I had to give up the very safe route of medical school and be willing to graduate from college without

necessarily knowing what specifi c direction was next,” Tim says.As a result of that broader view, Tim became a Pike Scholar, developing his own academic program in creative writing and the interdisciplinary fi eld of sustainable develop-

ment, pulling in sociology, economics, energy use and agriculture. Tim says,

“The Pike program has been forma-tive in my understanding of the

way God is guiding me toward community work in underde-

veloped parts of the world. It has allowed me direct

experience and pre-pared me to be a far more

effective servant in God’s kingdom.” Sustainable develop-ment means deter-mining how to meet the present needs of an area of the world while also planning to meet future needs. For instance, relief work

8 SUMMER 2001 9

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sshe says. “And I get e-mails and letters from students who want to stay in touch or let me know how something they learned in class has come in handy. “There’s great virtue in spending your career in one place because you can help mold that institution and be molded by it.” Many changes have taken place in education since Muriel entered her fi rst classroom. Although Muriel says she doesn’t see any reason for the rampant negativity around public schools today—there are both good and bad schools—teach-ing has changed considerably, she says. “We used to teach much more content; subjects such as history and geography.

Now we are expected to teach basic social skills, sex education and character education, whereas it used to be assumed character was developed through hard work and overcoming diffi culties, along with good parenting and good teaching,” she says.Muriel believes education goes in cycles. Currently many school districts are tightening things up and ending the practice of social promotion, insisting on a standard level of academic attain-ment.These years of tension have been somewhat tied to the break-down of the family, she feels. Over the last three decades, teachers have had to deal with disagree-ments about their roles. “There used to be clarity and harmony between home and school expec-tations and what each was respon-sible for. Now many more homes operate with single parents, often leaving greater expectations for

what schools need to do. “Over the years teacher attitudes have changed in general too,” Muriel says. “Teachers used to clearly be role models and were expected to behave in certain ways. That has changed, and teachers are now more like any other professionals.” Some of this comes from teachers’ unions, Muriel says. The National Education Association was primarily a professional organization when it started. “But as it became more unionized, the association did things that shackled teachers,” she says: requirements to work fewer hours; restrictions that make teaching harder than when we were free to arrive early and stay late. But one positive aspect of unions is improved teacher salaries, and for that we are grateful.” As she retires from her unplanned college teaching career, does Muriel feel she missed the road to journalism? “Teaching is what I was meant to do,” she says. “I like organizing a classroom and helping to shape teachers; these tasks still appeal to me. And the great by-product is students who become lifelong friends and encouragers. I didn’t expect that when I started out.”

It may be a bit strong, but not inaccurate, to call Muriel Radtke an accidental teacher. “Actually I

taught elementary school to pay my way through college so I could be a journalist,” Muriel says. But along the way, Muriel’s plans were interrupted. The result was a 34-year teaching career at Barrington and Gordon that has nurtured and mentored thousands of classroom teachers who, in turn, mentor their students.

“I have enjoyed teaching from the very fi rst minute,” she says. “The classroom is where I have wanted to be. I really can see God’s hand in it all as I look back.”

A native of North Dakota, Muriel found herself teaching in a lab class for 8–11-year-olds at Kean State College in New Jersey in the mid-1960s. She was also involved with InterVarsity, where she became friends with Bill Young, a doctoral student at Columbia University.

“After his studies, Bill moved on to teach at a place called Bar-rington College in Rhode Island,” she says. “Later I got a call from Barrington wanting to know if I’d be interested in an opening they had. I fi gured I’d at least go for the interview, but I was only 29 and had never taught at the college level.”

The weather and the interview left her less than enthusiastic, but several months later—in April of 1967—she got a phone call inviting her to teach at Barrington in the fall. “I wasn’t too sure about it, but I decided to go,” she says.

“I needed some shaping and direction, and Bill Young helped me with that. And the students gave me good feedback and let me know where I needed to improve. Some of the students from that fi rst class are still in touch and have become great friends.”

Because many individuals had taken an interest in her progress when she was a beginner, Muriel became a champion of more experienced instructors mentoring the less experienced. “During my whole career there has always been someone willing to come alongside and help me,” Muriel says. “Drs. Mary Thorpe and Rachel King are two who really helped me in classroom and administrative duties at Barrington.”

By the late 1970s Muriel had so mastered her discipline that she was named chairman of the Education Division at Barrington, a position she held until the school merged with Gordon in 1985. She served as the chair of Gordon’s education program from 1993 until her retirement this year.

Along the way she’s had the privilege of watching students she helped educate, prayed for and supported, grow into parents and professionals who have moved into many walks of life. “Many have become teachers, but I recently heard from one of my last students at Barrington—Sharon (Snow) Sirois ’85—who has just published her fi rst book,”

BY CHRIS UNDERATION Muriel Radtke didn’t set out to be a teacher. But she wouldn’t change her long-term detour for anything—not even journalism.

Muriel in 1974 at Barrington, and today. At Barrington Dr. Radtke taught education courses, supervised student teachers and also served as chair of interdisciplinary courses in fi ne arts and fi lm. She was appointed interim academic dean there for two and a half years. She chaired the Education Divisions at both Barrington and Gordon. Muriel was instrumental in establishing the Master of Education program at Gordon and was named chair of the combined under-graduate and graduate Education Divisions in 1996. She and retiring colleague Jane Wells plan to con-tinue their ministry to women in prison—a focus on literacy and spiritual development through classes, Bible studies and worship services.

8 SUMMER 2001 9

Gordon students tapped into a children-at-risk network when professor of journalism Steve Crowe took them to a worldwide conference to volunteer as scribes.

F ive Gordon students knew they’d be getting an education when they fl ew to Holland in March for a weeklong international conference on children at risk. After all, the 300 leaders of

Christian child development agencies, ranging from the president of Compassion International to the director of a 40-bed orphanage in the Philippines, would offer a wealth of knowledge and insight into the disturbing worldwide trends in malnutrition, poverty, education and AIDS. Seniors Tim Wolfe, Jane Mellema and Christina Morgner, and juniors Jennie Hutchinson and Susan LeCain attended dozens of lectures and workshops and took volumes of notes. They were vol-unteer scribes for Cutting Edge conference sponsors, Viva Network, based in Oxford, England.

“People kept asking me if I was getting credit for this,” said Christina, a senior biology major. She wasn’t getting credit, though she spent as much time in sessions and conversations as she would in class for a typical, semester-long course. The students weren’t paid either; they helped raise their own support to cover airfare, room and board.

The invitation for students to attend the conference came through a longtime friend of mine. The conference planning committee was looking to improve communication at its third Cutting Edge conference and to collect information to continue building a network out of the 25,000 projects for children at risk worldwide. Gordon students worked 10- to 12-hour days, taking notes, conducting surveys and typing up hundreds of handwritten comments from delegates for two reports: one on political, economic and other global trends, and one on the biblical basis for child development work. At the conclusion of the gathering, they helped write a two-page newsletter on conference themes.“I felt great about what we did,” said Tim. “It really was unlike anything I’d done before. I never felt really out of my depth, and I quickly realized how much I could help people.” Ken Harder, executive director of the Council of International Children’s Ministries, had high praise for the Gordon students: “Thanks for your servant leadership. Your willingness to do anything we asked of you was such a great example. We hope God rewarded you with an experience which will change your lives.” During their final seven weeks of college, the three seniors—all biology majors—found their minds drifting back to the conference. “I felt like this was a

conference to ‘come away from,’” said Jane. “It was not about what occurred at the conference, but about what will come later.” For Tim the impact of the conference is more immediate. He’ll head to Nigeria this summer to work on projects ranging from construction to videotaping, thanks to a contact he made at the conference (see page 7). Two of the keynote speakers took time for private meals with the Gordon contingent. Students were especially impressed with the spiritual depth of Dr. Samuel Kamaleson, a longtime Urbana Missions Conference speaker and World Vision vice president emeritus. But it was a lunch with Wess Stafford, president of Compassion International, that had the most direct impact on students. Stafford told how, at the age of 28, he doubted that God had much of a purpose for him. Jane noted: “I guess it was very encouraging to me to hear that a man being used by God in such powerful ways was at one point in his life as directionless as I am.” Stafford encouraged students to embrace every conversation, every class, every person, Jane said, “because God may use any of these things to guide, shape and inform us of things we may use later.” Viva Network is an international family of networks set up to link Christians working with children at risk worldwide. To fi nd out more, go to www.viva.org or write to Viva Network, P.O. Box 633, Oxford OX2 OXZ, UK.

Ken Harder, conference chairman

Classroom Moves toHollandBY STEVE CROWE

Steve Crowe has taught jour-nalism and writing courses at

Gordon since 1997. Prior to that he was an editor at The

Salem Evening News, the largest Massachusetts daily north of

Boston. He has also taught courses at Boston University.

Steve holds master’s degrees from Boston University and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Betsy,

have two grown sons.

Front row, L to R: Jane Mellema ’01; Jennifer Hutchinson ’02; Susan LeCain ’02; Christina Morgner ’02. Back row: Peter Coleman; Timothy Wolfe ’01;

Wess Stafford, president of Compassion International; Karen Smith ’84, with New Life Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and sister of Gordon’s

Professor Stephen Smith; Steve Crowe.

PAT M

CK

AY ’6

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S

HeartMINDLoving God with the

HE MAY NOT BE A HOUSEHOLD NAME, BUT WHEN KENNETH L. PIKE, CLASS OF 1933, PASSED AWAY DECEMBER 31, 2000, THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY LOST ONE OF ITS GREATEST SCHOLARS AND ONE OF THE OUTSTANDING LINGUISTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY. SINCE HE WAS A YOUNG BOY, JIM WATTERS HAS KNOWN AND ADMIRED HIM.

BY JIM WATTERS

Dr. Kenneth Pike held appointments as a professor in both anthropology and linguistics at Michigan, served as president of the Linguistic Society of America and the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States, was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and signifi cantly affected the research of modern cultural anthropology. In addition to his doctorate from Michigan, he received honorary doctorates from Georgetown University, the University of Chicago, the Sorbonne in Paris, and Freiberg University in Germany, among others. Tom Headland, SIL International Anthropology Consultant, tells a story that captures the Ken Pike who was loved and revered by his colleagues, both Christian and secular:

At the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in 1988, Ken and Marvin Harris from the University of Florida participated in a debate. Marvin Harris, a Marxist-oriented anthropologist, was considered the leading theoretician in anthropology in the USA. I was the moderator for the debate, which went on for

4+ hours to an audience of over 600 anthropologists. During the discussion period a man in the audience asked a question. To answer him, Ken was thinking of an incident that happened in Russia, but couldn’t remember a name. He looked out over the audience and suddenly said, “Evie, are you out there? Who was that man we had dinner with in Moscow?” Evie was sitting way in the back. She stood up and said, “Ken, that was Dr. So-and-So.” Ken said, “That’s right.” And he fi nished answering the question.I went to the microphone to call on the next person, but before I did I said, “Let me stop here, colleagues, to tell you who that was in the back of the room. That was Kenneth Pike’s wife, Evelyn Pike, and they are here with us this week celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary.” Everyone started clapping. Even the stuffy, gray-haired anthropologists were cheering. Then, Ken without even a thought, stood up, leaned across the table and blew Evie a kiss. The audience roared with even louder cheering and shrill whistles. I have never seen anthropologists act like that in my whole life.

Scholarship didn’t come easily for Ken Pike as a student at Gordon in the early 1930s. Though he went on to author or coauthor 20 books and 200 articles, the thin, high-strung student often found writing papers especially diffi cult. He later told how in the cold Boston winters he would sit by an open window, dressed only in his underwear, in deep sweat as he tried to put words on paper. A native of Connecticut, Ken owed the start of his life of service and scholarship to his parents’ encouragement. After graduating from high school in 1928, he found a job in a grocery store in Rhode Island. That year he decided to study for the ministry but was too insecure to pursue the application process. His mother took the initiative to get him registered at Gordon. He worked on the kitchen crew for his room and board and studied New Testament Greek with Merrill Tenney. Ken was convinced by inner feelings that it was God’s will for him to apply to the China Inland Mission, and he did so in December 1933 at the age of 20, fully confi dent they would accept him. He had spent a few weeks at the mission headquarters in Philadelphia studying Mandarin and learning mission policy. Ken’s struggles with pronunciation and his nervousness were enough to convince the mission he shouldn’t go to China. He was devastated. Assured by his father that God had a special job in mind for him, he continued at Gordon for a year of postgraduate studies. While there he heard from a fellow student about Camp Wycliffe, a small course in Arkansas designed to train Bible translators to work in previously unwritten languages. With his father’s encouragement he attended and

was especially interested in the phonetics course. It was Cameron Townsend—founder of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) and Wycliffe Bible Transla-tors—who invited Ken to join the work in Mexico and begin analysis of a Mixtec language in the state of Oaxaca with the goal of translating Scripture. Early on Townsend took note of Ken’s academic potential and urged him to write a book on language sounds. Ken put the idea out of his mind, convinced he wasn’t the person for the job. He wanted to focus instead on the Mixtec work. However, on a trip to the area where he was working on Mixtec, he slipped and broke his leg while carrying a hundred-pound sack of corn. Confi ned to a hospital bed, he decided God had a purpose for him even there. He started writing what eventually became a classic book in the fi eld of linguistics: Phonetics. Edward Sapir, the most prominent fi gure in American linguistics at the time, was impressed by Ken’s work and was his instructor at a summer session of the Linguistic Society of America held in 1937 at the University of Michigan. In the following years Ken continued his work on Mixtec in Mexico and studied linguistics at Michigan, earning his doctorate in 1941. During the next decade he wrote many linguistic articles and three more books, all signifi cant works in the fi eld: Phonemics: a technique for reducing languages to writing; Tone Languages; and The Intonation of American English. His productivity continued to be remarkable until late in life. After those early struggles with term papers at Gordon, Ken had learned to be a prolifi c writer. He explained it this way:

as well as the

10 SUMMER 2001 11

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The average student picks his topic for writing from the current state of the art or from materials on the frontier of the discipline. My topics arose from my attempts to help students and colleagues whenever I found them having diffi culty studying any language. I would jump down into the ditch with them and try to boost them out. The topics were chosen in relationship to people who were having diffi culty analyzing preliterate languages. This led to variety in my interests and in my writings.Ken was the fi rst linguist to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He

was also nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature and held numerous positions of distinction. Most of all, though, he became a friend to many and encouraged us to serve God with both heart and mind—to combine our commitment to Christ with a life of scholarship.

Ken experienced something even more significant than academic recognition during those early years: he met Evelyn Griset, niece of Cameron Townsend. Evelyn became Ken’s loving wife and a scholar in her own right.

I first came to know the Pikes as a child. After an initial assignment in the Peruvian jungles, my parents worked at the home offi ce of Wycliffe Bible Translators in southern California. My father served on the board and as part of the administration of both Wycliffe and SIL for many years, so they became close friends of the Pikes.I remember Ken’s visits to our home. He engaged me in serious conversations, even when I was a teenager. Sometime after he had spent a year at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, he asked me about my high school math classes and talked about applications of mathematics to models of language. I was always surprised that an outstanding scholar would take such an interest in what I was learning and thinking.Ken initiated a new approach to linguistics. The trend in both the philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics during much of the last half century was to focus on logical issues that arise in

the formal structure and semantics of isolated sentences. But Ken’s experience with language analysis and his many consultations with fi eld linguists led him to focus instead on the level of human interaction. This led him to seek parallels between the structure of language and that of other human behaviors. It also led him to stress the importance of context and observer viewpoint in language and thought. His longest work, Language in Relation to a Unifi ed Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, had at least as much impact on the work of cultural anthropologists as it did on linguists. Among his statements written over the last 50 years can be found some of the best insights into what we now call postmodernism.

Ken Pike encouraged scores of young men and women to become scholars at a time when many conservative church traditions had retreated from the academic world. Through technical research, articles and books in linguistics, devotional writings and chapel talks, poetry and forays into philosophy, Ken always sought to help others understand—whether it was the intricacies of a particular linguistic construction or issues of truth and the importance of multiple perspectives. His was a life of scholarship in service to the many minority groups around the world, some of whom are still waiting to have God’s Word in their own language.

Jim Watters has been with Wycliffe for 24 years and director of SIL’s work in Mexico since August. He and his wife of over 24

years, Juanita, have four children. Jessica is a senior Pike Scholar at Gordon, with a double major in Asian studies and biology.

Showing some of the same passion Ken Pike had for China, she studied there during the last academic year. Josiah graduated

from Gordon in 2000; two other sons are still in high school.Jim and Juanita have worked on the translation of

Scripture into two related Tepehua languages. Jim holdsa doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley—

largely due to Ken’s encouragement.

T he purpose of the Kenneth Pike Honors Program is to provide exceptional students an individual-

ized, flexible, academic experience that will challenge them to utilize all of their academic potential. To enter the program a student must have completed at least one semester at Gordon and have a cumulative grade point average of 3.5. To remain in the program, the scholar must not drop below an average of 3.5 for three semesters. Under an academic advisor and a Pike Honors Committee member, it is the scholar’s responsibility to design and submit a program consisting of challenging learning experiences. It may include selected regular classes, independent studies, special topics courses, research courses, internships, theses, and travel/study in other cultures. The emphasis is on individualized learning. There are 95 Pike alumni and 17 current Pike Scholars. Dr. Kenneth L. Pike epitomized the meld-ing of academic excellence with the life of faith. Upon instituting the honors program in his name at Commencement in 1982, Gordon College conferred the honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters on Dr. Pike. On that occasion he made the follow-ing statement concerning the importance of faith and learning integration in the life of the Christian scholar.

Life is context. Death is autonomy; and independence is the fatal illusion. The fall of the race followed the intellectual choice of stipulating one’s own moral responsibilities outside of the context of God’s stipulation and God’s personal rule. Yet only in Him can we live and move and have our being—as a Greek poet-philosopher quoted by Paul knew in the past.

Life is person—person above thing, person above proposition, person above academic knowledge. Life in context reaches its integrating wholeness in context of family, context of culture, context of God the Three-in-One.

The Trinity could talk, plan and create. The Trinity made us in that image also to talk, plan and create; talking to create a taxonomy (in naming the animals) before the Fall; planning an ecologically controlled environment (keeping the garden cultivated and trimmed) before the Fall.

And after the Fall? This and more in the Plan: loving the Person of God with commitment which necessarily includes the intellect (mind as well as heart) and society (one’s neighbor).

The college student needs this com-manded breadth. He needs psychological insight into community, insight into growing things, physical insight into the created stars and their space-time stuff, and philosophical and spiritual insight into the Plan and Person revealed in words by the Word.

Go to it! It’s fun!

PROBABLY NO

OTHER EVANGELICAL

HAS HAD SUCH AN

IMPACT ON BOTH

THE ACADEMIC

WORLD OF THE

SOCIAL SCIENCES

AND HUMANITIES,

AND THE MODERN

MISSIONARY

ENTERPRISE.

Josiah, Jessica and Jim

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gives perspectivePike Scholars from the ’80s, the ’90s and the 21st century

refl ect on their experiences in the Pike Program.

PIKE PROGRAM

BY JESON INGRAHAM ’99

During high school I became interested in linguistics. Because I was homeschooled,

I had the fl exibility of taking an introductory course in linguistics at a local university during my senior year of high school. That experience cemented my interest in and excitement for linguistics.

As I made my college search that year, it became discourag-ingly clear that though many have programs in music—another love I didn’t want to give up—few undergraduate institutions offer a program in linguistics. During the application process for Gordon, I learned that one of the benefi ts of a Gordon education is the Pike Program. This brewed in the back of my mind when I made a decision to come to Gordon as a music major.

During my freshman year I learned of a way music can go hand in hand with linguistics in Bible translation. It’s called

Perspective has become the mantra of post-modern study. I tried to keep this in mind

when crafting a Pike program designed to boil down the historical, political, theological, sociological, economical roots of societal divi-sion.A trip to Northern Ireland to study peace and

confl ict resolution at Magee College in Derry—Londonderry if you side with Unionists—injected some real life and anecdotal experiences into my academic studies. I returned to Gordon my senior year with musing on my mind, which I nurtured as a columnist for the school newspaper, The Tartan. And since graduating in 1999, my college degree has taken me further into the fi eld of journalism as I cover two rural communities for The Daily News in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

I was attracted to Gordon’s high academic and moral quality education, but I had hoped to

major in international relations, which Gordon didn’t offer at the time. The Pike Program was the solution to my dilemma. I designed courses similar to those offered at other schools and did some of the work in Korean politics on site in Korea, where I grew up. During my senior year

Gordon permitted me the privilege of coordinating a course and arranging for lecturers and activities—Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, which was offered to other students. I’m still using the training I received at Gordon (as well as that of a seminary degree and a master’s in teaching English) as a tentmaker among the Korean minority people in northeast China—perhaps the most closed nation on earth today. Working

BY SAMUEL FOLTA ’87

BY CATHERINE MACLEOD ’03

ethnomusicology: the study of musical cultures of a non-Western society. It is an academically challenging fi eld because of the cultural and linguistic barriers involved—the equivalent of musical anthropology. I was able to make ethnomusicology a part of a modifi ed music major through the Pike Program. In addition to complet-ing a B.A. in music, under the direction of my music advisor, Professor Stanley Pelkey, I’m developing independent studies in ethnomusicology. As part of that, I’m excited to be attending the Wycliffe’s Summer Institute of Linguistics in North Dakota this summer. I’m grateful God has given me not only the blessing of studying at Gordon but also the privilege of combining these two majors for greater learning opportunities. I look forward to one day using these tools to take the Word of God to unreached language groups.

This is certainly not the setting I envisioned when coining “Politics in Divided Societies” as the name of my program. But underneath the sanitation of suburban life there have been plenty of disagreements to report on. You’d be amazed how many lawsuits can be spurred on by plans to extend a sewer line to a beach community on Plum Island, or how much passion is invoked by debate on whether to keep a town landfi ll open.

Perspective is, perhaps, the single most diffi cult thing to fi t into the who, what, when, where, how and why of the newspaper clipping. While reporting these days has become more concerned with fairness than objectivity, it’s still a tough medium in which to give every viewpoint an equitable hearing.

The sensitivities I gleaned from the Pike Program have helped me take care in understanding how numerous angles add to the fullness of the stories we all tell.

from my base as coordinator of the English conversation program at Yanbian University of Science and Technology, where I teach and supervise a staff of 18 English teachers, I’m also able to be involved in leadership training, literature distribution and relief for displaced persons. My experience in the Pike Program helps me be a better advocate for people trying to accomplish their personal goals which do not fi t into prearranged institutional boxes. It prepared me to help young people attempting to get into seminaries—a very diffi cult endeavor in China. The Pike Program has borne fruit not only in my own life but also in the lives of Charles Kim (Th.M.), Suzie Park (music degree), and Stephen Kim (M.Div.). In my opinion, the Pike Program is one of the best things Gordon has going for it.

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Happy to be at Gordon College and thankful for the opportunityto follow a rigorous academic program grounded in Christian values

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F

AFROM THE COCHAIRS OF PARTNERS

s a member of the Board of Trustees at Gordon College for the past 14 years, I’ve had the privilege of helping make decisions that set and stay the course of the College. There have been decisions to build new buildings, expand academic programs, enable faculty to grow in their fi elds of expertise and so on. Providing the best possible environment for our students to experience the education they need to serve as Christian leaders worldwide has always been a concern for the trustees. However, for me personally, helping students through the tremendous fi nancial hardships that some face in order to study here at Gordon has been a special area of concern. So in 1989 the Partners Program was launched, and for the past 11 years my wife, Barbara, and I have served as cochairs of the program, providing direction and encouragement.

By God’s grace the Partners Program has grown from 40 Partners in 1989 to 350 Partners today, contributing over $1.6 million in scholarship support for a total of 1,500 students. The best explanation for this growth is found in student letters like this one:

Thank you so much for supporting my Partners scholarship this year. During the past year my father’s business went bankrupt, my parents separated and are in the process of divorce, and I’ve been stranded in the middle, responsible for paying my way through school. Your support has enabled me to return to Gordon as a junior music education major and get one step closer to being able to teach young people the beauty of music.

Our hope as cochairs of this program is that we are able to get to alums, friends, parents and churches the message that we have a program in place that helps students like this one. But as the students’ needs increase each year, so does our need for additional Partners support.

Students supported by this program are grateful for the opportunity they’re given to experience an education of academic rigor grounded in Christian values and truth. They’re our future local and global leaders, and Barbara and I want to do all we can to help them graduate from Gordon College and face the world with this fi rm foundation. Will you join us this year?

WHY IS THE PARTNERS PROGRAM SO CRITICAL? inancial aid for deserving students continues to be a challenge for both students and Gordon College. When it comes to meeting the costs of a college education, it must begin with the students and their families. But many families simply can’t afford the full amount. As Partners you help bridge this fi nancial gap by providing support for students through the Partners Scholarship Program.

There are two substantial scholarship sources at Gordon. The fi rst is through the College’s endowment. We’re making good progress in this area but still need to increase the endowment considerably. In the past three and a half years, the endowment has grown from $11 million to just over $24 million.

The second source of scholarship assistance is through current gifts—like Partners. This operates as our current endowment. Gordon continues to work hard to keep cost increases down so your support can have a greater impact. In the past two years the tuition increase has been held at or below the rate of infl ation.

Here are a few points that further illustrate the need for Partners scholarships:

• Eighty-eight percent of all Gordon students are receiving some type of fi nancial assistance.

• The Gordon students who are assisted by Partners scholarships usually receive $6,500 to $11,000 of Gordon’s other scholarship/grant support.

• One-third of the students receiving aid have annual family household incomes of $40,000 or less. For approximately 450 students and their families, the cost of a year at Gordon is more than half of the family’s income after taxes.

Don and Barbara Chase

Barbara S. and Donald P. Chase, TrusteeCochairs, Gordon Partners Program

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Partners ListingAnonymous DonorsA. P. Vending and Amusement CompanyStarla Ackley ’87Elmer* Anderson ’24Joyce ’58 and Harold AndersonManuel ’47 and Madelyn AvilaJeffrey ’81 and Kathleen ’85 AzadianJeffrey Baker ’81Walter and Mary BakerRonald Barnett ’59Barrington AlumAndrew ’83 and Sarah (Prescott) ’82 BeauregardJohn ’53 and Georgia* x’58 BeauregardPeter and Diana BennettRobert and Genie BennettPaul and Joan BergmannEric ’89 and Andrea ’98 BergstromHarry and Gerd BergstromEllen BishopPeter ’64B and Jan BlackwellCarl and Catherine BlatchleyBarbara BolesPhilip ’64 and Linda x’66 BonardThales and Sally BowenRobert and Nancy BradleyRobert ’89 and Tatum ’96 BrooksFrancis ’85 and Theresa BrownJan ’78 and Wes BrownSteven ’87 and Laurel ’89 BrunvollCharles ’61 and Carole BruttoCedric ’87 and Lisa ’87 BuettnerRonald and Barbara BurwellFrank and Ruth ButlerSandy ’93 and David ButtersNancy ’85 and Gregory CannonMichael and Patricia CapparelliR. Judson and Jan CarlbergLinda ’70 and David CarlsonPaul ’54B and Myrtle CarlsonRoy and Barbara CarlsonPriscilla ’92 and William CarterPaul and Mary CeluchJohn ’69 and Jean ChangDonald and Barbara ChaseNancy CiceroLisa Coderre ’84Randall ’67 and Patricia ’68 CollinsMary Cowperthwaite ’69Cheryl Crawford ’77William and Patricia CrawleyRichard CushingJudith Dean ’78Thomas and Barbara DenmarkDarren ’91 and Deb DeSimoneJeremy DePace ’95William and Margaret DepewDaniel and Flo DinzikAlys ’64 and Norman DorianDeighton ’50B and Alice ’50B DoughlinJeffrey ’77 and Melanie ’77 DrakeDrinkwater Contracting CompanyKenneth DurginArnold and Mary ’60 EllsworthRodney and Barbara ElsenheimerDouglas ’88 and Pamela ElzingaKenneth and Terry ElzingaArthur and Karen EmeryThomas and Sue EnglundJoanne ’83 and Curtis ’81 ErsingNola Maddox FalconeEarl ’74 and Linda FarmerEric ’76 and Robin ’80 FeustelLynn ’80 and William FishJohn ’81 and Andree FontaineRobert and Lillian FultonFrederick and Nancy GaleScott ’81 and Kimberly ’83 Gardiner

Gary ’74 and Marianne ’75 GentelThomas and Jutta GerendasPaige Gibbs ’69Dean and Mary GivenMichael and Ann GivensRobert and Joan Gordon Robert and Catherine GoughPatricia ’67 and Stephen GrahamGary and Deborah GreenFrederick and Juliet Griffi nRobert ’81 and Barbara ’81 GrinnellRichard and Jody GrossSusan ’91 and Tyler GrossThomas ’77 and Carol ’78 GruenJudson ’69 and Joan ’74 GuestBrian ’87 and Johanna HabibDavid ’89 and Tera ’89 HagenSamantha ’95 and Joshua HagerKarl ’96 HahnDavid ’89 and Beverly ’77 HallCraig and Margot ’68 HammonSteven ’74 and Debra HardingCharles ’86 and Lisa ’89 HarveyDavid ’84 and Elaine HayesRobert and Betty HerrmannPeter and Jo Dee HerschendHerbert and Sally HessMatthew Hillas ’93Robert ’56 and Frances ’56 HinckleyDavid and Patricia HofsassStanley ’68 and Beryl ’62B HoglundRoy and Beverly HoneywellDavid ’65 and Irmgard HowardDonald HowardRobert and Rachel HsuGordon and Jane Ann HugenbergerJames and Sydney HumphreyRoger ’80 and Barbara HuselandSkip Hussey ’63Shelly and Mary Ellen IveyFrederic ’59B and Alma ’75B Ivor-CampbellRaymond JarvioMargaret JensenDavid Jodice ’75William ’78 and Ann JohnsonJames and Marilyn JohnstonVerna JoitheRoss and Emily JonesRobert and Meredith JossDeborah Kalafi an ’83John and Jean Kalafi anMamoru ’64 and Noriko KamadaWilliam and Sally KanagaHoward ’52 and Hazel KeeleyWilliam and Jane KeepKirsten ’90 and Andrew KeithDonna Jean ’69 and Glenn KendallGlenice KershawDaniel ’57 and Ronnie Jean KlimCraig and Deborah KnotKatie ’99 and Matthew KrasonPrudence KuhrtDaniel ’74 and Darlene ’74 KuzmakRay and Mildred LaneGeorge ’45 and Ruby LangDavid and Sheila LarsonWilliam and Carol Ann LavertyRob and Connie LawrencePhilip ’82 and Flora LeeJeffrey ’88 and Lorraine LewinJoseph and Lanayre LiggeraEric ’91 and Catherine ’94 LindsayDavid and Suzana LindsayMartha ’73 and Michael LinehanRichard and Carolyn LippmannJ. Anthony LloydThomas Longhway

Bronwyn ’87 and Caleb LoringWillis and Marjorie LundWinston ’71B and Margaret ’67B LyfordEdward ’80 and Beryl ’81 LynchMark ’84 and Suzanne LynchGordon and Gail MacDonaldJames and Joyce MacDonaldBruce MacKilligan ’58Stephen and Robin MacLeodRonald ’81 and Jerilyn ’82 MahurinChad and Robin MaslandR. Preston ’85 and Pamela MasonJames and Virginia MastersonPat ’75 and Roger McClellandMarjorie McClintock ’90Norma ’80 and Byron McCluskeyJill ’94 and Patrick McGinnR. Bancroft ’68B and Kathleen McKittrickCatherine McLaughlinCarl ’43 and Alberta ’44 McNallyJerrold and Jolene McNattGeorge ’85 and Terisa MeansJohn and Jacquelyn MeersDavid Mering ’71Eric ’81 and Lois ’80 MeyerPhilip ’86 and Cynthia ’78 MichaelsMiller Outpost Mail ServiceRobert and Linda MonroeMargaret MontalvoHoward Moon ’62Mark and Glad MooreTimothy ’78 and Jane MorganTaizo Morimoto ’81Doreen Morris ’74David ’76 and Debra ’76 MyersHarold and Jeanette MyraCathy ’80 and F. C. NackelJeffrey and Darlene NeilDavid ’71 and Helgi NelsonGrant and Carol NelsonWilliam and Chelle NickersonNorman ’75 and Deborah NielsenJulie Anderson Oldham ’83Mark ’84 and Alexandra OlsonMark ’95 and Lynn ’95 OvertonW. Terry and Janice OvertonRichard and Laura ParkerRobert and Kathleen ParleeWilliam and Lynne PayneEllen ’90 and Charles PepinLeonard and Judy PetersonVirginia ’52 and Meredith PetersonW. Ross ’51 and Lucile PetersonNed Pethick ’96Barrett and Susan PettyPfi zer Inc.Eric and Cynthia PhillipsThomas and Gertrude PhillipsCarl and Sarah PickellGordon Pierce ’60Jon and Kathy PitmanShelly Pitman ’95Judith ’67 and Seppo RapoLouise RathfonWilliam and Evie ReedWalter ’50B and Audrey x’50B RiceDouglas Rieck ’75Colyn ’72 and Janet RobertsJames ’66B and Joanne RobertsJeffrey ’92 and Kari ’90 RourkeRichard ’53 and Dorothy RungM. Kimberly RupertDavid ’74B and Joyce ’75B RuppellGrosvenor and Marjorie RustDante ’80 and Melanie ’82 RutstromBradford ’91 and Sharon ’92 Salmon

Brooks ’65 and Tina x’66 SandersMark and Arlyne SargentWarren ’57 and Joan SawyerJohn and Marcia Schefl enScott ’90 and Karyn SchneiderDavid and Esther SchultzThomas and Lyn ShieldsJ. Bryan and Kim SimmonsRussell and Barbara SkinnerLoren and Colleen SloatDerk ’81 and Amy ’93 SmidDavid ’79 and Elizabeth SmithHerman ’70 and Denise SmithDurwood and Judith SneadWilliam ’49 and Elizabeth SnowCheri Lynn Sperr ’86 and Rick MorganG. Alan and Jane SteuberMichael ’92 and Carolyn ’92 StevensPeter and Betsy StineMark StockwellRaymond ’81 and Kathleen StotlemyerWarren and Joan StrattonBradford ’76 and Marla ’75 StringerClement Sutton Jr.David and Marcia SwensonBrock ’84 and Gina SwetlandAnn TappanStephen and Claire TavillaVirginia Tavilla x’55Mark and Carol TaylorRon and Sue TeiwesElizabeth Gordon ThompsonGary ’76 and Patricia ’76 ThorburnHarold and Diane ToothmanV. Simpson ’45 and Laura TurnerVernon ’33 and Marian ’33 TuxburyDaniel and Andrea TymannJonathan ’83 and Carlene TymannNathan ’91 and Linda ’91 TymannWilliam ’52 and Nancy ’55B UdallWilliam ’52 and Norma UnsworthJames and Barbara Vander MeySilvio ’87 and Theresa Morin ’86 VazquezMark ’96 and Joanne ’96 VermontAndrew Waddell ’98Richard and Jayne WaddellEdward ’44 and Barbara WalkerMeirwyn and Nina WaltersJames and Elizabeth WardenRobert and Nance WareLawrence ’77B and Amy ’78B Warfi eldRaymond and Mildred WarrenMina ’46 and Robert WattsJay and Cathie WegrzynThomas WeisDonald x’83 and Shirley WeltRobert Werth ’73West Congregational ChurchDoris ’78 and Tom WilliamsRichard and Gail WilsonMrs. Robert WilsonThomas ’80 and Marjorie ’84 WilcoxHelen WingateGeorge and Penny WingateFay WinsonMichael Woffenden ’84Timothy ’73 and Georgette WoodruffDavid and Suzy YoungThomas ’68 and Linda ’69 ZeigerWilliam ’78 and Laurie ’78 Zimmerman

*Deceased

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WILL YOU JOIN US THIS YEAR?Joining the Partners Program not only satisfi es your desire to help fi nancially deserving students continue their education at Gordon, but it also puts you in touch with other Partners (such as those on the preceding page) who share this desire to support student scholarship. As Partners we depend on you to:

• help us make the best in Christian education financially available to deserving students (see gift levels below)

• pray for our students as they seek the Lord’s will in their lives

• encourage others to support the Partners Scholarship Program so more students can benefi t

And, in turn, we . . .• keep you informed by mailing Partners Reports from President Carlberg to you several times

during the year, providing news of student and faculty achievements and other developments at Gordon

• invite you to special events on campus, where you can fellowship with other Partners and meet students who are the benefi ciaries of your support

THREE OPTIONS FOR JOINING THE PARTNERS PROGRAM

• Visit www.gordon.edu/giving and click on Online Giving to make a credit card gift.

• Complete the information below and mail it along with your check to: Sandy Butters, Development Offi ce, Gordon College, 255 Grapevine Road, Wenham, Massachusetts 01984.

• Arrange a special payment plan with Ann Givens, 978.927.2306, extension 4233.

cut here

Yes! I’d like to join the Partners Program for 2001–02. Enclosed is my gift of $________.

Associate Partners Level ($500–$999) Partners Level ($1,000–$4,999) Founders Level ($5,000+)

Name __________________________________________________________________________________

Address_________________________________________________________________________________

I authorize Gordon College to charge my

VISA MasterCard Account # _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ Expiration date _____ /_____

___________________________________________________Signature

“The fi rst time we visited the Gordon College campus, our impression was that it was just too good to be true. We couldn’t get over the kindness shown us by the students and administration. But over the years we found this Christlike attitude is indeed a hallmark of Gordon. Not only have our children received a top-notch educa-tion, but we’ve all built relationships that will last into eternity.”

Ellen Bishop

“We both had tremendously posi-tive experiences at Gordon. We received an excellent educa-tion, which prepared us for the business world and matured us in our walk with Christ. Rarely do both of these occur during time spent at college. It happens regularly at Gordon, and we want others to be able to share in that.”Brad ’91 and Sharon (Harbinson) ’92 Salmon

Ellen is pictured with her children, Kenneth ’98,

Rebecca ’03 and Robert ’98. Ellen and her

husband, Larry, formerly served as copresidents of the Gordon CollegeParents Association. Larry passed away in August 1999.

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October of 1994 was the fi rst time I fl ew from my home in California to Boston to visit Gordon College. I was a senior

in high school when my mom and I boarded the plane for an 8 A.M. fl ight out of San Francisco. That was the fi rst of 27 round trips I’ve made so far between the coasts—trips taken as a prospec-tive student, an enrolled student and now as an admissions recruiter for Gordon.

On that October morning, the six hours spent in the sky were fi lled with questions about Gordon and the admissions process. Today a plane ride out West takes on a different meaning. The unknown has been exchanged for under-standing gained through the experience of not only completing the application process and attending Gordon, but through work-ing closely with West Coast students and families who ponder

some of those same questions and decisions I faced seven years ago.

The col-lege search and application pro-cess take hard work, but a student can be rewarded with a satisfying outcome that makes all the

effort more than worthwhile. The process begins with checking out schools that offer desired features. The Internet is a great tool for getting an overview of a college. College fairs are an excellent source for information too, and there’s the standard word-of-mouth endorsements from alumni and their families. All this exploration takes time, and competition for space at some colleges has become fi erce, so many students start making contacts as early as their sophomore or junior years. The best way to determine whether or not a college is a good fi t is to see and experience the campus. The Admissions Offi ce helps families plan such visits to Gordon. Once a decision has been reached, it’s best to beat deadlines, not just meet them. This goes for admissions, fi nancial aid and scholarship applications. A worthwhile goal is to mail the admissions application and essays over Thanksgiving break of the senior year. Making wise time management decisions is a good exercise, which in itself makes the transition to college smoother. Another aid in the transition is to take substantive academic courses right up through the fi nal semester of high school. Finishing strong contributes not only to a sound application but is also a solid preparation for the greater work load that lies ahead.

Elizabeth when she was a student at Gordon. L to R: Emily (Holmgren) Amadon ’99, Jennifer (Rolsing) Kennedy ’99, Elizabeth, Krista Carlson ’00.

Elizabeth Eaves did seven years ago. Now she herself isshepherding students through the admissions process at Gordon.

BY ELIZABETH EAVES ’98

the College Search?

SAT scores and grade point averages are not the only considerations when Gordon looks at an applicant. We look for the student who is committed academically but also involved with extracurricular activities and in spiritual areas. We consider the whole person and the potential contributions he or she may make to the campus community.The application essays, references and inter-view all play important roles. At the same time, the importance of the interview should not

be cause for unnecessary anxiety. It’s basically a congenial conversation that provides helpful information for both the prospective student and the College. Students should prepare for it by carefully determining their gifts and strengths as well as interests and plans, and then considering how to best articulate those to another person. This is great practice which will prove helpful in various life opportunities to come, whether they be career or personal. Once prepared, the key is to relax; a student’s demeanor is a clue to how he or she will deal with college life. And remember, all admissions recruiters were themselves at one time prospective students going through the same process. We’re here to be a helpful resource as students seek to determine whether the College matches their needs and desires. When I left Gordon after my fi rst visit, I felt an excitement and enthusiasm that have since multiplied many times over. Gordon is a unique community fueled by dedication to faith and learning. Its location in the Boston area refl ects the liberal arts tradition established by the nation’s most prestigious universi-ties. Gordon is a place where faith and intellectual development are still considered complementary, not contradictory. The success of its strong spiritual training is evidenced by the reception of its stu-dent leaders—from the local community to remote parts of the globe through internships, study abroad programs, and missions. The college search takes time and inten-tionality, but it can and should be an enjoyable process. With hard work and patience, a school can be found that will be a home away from home, even if it’s thousands of miles away. For admissions information call 800.343.1379 or e-mail admissions@gordon.edu.

• Start the college search early

• Visit the campus

• Beat the deadlines

• Finish high school strong

• Be well-rounded

• Determine strengths and present them well

• Relax—be yourself

Elizabeth recruited Paige Orton ’02. Here, they discuss course listings.

14 SUMMER 2001 15

In 1954, after completing my general exams at Harvard, I traveled to the Netherlands as a Fulbright Scholar to track down further information for my doctoral thesis.

My family and I lived in a small Amsterdam apartment and traveled around Europe with a used British Ford and a used U.S. Army tent. I was quite confi dent I knew almost everything about Europe worth knowing, but shock quickly set in. It became clear I was a stranger in a highly civilized environment and didn’t know what people were saying, doing or thinking. I felt vulnerable, confused, unsure of everything, lost most of the time—but very teachable. I had been teaching at Gordon on the Fenway since 1951and returned from Europe to the new Wenham campus in 1955 to teach Western Civilization classes. I was a chastened teacher, wearing my tattered learning lightly. Besides humility, I had learned something about the context of history. It was in after-class conversations that some students began to ask, “Why can’t we go to Europe too?” That’s what launched European Seminar in 1958. For the next 33 years, until I retired from teaching in 1991, some 3,800 students put on their boots and headed for Europe. We chartered our own planes, secured a fl eet of vans and for two months Gordon faculty, augmented by teachers from Wheaton, Houghton, Barrington, Yale and others, led a variety of tours through Western Europe, Russia, Greece, Israel and Scandinavia. At fi rst we were a bit uncertain—sometimes baffl ed—but we were all eager to learn. We were teachable. The trips were not merely to see the famous and exciting sites on the continent. Travelers were loaded down with assigned readings, preparatory lectures, required daily journals and, of course, the ever-talkative team historians. But

Gordon’s enviable international study programs made their debut 43 years ago, when such programs were virtually unheard of. A young professor by the name of David Franz led the fi rst group of students to Europe in 1958, and students, alumni and friends have followed him around Europe and Asia ever since. We asked Dr. Franz to reminisce about a handful of teachable moments from his many treks.

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perhaps it was the unplanned teaching moments that were the most memorable.

No Longer Just Abstractions In 1967 our three vans followed an enormous convoy of Russian tanks and soldiers as they churned up huge clouds of dust enroute to the Czechoslovakia border. We fi nally passed them, crossed the border and entered Prague. The central square was fi lled with young people celebrating a successful revolt against the communist government. A few days later, safely outside Czechoslovakia, we watched with horror as Western television chronicled hour after hour the bloody entrance of the Russian Army into Prague. We saw the young people trying to throw fl aming bottles of gasoline into the open hatches of the huge tanks. And we asked ourselves, “Was freedom that important, more valuable than one’s life?” In Moscow a few summers later, a Russian lad in his late teens attached himself to some of the young men on our team. Help-ful, joyful and excited, he soon became the team mascot. As we gathered around the

14 SUMMER 2001 15

vans on depar-ture day, a police van pulled up

and several armed police rushed out to grab him. We couldn’t believe what was happening; what crime, what reason, what treason could there be? Just before he was thrown into the van, he lifted his head and shouted, “Don’t worry about me!” The whole scene seemed so bizarre, so frightening, so totalitarian. We replayed it over and over in the vans as we left Russia. The unlimited power of the state had leapt out of the textbook and lodged painfully in our heads, no longer an abstraction.

And who could forget Auschwitz? Huge bins of children’s shoes, tattered suitcases, women’s hair cut from the corpses, furnaces, empty rail cars; by the end of the afternoon we were absolutely stunned. Could it be that Paul’s words in Romans 1 about the fall of man and the depths of our iniquity rang more true than the long hosannas to the progress of man which had been our common gospel in public schools and textbooks? Were the scholars more accurate to now say the 20th century is the most violent century in written history? We had looked deep into the abyss and were shattered.

Late afternoon above the Roman Forum, we explored the world of the mad Nero, insane Caligula, powerful Augustus. Then we sat in the shade on the brow of the Palatine, looking down on the Mamartine Prison. Was it the place of Paul’s fi nal imprisonment as many scholars argue? We pulled out copies of Paul’s letters, passed them around the circle and read his sad words to Timothy: “At my fi rst defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me.” And then we read the sequel: “But the Lord stood by my side.”

We continued with another letter from Rome to the Philippians. Was Paul really serious when he urged us from his chains, “Rejoice in the Lord always”? As if he had heard our incredulous response, he repeated this most diffi cult command: “I will say it again; Rejoice!” Which of us stoics will ever read that letter in some agonizing personal crisis without remembering the man in chains saying to us, “Rejoice in the Lord always.”The tragic aspects of war settled in our memories as we camped on the cliffs above the Normandy Beaches and traced the landings on June 6, 1944, at Omaha Beach. More than 2,500 men had died that morning—many of them 19- and 20-year-old American boys fi ghting their very fi rst and last battle of World War II.On one occasion a team member received a letter from his Dad, detailing a story which he had never been able to tell his family—the story of his attack with the U.S.

Rangers on that terrifying cliff at Pointe Du Hoc. On another occasion a team member left the team to travel by bus to the American military cemetery where his father was buried. He had been killed in action soon after leaving the States, and this young man had never seen his father. I have never forgiven myself for not leaving the team that day to make the lonely journey with him to his father’s grave.As the British Colonel John McCrae wrote on the day of his own death on the battlefi eld, “Tell them this, ‘If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep.’”

Some Lighter MomentsThough there was much seriousness on our trips, the history vans traveling down the highway were also filled with endless humor and music. And we learned folk songs from each country as well as hymns that were written there. In northern Europe we appro-priately sang, “In all kinds of weather, what if the rain should fall, as long as we’re together it doesn’t matter at all.” Certain hilarious situations tested our sense of humor, as on one day in Switzerland. While sauntering around Interlaken, we saw the heavy, black clouds gathering over the Alps. We jumped in the vans and headed up the valley of Lauterbrunnen to rescue our tents from certain disaster. As we approached the campground we could see the fi rst tent, and inside it one terrifi ed student sitting on a pile of air mattresses with his sleeping bag wrapped around his head. Unfortunately, all the other tents had collapsed on soaked sleeping bags and dripping suitcases.

Facing a long, cold night sitting in the vans, I wandered around the Swiss village looking for some kind

of shelter. I came upon a large chalet, and on

Dr. Franz lectures in the Roman Forum in the 1970s.

On one occasion DickGross said the fi rst time

he heard of Gordon College was when he became

acquainted with Gordon’s European Seminar.At Homecoming the

favorite refrain of veterans of the Seminar is ‘Best summer I ever had.’

Tenting in Worms, Germany, circa 1980.

16 SUMMER 2001 17

impulse I went inside. Peter and Clare von Allmen welcomed me and hardly blanched when I told them I was the leader of 26 cold, wet and desperate American students down in the campground. For the next 23 years, all of our traveling teams looked forward to spending three days in midsummer at the Chalet Im Rohr, surrounded by the 14,000-foot Alpine peaks.

Amazing GraceForty-three years later I refl ect on the amazing grace of God that we all returned safely from each trip. I think too of the idealism of the leaders who volunteered to lead the teams without summer salaries. They did it simply out of their convictions that all students should have the chance to take the history roads of their own heritage.

The enthusiasm of Diane Blake ’58, Bill ’62 and Lillian ’60 Harper, Russ Bishop, Tom and Jean Askew, Dick and Martha Stout, Ruby Blackhall ’56, Dick Rung ’53, Beth Wilcoxson ’66, Grady Spires, Kaye Cook, Ann Ferguson, John Skillen ’76, John Beauregard ’53, the late Nigel Kerr and many others made it all possible.Many sacrificed for European Seminar, but no one more than my late wife, Doris (’44B), and my family. Refl ecting more fully on the extent of steady support and unending contributions they made to this idealistic venture has been for me yet another teachable moment.

Since retirement Professors Franz and Bishop have led more than 700 alumni on two-week miniature European Seminars for the Alumni Offi ce.

Dr. Franz has also responded to the request of several local churches to do various journeys on church history in cooperation with the Alumni Offi ce. This year two teams took trips to the British Isles: one to tour England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales; and another to retrace the steps of the Puritan fathers who left Ipswich, England, in 1633. They bought almost the whole of what is now Essex County from Chief Masconomet of the Algonquins for 20 pounds and founded Ipswich, Massachusetts, along with a string of other important Puritan towns in New England. Dr. Franz is doing a memoir on European Seminar and would like to receive anecdotes, meaningful moments, etc., from seminar veterans. Send memoirs to him c/o the College Communications Offi ce, or by e-mail to dfranz@mediaone.net.

. . . For the next 23 years, all of our traveling teams looked forward to spending three days in midsummer at the Chalet Im Rohr, surrounded by the 14,000-foot Alpine peaks.

The Gordon College Teaching Ship on the Rhine River in the 1960s.

Taken in Brugge, Belgium,

on the 1999 alumni trip.With Dr. Franz are members of the class

of 1964: (L to R) Linda (Trask) Siddon; Clara (Niles)Whitney; Mary (Little) Gibbs; Elaine (Townsend) and Calvin Blaser.

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International Programsat Gordon Today

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European Seminar was the forerunner of the many international programs that students choose from at Gordon today. It shaped the understanding of and goals for cross-cultural studies at

the College. In fact, it was their fi rst experience abroad for many faculty and staff, which helped to stimulate cultural awareness and excitement for international programs among the administration and students. If not the fi rst, it was among the very fi rst programs of its type in colleges around the country.Dr. Franz reminds us of European Seminar’s humble beginnings: “Can it be that in 1958 we took the reconstructed troop ship across the Atlantic, spent two months camping and ate hundreds of peanut butter sandwiches—all for $595?” He also notes that one cannot overestimate the efforts of Diane Blake, who was a student on that fi rst trip, became secretary of European Seminar and then was associate director from 1964 to 1986.” European Seminar earned academic credits from the start, and at its peak 150 participants—half of which were non-Gordon people—went on fi ve different fi eld trips each summer. The basic program began in Western Europe; in 1964 Eastern Europe was added, and in 1965 the three additional teams went to Greece, Israel and Russia. A fi fth team spent one month in England for literary credit and one month on the continent for history credit.Primed for international study by European Seminar, Gordon

has participated in the growing list of international programs sponsored by the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) from its inception in 1976 (see Spring 2001 Stillpoint). And in 1987, under then Dean of the Faculty Jud Carlberg, Dr. Diane Blake established Off-Campus Programs at Gordon. She later became assistant dean of external education, retiring this year.

Of the 2001 graduates, 34 percent spent a semester or academic year on an off-campus program. Gordon sends many students to CCCU study programs at home and overseas. Students receive credit in four

CCCU programs abroad—China, Latin America, the Middle East and Russia.Gordon also sponsors four programs of its own: Semester in Orvieto, Italy; Gordon-at-Oxford; Gor-don-in-France; and Tropi-cal Biology Semester in the Philippines. Gordon students can study in a broad variety of other programs including AuSable Institute of Environmental Studies in India and Kenya; Daystar University in Kenya; Jerusalem University College; Nova Scotia Student Exchange Program; and a host of programs in the United States.International Seminars are intensive summer travel courses from different disciplines taught in the context of a specifi c culture or region. Gordon offers an international affairs major, hosted by the Political Studies and Economics and Business Departments, as well as a minor in international studies. Their majors study in South Africa, Italy, Australia, Spain, Ireland, to name a few places. Education students may spend a semester at St. Martin’s College in Lancaster, England, where they are able to do fi eld placements in local schools in addition to course work in education. An increasing number of students from many departments are spending a semester at one of Australia’s fi ne universities.For information on any of the international studies, contact Lillian Harper in the Off-Campus Programs Offi ce by e-mail at lharper@hope.gordon.edu, or externaled@hope.gordon.edu or call 978.927.2306, extension 4399.

Truitt Seitz ’02 sketching on location while studying atOrvieto Semester in Italy.

Justin Ayer ’00 doing research while on a tropical biology program in Belize.

Pen and ink drawing, A Celebration of Mother’s Love, by Jenny Chang ’01. Jenny spent a semester at the China Studies Program and immersed herself in the culture. It was a time of discovering her roots, growing inwardly and fi nding her niche. Her experience with Chinese calligraphy and painting gave her the push she needed to pursue her extraordinary gifts in art.

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JerusalemJerusalemBiblical studies professor Ted Hildebrandt found there’s no substitute for being there when studying the ancient sites of Jerusalem. So now he takes his students there via virtual reality.

I t’s just after lunch and the classroom is warm. The sedentary students settle into their comfortable seats for an afternoon siesta on the history, geography and

theological signifi cance of Jerusalem. Having lived in Jerusalem in the 1970s, attempting to take students there by the retelling of Jerusalem’s story has been one of my passions. The city becomes a part of those who have spent months walking its walls, strolling its streets and crawling into its underground crevices. I want to whet the appetite of my students. On the blackboard my hand-drawn maps of its valleys and hills fail to stir them from their slumber. Identifying important biblical sites on overheads and transferring the info to xeroxed maps becomes a scribal exercise. Stirred by the awesome signifi cance of Jerusalem as the place of divine encounter, they pose a penetrating question: “Will this be on the test?” Slide presentations dim the lights into academic exercises fi t for memorizing more than for invitations to discover. Somehow the joy of entering Jerusalem’s gates and circling its walls dissipates into a series of fl at, disconnected images. My desire to collapse the distance between the ‘here’ and the ‘there’ is folded comfortably into their notebooks as they rouse themselves for the next class.

Connecting to a Digital GenerationMy burning desire over the years has been to fi nd a way to communicate the biblical signifi cance of a Jerusalem that surfaces throughout the text of the Old Testament: from Abram’s meeting of Melchizedek and the faith-testing sacrifi ce of Isaac on Mt. Moriah to the city’s capture by David, who fi lled the Psalms with praises of the divine presence and pilgrim ascents to Jerusalem’s citadels. I wanted to fi nd a way to spark postmodern students with the desperately needed hope heralded by Isaiah in his narration of the restoration of Jerusalem: “The ransomed of the Lord will return. They

will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. . . . And sorrow and sighing will fl ee away” (Isaiah 51:11). How could I capture Jesus’ connectedness to Jerusalem as he furiously fl ipped over the tables because his Father’s house had been violated? How could I recreate the sense of walking down the Via Dolorosa or climbing up the stairway to the top of Golgotha?

Books, Bytes and Being ThereToday we’re immersed in technology and its diverse forms, but the battle between books and bytes is nothing new. As early as 1934 Lewis Mumford, patron saint of the Neo-Luddite movement, warned that the new media would make us a “society of shut-ins.” Janet Murray, on the other hand, in Hamlet on the Holodek: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, expresses the dangers of book-based virtual worlds and losing touch with reality. She quotes from Cervantes’ Don Quixote: “He so buried himself in his books . . . and so deeply did he steep his imagination in the belief that all the fanciful stuff he read was true, that . . . [h]e decided . . . to turn knight errant and travel through the world with horse and armour in search of adventures.” Pierre Levy reminds us in Becoming Virtual that we have always taken virtual trips through our imaginations, memories and religion. It was the excitement of taking students to a place they’d never been that attracted me to pursue virtual reality as a dynamic way of modeling Jerusalem. If I could just get my students there, the city itself would entice them into wonder and exploration. I wanted to do that without boring them with traditional methods, yet not make them slaves to technology. The seeds of the idea for a virtual tour actually came while I was teaching some students the inner pathways on-site in Jerusalem. I found that when they followed me through the Old City, they depended on me and didn’t really learn their own way around. So I developed an exercise I called “Get

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Lost in Jerusalem.” One morning I took them into the heart of the twisted alleyways of the Old City and announced, “We’re lost. Please lead us back to Jaffa Gate.” With looks of disbelief, they tentatively set out. After wandering for an hour or two, we fi nally arrived at the desired gate, and they owned a new sense of place and direction. Jerusalem was becoming theirs.

People love to explore. Exploration often includes getting lost and disoriented, being frustrated by wrong turns and dead ends, but it also promises the delight of fi nally discovering one’s own path less traveled.

A Virtual Jerusalem Becomes RealityI set my sights on capturing the students’ experience in a virtual Jerusalem. After a couple failed attempts, I located new software and read several articles that revealed my errors. On the third attempt, eureka! Innovation often involves vision, risk, failure, experimentation and, especially, committed persistence. There was plenty of each in this project.

My 15-year-old son, Zach, worked with me to construct a virtual Jeru-salem from photos I had taken. Links allowed travel naturally from one place to the next simply by clicking like one clicks on the link of a Web page. I incorporated two hundred pages of text (including audio) with the photos to explain what is being seen as well as the history and theol-ogy of Jerusalem. Still it lacked the realistic feel of moving from place to place. On the fi nal trip to work out this problem, I had the privilege of taking Zach to visit the Holy City he had known only through virtualization. When we arrived at Jaffa Gate I paused and said to him, “You’ve worked on the program. I’m lost. Take me to the Gloria Hotel.” He looked at me as if Father Abraham had just asked something too much of his

bewildered son. “I’ve never been here. I have no idea,” he complained. Then, realizing there was no ram in the thicket, he initiated with, “That’s Jaffa Gate, isn’t it?” Within a short walk, his reluctance and hesitance gave way to triumphant joy as he led us right to the doorway of the Gloria Hotel. It worked. He was able to transfer what he had learned from the virtual Jerusalem to the actual Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Comes to GordonDuring summer 2000 we put the fi nishing touches on the program. Last fall a preproduction version was loaded in the Jenks Resource Center PC lab so students could have easy access to it. To our delight, it passed the test.

In my Old and New Testament classes we had scavenger hunts with students fi nding their way from Jaffa Gate to Hezekiah’s tunnel to get their thirsty prof a drink. Or they might go to the Wailing Wall and then to the south wall excavations to discover the Herodian stones thrown down when the Second Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, just as Jesus had predicted in Matthew 24:2.

The result of this interactive learning is that students

Pictured here is Ted Hildebrandt with his son, Zach, who helped him with the project. Ted has been professor of biblical studies at Gordon since 1999 and previously taught for 19 years at Grace College and Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana. He and his wife, Annette, lived in Jerusalem 1975–76, sharing an apartment with Drs. Perry and Elaine Phillips (Elaine also teaches biblical studies at Gordon). In addition to Get Lost in Jerusalem, Ted is the author of Greek Tutor and Hebrew Tutor CD-ROMs (Parsons) and translator for the Book of Proverbs in the New Living Translation of the Bible (Tyndale House). He holds a doctorate in theology from Grace Theological Seminary. See the Gordon website,http://www.gordon.edu/bible/classsites.htm, for otherexamples of using technology to teach biblical studies.

explore for themselves, engaging with the city. Christie, a student who was planning a semester of study at Jerusalem University College, spent hours learning her way around the maze-like Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, the knowledge she had gained from the program allowed her to embrace more fully that site which commemorates the place of the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord. Comments of students both coming from and going to Jerusalem have demonstrated the effectiveness of the program. A student named Joshua wrote, “Of all the ways I have studied history and geography, be it through textbooks, videos, slides or maps, I would consider this to be my favorite.” Another student said, “I didn’t know what to expect, and it was amazing. It was so much fun to look around—I got chills thinking this is the very place that Jesus walked. It made me want to go to Israel more than ever.” Trey, who had studied in Jerusalem with Gordon’s Dr. Elaine Phillips before using the program, wrote, “When we were in Israel, we didn’t always have all the time we wanted. With this program, you can take as much time as you want at any site. The program is so realistic. The only big problem I see with the program is this: What about the rest of Israel?” Technology, innovation, and meaning merge as this generation of digitally active students are presented with new ways of accessing the great redemptive places and history of Scripture. Pioneering efforts at educating with new media are exploding, beckoning us to communicate a solid liberal arts heritage to a generation of wired and wireless students. Get Lost in Jerusalem is just one example of what can be done. The Windows CD-ROM Get Lost in Jerusalem, published by Zondervan Publishing House, is available at your local bookstore, or contact Ted Hildebrandt at thildebrandt@faith.gordon.edu or by mail: Dr. Ted Hildebrandt, Gordon College, 255 Grapevine Road, Wenham, MA 01984. Cost is $19.95 plus shipping.

It was the excitement

of taking students to

a place they’d never

been that attracted

me to pursue virtual

reality as a dynamic

way of modeling

Jerusalem. If I could

just get my students

there, the city itself

would entice them

into wonder and

exploration.

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LESS THAN A YEAR AFTER SHE GRADUATED FROM GORDON, LAUREL BRUNVOLL RECEIVED THE DEVASTATING NEWS THAT HER MOTHER HAD OVARIAN CANCER. THAT FOUR-YEAR STRUGGLE LED LAUREL AND HER FATHER TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCES AS A FAMILY FACING SERIOUS ILLNESS—ACCENTUATED BY HIS EVENTUAL DIAGNOSIS OF CANCER AS WELL. THEIR SUBSEQUENT MINISTRY IS ONE OF HELP AND HOPE.

and I had worked on Life on Hold: Finding Hope in the Face of Serious Ill-

ness for fi ve years. We had spent time looking back on

our own experiences, trying to decipher what helped us and what

didn’t. We had talked with other patients and their families; researched academic journals and interviewed healthcare professionals, pastors, psychologists, social workers and chaplains, gleaning much information from them. We had asked for God’s guidance as we put it all together. Our goal was to create a practical and spiritual handbook

for patients and caregivers. Life on Hold tells people what to expect when they face a serious illness as well as how to live with peace and hope. Even though it’s written for Christians, we hope nonbelievers can also benefi t from it. Perhaps God will use it to spark contemplation about their spiritual destiny in light of illness and death. Until now, I never completely under-stood God’s words in II Corinthians 1:3–4: “Blessed be the God . . . of all comfort; Who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affl iction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”God has brought us to a place where we can use our experiences to help others; to point people to God as our Ultimate Comforter. We can share our hope in

Jesus Christ because of what we’ve been through. Though writing a book has been my dream for years, I never anticipated how God might transform an experience so terrible into something hopeful and helpful for others. Whenever I reread Romans 8:28—“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose”—I

Taking Ahold

At Laurel’s graduation in May 1989. L to R: Her mother, Nancy; Laurel; sister, Rebecca; and father, David.

T rees, still stripped of their foliage, lined both sides of the rectangular fi eld. The brownish grass showed little

sign of its inevitable awakening. I walked with deliberate steps around the markers underfoot. My shadow shivered when I reached my destination—my mother’s grave. Nancy Sara Seiler . . . Born August 8, 1942 . . . Died September 6, 1994. I breathed heavily until my tears were uncontrollable. They spilled down my face as I remembered those four-and-a-half years she battled ovarian cancer. Her struggle with the deadly disease shook my world and changed my family forever. This was my fi rst trip from our home in Maryland to her grave near Green Bay, Wisconsin, since her death. Two years after she died, my father was diagnosed with kidney cancer. His remission after having the kidney removed is a constant source of thankfulness. I looked down at the hard ground. Has it really been almost seven years? Why, God? Why did she have to go? I still yearn for that perfect, fi ll-in-the-blank answer. Instead, God has softened my angry heart over the years and comforted my anguished soul. With God’s help, sadness and grief have become manageable companions. Worry has been replaced over and over again with His peace and strength, which is beyond my comprehension. Glancing at the words engraved on the stone, I was reminded that, without a doubt, God loves me. He took care of my mom every step of that diffi cult journey. If He did it for her, He will do it for anyone who asks. He has promised to never forsake His children. I cling to those many promises found in the Bible because I know God is trustworthy. I’ve seen Him keep His promises and do His work, both in me and in others. I rest—though sometimes in turmoil—in His awesome power. He alone is God. He is sovereign over all things, including every event in my life. As I turned to leave, I realized how long it had taken me to come to this place of acceptance, and once again I relinquished my heartache into God’s loving hands. He alone can take care of that pain, molding it into something for His glory. As I headed toward the car, the March sun warmed my back. I felt a growing excitement about where and how God plans to use my pain. A few days after my return to our home in Maryland, the fi rst boxes of the newly published books arrived. My dad

BY LAUREL SEILER BRUNVOLL ’89 of LifeI used to envision the worst that could happen so that I would be ready for it when it came. This is self-defeating, for rather than prepare you, such an exercise disturbs the peace of the present for it anticipates an evil that is not yet a reality and for which God has not provided strength.

— Nancy Seiler

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Laurel met her husband, StevenBrunvoll, at Gordon, class of ’87. They live in Montgomery Village,

Maryland, with their two sons, Michael, 6, and Joshua, 8.

Laurel owns Writing Solu-tions, a writing and public rela-

tions fi rm. She has had 650 arti-cles published in national and local magazines and newspa-pers. She may be contacted at brunvoll@erols.com or by

phone at 301.948.6454.Visit Laurel’s website at

www.lifeonhold.net.

am again amazed at how God works. Too often we limit God’s power.

The book seems to be just the beginning of this new twofold ministry of education and encouragement. Talking about serious illness and death is never easy—it’s still not easy for me—but I feel strongly about the value of open communication. Our family talked through all the aspects of struggling with a serious illness and even death all during my mother’s illness. I know it made a difference for both my mom and our family.

And patients and caregivers aren’t the only ones hungry for information. Friends, neighbors and coworkers want to be better support systems for people with serious illnesses. They want questions answered, and ideas and insights for coping with and supporting those they care about.

We provide education by speaking at events, doing radio shows, writing articles, leading seminars, teaching Sunday school classes and just by having conversations with others. We cannot be silent about what God has done in our lives.

I have made a conscious decision to be vulnerable and honest about my experiences with the hope it will encourage others who are walking their own diffi cult paths. Our ministry of encouragement includes praying, visiting people, and writing letters and cards.

My dad and I do not take this ministry lightly. We pray before every opportunity given to us. We ask God

to guide our words and actions, that they will be truthful and encouraging. We also want to be beacons of light for those who are still searching. Death rips away pretenses and defenses. There is a window of opportunity that is wide open during times of crisis, and I would not want to miss a single chance to introduce another to the Source of our strength and salvation. I am humbled—sometimes overwhelmed—at the incred-ible ministry God has laid at my feet. It’s a huge responsibility, but I am grateful for the part He is allowing us to play in encouraging and comforting others. May we faithfully be visible and audible signs of God’s love and care.

was a senior at Gordon (I had a fantastic opportunity through the Cooperative Education Offi ce to work as an intern at The Salem Evening News that year), but I had no real ideas of what to write about. Years later—in 1996—my dad suggested we write about our experiences with my mom.” Laurel read dozens of books and magazines on how to write a book and researched the process of selecting a topic, setting goals, outlining the book, targeting a market, fi nding a publisher and, fi nally, doing the writing in an organized manner. She spent more than two years working on her 130-page proposal, enlisting not only two editor friends but also a social worker, a chaplain, a psychologist and a pastor to review for accuracy in those fi elds. “You only get one chance when making a fi rst impression,” Laurel reminds would-be authors. It took over a year and several attempts to nail down a publisher. “Be patient and persevere,” Laurel recommends. “It’s worth it to fi nd the right partnership. “I’ve never worked (and thought) so hard in all my life,” she says. “One lesson I learned: Don’t give up on going to the gym! Taking breaks for physical activity should be built into your writing schedule.”

For information on Life on Hold, go to www.multnomahbooks.com or contact your local Christian bookstore. Book cover used by permission of Multnomah Publishers.

Laurel and her dad, David Seiler, are pic-

tured here at a book signing.David earned his doctor-ate in physics at Purdue University and is chief of the Semiconductor Electronics and Electrical Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithers-burg, Maryland. He recently received a Purdue School of Science Distinguished Alumni Award.Life on Hold: Finding

Hope in the Face of Serious Illness contains excerpts from Laurel’s mother’s journal, offering scrupulously honest insights into the life of a seriously ill person. The book is a resource for patients, families and friends, medical professionals and pastoral counselors. In late May Laurel was interviewed by the Christian Medical and Dental Association, which is promoting Life on Hold to its physician members. The book offers an extensive list of resources for assistance as well as indexes of the book by person and subject. Of her writing ventures Laurel says, “I became interested in writing as a second-grader and was continually drawn to writing projects. Thoughts of writing a book fi rst hit me when I

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eary in mind and body, I boarded the small plane, happy to fi nally be heading home from a series of rigorous but successful interviews for a presidential post at a midwestern university.

As the little plane dipped and fl opped its way to upstate New York, where I was assistant provost at a college, an alarming premonition grew within me—not of imminent danger but a warning to prepare for a future event. I uttered a quick prayer and heard my mother’s voice speak to me in her distinct Panamanian accent, quoting Psalm 91:5, 14–15:

You will not fear the terror of night nor the arrow that fl ies by day. . . . I will protect him, for he acknowledges My name. He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. I didn’t appreciate it when I was

a child, but Mother insisted her family memorize passages of Scripture—even entire chap-ters at times. It seemed pointless; more along the lines of cruel and unusual punishment. But I thank God my mother never departed from her yearnings for her children to know God’s Word and develop personal relationships with Him.

HOME AT LAST, I thanked my babysitter and dropped the collected mail on the table. A quick glance revealed a letter from the middle school my son, Eric, attended. I picked it up nervously and realized what the Lord had been preparing me for. I didn’t open the letter that night, but I knew what it contained. What had my son done this time? Why couldn’t he settle down? I stopped right where I was and prayed aloud, “God help me.”

I was upset with my son but also angry with myself—angry for not knowing what to do. How does one learn how to manage difficult people and situations? I was a college administrator and dealt with diffi culties quite frequently, but I felt almost powerless to handle this one. I wondered where I had gone wrong.

A few months earlier, in desperation concerning Eric’s behavior, I had called my mother for advice. She had successfully raised eight boys—six sons by birth and two adopted; surely she could tell me what to do with her fi rst grandson. “Listen carefully,” she had said to me, “and call me back when you comprehend the message.”

Her message was metaphoric: “Decide on the musical

score and never change it.” As she hung up the phone, I shouted to her, “Wait, wait.” But suddenly I knew what she meant: Select the values for the family and never change. Some children need more structure—absolutely clear values and limits. For weeks I thought about her message over and over. Kids get confused, she was saying—especially when their parents are still trying to fi gure out the musical score for their own lives. My work as assistant provost at the college was exciting and challenging, supporting five academic deans, other administrators and the faculty. I was the only woman and the only person of color on the President’s Cabinet. I passionately loved working in the academy, and I felt the experience would

prepare me to one day give leadership to a small college. I wanted to work hard and

learn how to lead. But something was going wrong. I sensed there were

unknown challenges ahead.The known challenge,

of course, was that our family lived in two dif-

ferent places. My hus-band, Eric Sr., a professor of instruc-

tional media and art at Howard University in Washington, D.C., had spent a sabbatical year with us. He had returned the next year to his teaching position at Howard University, commuting to us when he could. Eric had used his dad’s absence as a license to misbehave. A long-distance marriage is challenging enough, but when a child begins acting out, it’s serious. I wondered if we’d decided on the best musical score for our family.

“I’LL DEAL WITH IT TOMORROW,” I thought, as I looked in on my sleeping children—Eric Barclay, 12, and Dana, 9. I dropped into bed exhausted, and with an aching heart. Hazy dawn awakened me at 5:30 A.M. Dialing Eric Sr.’s number, I wondered if he’d be excited about the prospect of a new job for me. When he asked about the diversity of the new community—composed of Anglos and Hmong people—the conversation became uneasy. “What’s the big deal?” I countered. “We can take diversity with us.” But his reply matched the wisdom of my mother’s: “Our son must have culturally based experiences, especially in his early teenage years. “This time you can go alone,” he continued. “The children must return to live with me. I will not stand in your way; you’re on a dynamic trajectory to give leadership to a college or university, but you must go without us this time.”

SHOULD SHE GIVE UP THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE A COLLEGE PRESIDENT

TO SAVE A SON WHO HAD WASTED SO MANY ADVANTAGES?GORDON’S ASSOCIATE PROVOST TELLS OF HER AGONIZING DECISION.

C H O O S I N G

the ight core

I resolved to meetthe challenge head-on.

I didn’t realize then how thatstrange moment would change our lives

forever. It was easier to say the words thanto do what needed to be done. During the next

several months—and then years—the sacrifi ce was immense.

BY HERMA B. WILLIAMS

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I felt the fabric of this wonderful marriage of nearly 20 years begin to unravel.

The next 10 hours tested my comprehension and willing-ness to follow my mother’s advice. Serious questions raced through my mind: Can I accept the position of leading a college and go alone? Do I value the job over the family? Will the marriage disintegrate? Who is ultimately responsible for this soon-to-be teenager?

I began to pray for wisdom, guidance and the ability to administer tough love. I needed desperately to know how to do the latter in just a few minutes when I awakened Eric. I gathered my strength and opened the letter—an immediate summons for me to meet with a team of school personnel concerning Eric’s behavior. This was the fi fth summons, and the tone was urgent.

I recalled seeing an article on the front page of The New York Times concerning the larger numbers of incarcerated men of color. Could our child get into serious trouble? Maybe it was not the child; perhaps I was at fault. We already provided a strong Christian family; an excellent school; many cocurricular activities—violin, soccer, swimming, baseball, youth group and other advantages. His dad came often to visit. What more should we do—how should we shelter him?

My friends urged me to relax. But mothers know when something’s wrong. My husband and I needed to face this dilemma together. It was my third year at that college and my husband’s 16th at his university. Who should take the risk?

IN THE MEETING AT THE MIDDLE SCHOOL, Eric’s teachers indicated he constantly disrupted class with jokes at inappropriate times. They also said, “We love him—we just don’t know how to manage his outbursts in the classroom.” They declared, however, that his comments were unusually interesting, witty and clever. I was truly surprised to learn Eric’s behavior had a positive element. But I still felt angry and upset with his misbehavior; we had worked so hard to nurture him.

I assured his teachers of our family’s clear set of values for guidance: spiritual development, moral development, respect for and involvement with senior citizens, cultural knowledge, global awareness, a strong dedication and commitment to community service. I shared my deep sadness and apology and told them I intended to resign my job at the college and take my children back to our family home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Eric’s dad and I would save this one with tough love. They urged me to reconsider, but I knew the real solution was for me to sacrifi ce my dreams for this precious child.

I WAS OVERWHELMED WITH SADNESS. It just didn’t seem fair—I had invested so much in preparing to give leadership in the academic community. Back in my car, I wept long and hard. My tears were for the struggle in these United States, especially for people of color—challenges unknown to the vast majority; for struggling mothers, and for the dads who work two jobs for survival; for families in the suburbs with adequate incomes but no love; tears for the lack of a manual for raising challenging children in this crazy and diffi cult world; tears for dreams unfulfi lled and the hard days to come.

Driving home from the middle school that day, I resolved

to meet the challenge head-on. I didn’t realize then how that strange moment would change our lives forever. It was easier to say the words than to do what needed to be done. During the next several months—and then years—the sacrifi ces were immense.

WHEN I RESIGNED MY ADMINISTRATIVE POSITION AT THE COLLEGE, I met with jokes suggesting I just couldn’t handle the stress and challenge of fi ve white male deans under me. My supervisor laughed when I spoke of wanting to save my son and not have him end up as a statistic on the front page of The New York Times. He refused to discuss it with me and didn’t even attend my farewell. Neither of us could know then how his

response would haunt him in the years to come. I didn’t see or hear from him for the next 10 years. Leaving was painful. A local women’s support group I belonged to gave me a farewell supper and severely scolded me for not confi ding in them over the past three years. I had provided support for many but had never leaned on them for help. It was diffi cult to share that the role of a senior academician is often different and lonely—that it’s hard for leaders to bare their souls. I remained quiet but very thankful for their presence in my life. In addition, as a member of a national group of leading professional women of color, I was reprimanded for walking

Eric Sr., seated. Standing, L to R: Eric Barclay; Dana, who is a senior English major at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, with plans to go to medical school; and Herma.

24

away from my certain oppor-tunity to provide important national leadership at prominent Black institutions. It was extremely diffi cult to feel I was letting them down, and to know that an opportunity for that level of leadership might never be available to me again. It was frustrating not to have my values and priorities understood by those I admired and sought to emulate.

But it was also a time of discoveries for our family. The week following my agonizing decision, Eric invited me to a musical at his middle school. When I inquired about it, he said, “Mom, just show up.” The play was Mary Poppins, and to my surprise he had a leading role. I was speechless when he appeared on stage speaking and singing with a British accent. I wondered how I could have missed these gifts in my son. During intermission I called his father to share the news, and he drove the seven hours to take in the next performance—equally surprised by Eric’s talents. We had never heard him sing—not even a whistle in the shower.

BACK TOGETHER AGAIN AS A FAMILY IN THE GREATER WASHINGTON, D.C., community, I resolved to fi nd the peace and right attitude to develop a challenging boy into a man, and to fi nd the best school I could for this precious son. After much research, I set my sights on the Sidwell Friends School, whose mission is to develop the character of the young person in an atmosphere void of competition, and to stress values.

I called for an appointment, well aware that registrations had closed seven months earlier. I took the entire family for the interview, carefully choosing each one’s attire and painstakingly preparing every part of our presentation of Eric. The admissions director seemed annoyed with my persistence but impressed with Eric’s essays, unusually high test scores and other admissions materials. God worked His miracle.

With a price tag of $11,500 for Eric’s eighth-grade year (in 1989), my husband declared on the way home that we couldn’t afford to send him to that school. I countered with, “If we needed a new roof or a new car, would we afford it?” For the down payment, Eric himself loaned us the $500 he had saved to purchase a mountain bike. We stopped at the bank on the way home from the acceptance meeting and transferred the money from Eric’s account to cover the check I’d written on faith that God would provide. God had a bigger plan, and these events were only the beginning.

THE NEXT FEW YEARS REQUIRED SERIOUS, TIRELESS TOUGH LOVE. I became a carpool mom at 6:30 A.M., while I served as both administrator and faculty in the graduate school of education at a local university. My teaching class schedule began at 4:30 P.M., which gave both my husband and me time to be with our children during many daytime activities. Often when I returned home from work exhausted at 11 P.M. or later, I went through Eric’s book bag and found a note from a teacher or a letter from the school. I committed to always awaking him on the spot—whether it was midnight or 3 A.M.—to address the situation.

They were diffi cult times. I even collected the televisions in the house and stored them in a locked storage room until the reading interest increased in our home. I clipped

articles from The New York Times and tacked them on a

bulletin board in the bathroom. We went to a museum each Sunday

after church and to a Broadway play or musical each year. Eric’s talent for playing

the violin and learning the music of each Broadway score was enjoyable and exciting. But we always insisted that spiritual development must be the centerpiece of our lives. Our primary task was to develop our children to be godly leaders for the nation and the world. The best part was that Eric began to excel. He went on to Sidwell Friends Upper School, performed in nearly every play they did, won many awards in sports and headed Sidwell’s community service student program. He loved and did well in science and math, but he struggled with writing. When the time came, he chose Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and majored in English, to our surprise. When we suggested he should major in an area of his strengths, he remarked, “Why would I want to do that? College is about learning to deal with one’s weaknesses.” He sang with Bowdoin’s 89-year-old group of 12 select young men on national and international tours. He spent much of his senior year at the University of Cape Town in Africa and did community service for eight months with The Amy Biehl Foundation there [see article on page 3]. Eric graduated from Bowdoin in 1999, and today he is the public relations coordinator and writer for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington. Needless to say, we are very proud of his accomplishments.

YEARS LATER, my supervisor at the college I had resigned from moved to the D.C. area. Though we had not connected in the 10 intervening years, I decided to contact him. I recalled how he had mocked my decision to leave my career track to save my son, and I didn’t know what to expect when I met him. As he sat looking at Eric’s graduation photos, he began to weep. “Your message was for me 10 years ago, Herma,” he said. “I should have listened to you say that children are more important than careers. It’s ironic that both of our sons are in Seattle now—yours at the Gates Foundation and mine in a maximum-security prison.”

RETURNING TO MY CAR, I remembered the anguish of that day in the middle school parking lot 10 years earlier, when I struggled to step off my career trajectory and do the right thing. Once again—just as I had that day—I sat in my car and cried quietly. This time they were tears of sadness for another’s choices, and thanksgiving for God’s grace in a decision that determined our family’s musical score for a long time to come.

Dr. Herma Williams became associate provost at Gordon in the fall of 2000. She holds a master’s degree from Southern Illinois University and a doctorate from Iowa State University, and has held teaching and administrative positions at a number of colleges and universities. Her whole family became involved with events in South Africa when she received a Fulbright Scholarship to work at the University of Cape Town in the mid-’90s.

As he sat looking at Eric’s graduation photos, he beganto weep. “Your message was for me 10 years

ago, Herma,” he said. “I should havelistened to you say that children

are more importantthan careers.”

24

Dear Dr. Carlberg:

Since the Commencement Exercises at Gordon, I have been plagued by Dr. Marv Wilson’s speech. . . . I can recite his three points fairly accurately—and have to many audiences. . . . It was . . . a confi rmation of the rea-sons we were delighted when Ian chose Gordon. From one who believes fi rmly in Christian educa-tion from kindergarten to age 100, I believe Dr. Wil-son’s speech should be on the campus and in the guid-ance offi ce of every Chris-tian school in the country. . . . I fi rmly believe it is a must see/hear for Christian educators nationally. Would I dare say internationally? Therefore, I would ask if I might obtain a copy . . . that I might share Dr. Wilson’s passion with another crop of potential Gordon—and other Christian college—students. Again, thank you for all of your kindnesses to us through Ian. May God bless you and Gordon as you fulfi ll His command. —Ray Doreian, parent of 2001 graduate

See a summary of Dr. Wilson’s address on page 4 of this issue. A video tape is available for $7 and an audio tape for $4, including shipping. Make checks payable to Gordon College, and send to the attention of the Media Center at the College.

Homecoming 2001We’re having A Family Reunion

at the place we call home

October 5 and 6

Mark your calendars today andwatch for more info in ALMAMATTERS

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ALEN

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255 Grapevine RoadWenham, Massachusetts 01984978.927.2300www.gordon.edu

CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED

Nonprofi t Org.U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDGordon College

For info, updates and tickets, call ext. 3400 for music events and ext. 3200 for theatre productions. Phillips Recital Hall is located in Phillips Music Center. Art exhibits and theatre productions are in the Barrington Center for the Arts (BCA).

Pilgrim Church of the Black Madonna, Einsiedeln, Switzerland.

August 28 Art Exhibit—Wlodzimierz Ksiazek: A Decade of

Painting (1990–2000); 8/28–9/28, BCA

September 7–8 Women’s Volleyball Invitational Tournament

9 Thompson Chamber Music Series; 4 P.M., Phillips Recital Hall

22 Pop Crowell Invitational Tournament

October 3 Art Exhibit—Duncan Simcoe: Drawings and

Paintings from The Golden Book of the Civil War; 10/3–11/8, BCA

5–7 Homecoming and Family Weekend 14 Gordon Symphony Orchestra; 3 P.M., A. J. Gordon

Memorial Chapel26 Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble; 7 P.M.,

Gordon Chapel26–27 New Parents Weekend

November

9–10, Theatre—The Visit by F. Durrenmatt; BCA 13–17

9 Choirs! Choirs! Choirs!; 8 P.M., Gordon Chapel10 Gospel Choir; 8 P.M., Gordon Chapel12 Jazz Ensemble; 8 P.M., Easton Dining Room, Lane18 Gordon Symphony Orchestra; 3 P.M., Gordon

Chapel21–25 Thanksgiving Recess

26 Art Exhibit—Senior Thesis Exhibits; BCA

December 2 Advent Festival; 4 P.M., Gordon Chapel

8 Christmas Gala; 7 P.M., Gordon Chapel20–1/15 Christmas/Winter Recess

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Following Commencement the Gordon College Choir toured Central Europe for two weeks, attracting enthusi-

astic music lovers from Germany to Slovenia. The choir performed in over a dozen churches and cathedrals. A number of professors and Provost Mark Sargent accompa-nied the group. Fine Arts Coordinator K. David Goss documented the concerts in a series of digital stereo recordings, which he plans to reproduce in a CD.

Throughout the tour choir members were treated to lectures on historic sites by Dr. G. Lloyd Carr ’64 and were provided with spontaneous opportunities to sing in unscheduled venues such as Cologne Cathedral, Limburg Cathedral and Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria. Most important of all, through host families and concert audiences the Gordon College Choir made friends and supporters in many towns and cities of Central Europe.

G. L

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