University of Chicago

Living Intentionally No Matter What

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 15:25:16 +0000

Gordon Govier

Living Intentionally No Matter What

When MBA student Liz Dong was asked to help plan and moderate a Believers in Business conference panel on dealing with disappointments, she had plenty of experience to draw from.

After immigrating from China to the US in fourth grade, Liz studied hard and excelled in school. But her hopes for future success were devastated when she and her mother discovered paperwork mistakes by their immigration attorney left them without proper documentation. Liz and her mother trusted in God though and, as she explained in a Christianity Today testimony, God miraculously opened the doors at Northwestern University, where she graduated in 2011.

Finding work was difficult because of her immigration status, even with a college degree. As soon as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was implemented in 2012, which provided Liz and many other immigrants a temporary work authorization, Liz took a marketing job with a small eCommerce company. Then, as she took the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course through her church, she began to discover ways to apply her faith and use her own immigrant background to help other immigrants.

She moved into an apartment complex in suburban Chicago and joined a small intentional Christian community that was living among and serving their many immigrant and refugee neighbors. On nights and weekends, Liz gave rides, worked with children, and offered other practical support. “We were neighbors and friends,” she said. “I helped them, but I was also blessed by my immigrant neighbors.”

Then she changed jobs to work with World Relief and the Evangelical Immigration Table, advocating for immigration issues from a Christian perspective and drawing from her rich background of experience.

Back in School Again

Liz dreamed of going to graduate school to study management. Chances did not look promising as she tried to make ends meet on her non-profit salary. But she reconnected with the same foundation that had supported her as an undergrad at Northwestern, applied at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, and found herself admitted.

Her focus on management could have led her to stay in the nonprofit world or to a job in business. Either way, she knew she wanted to integrate her faith with her vocation. After a conversation with a missionary who was visiting her church she decided to learn more about that integration by attending Urbana 15, ��ñ��’s Student Missions Conference in St. Louis.

At Urbana, Liz discovered other business students who shared her conviction. “The Business as Mission track was highly applicable and practical for understanding the theology of work and that all work is ordained by God when it's done in a way that honors God,” she said. That was also where she met Mark Washington, who directs ��ñ��’s MBA Ministry.

Mark urged her to join Christians in Business, ��ñ��’s fellowship at Booth, where she eventually became one of the leaders. He also recommended the annual Believers in Business (BiB) conference that’s held in New York City each winter (This year’s dates are February 21-22).

Believers in Business

The first time she went to BiB, Liz found it refreshing and challenging to hear from business leaders who shared about their work experience and how they integrated faith into their workplace. The second year she went as a finalist in a Business as Mission competition. Her team helped a Christian company grow its profitability, invest in the communities where it employed workers, and advance other objectives that supported God’s kingdom. She described it as an enriching experience. Her team placed third.

Although the Booth MBA program normally lasts two years, Liz worked full time and went to school part time, stretching it to three years and allowing her an additional opportunity to attend BiB. For her third year, Liz served as a planner and moderator of the panel on dealing with disappointment.

“That topic was important to me,” she said. “It’s good to showcase more than just the successes. In our failures and disappointments, we discover God sees success differently than how we see it.”

Today, Liz no longer lives in the midst of an immigrant community. She also has a new job, working with a financial advising service. But she still advocates for immigrants and refugees in her spare time.

Liz is thankful for the path that God has led her on, particularly through the challenges of graduate school.

“I knew that everywhere I went, whatever I did, I wanted to somehow integrate my faith with the thing that I did, in the place where I was at,” she said. “Christians in Business, the campus fellowship at Booth, provided me a means to do that.”

Looking back at the seemingly insurmountable challenges she faced before both her undergrad and graduate school experiences, she sees God’s faithfulness.

“Each step of the way that God has led me, God has opened doors. Sometimes even unbeknownst to me at the time, God has prepared me for the next step. But I also know that God has used and is using all of my experiences in the past to prepare me for what he will have me doing next.”

Support ��ñ��’s MBA Ministry

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Believers in Business

University of Chicago

Booth

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Christians in Business

Going First—Keeping Step with Christ & Community

ashlye.vanderworp@intervarsity.org — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 20:49:58 +0000

Nathan Peterson

Going First—Keeping Step with Christ & Community

First in her family to go to college. First to earn a bachelor’s degree. First to earn a master’s. Ruth Castro has a history of going first.

Throughout her childhood, going to college wasn’t ever really discussed. “Everyone’s expected to work right after high school,” Ruth said. “That’s been the mentality culturally. It’s kind of the stereotypical Mexican American family.”

But college readiness courses in high school sparked Ruth’s desire to pursue higher education. Just a few weeks after graduating from the University of Chicago (UChicago) with her MA in Social Work Administration, Ruth reflected, “It’s empowering to pave my own path and set the example for future Mexican American leaders. It’s been a really good journey so far.”

Putting Faith First

Though it’s empowering, going first is harder than billboards and bumper stickers let on. As she began applying for colleges, Ruth discovered one of the many challenges that confront an aspiring first-generation college student: a need for guidance. “I don’t have the luxury of going to family members and asking them for advice like, ‘What do you think of this career path?’” she said. “I’ve had to scramble for resources on my own.”

Fortunately, mentors and high school teachers came alongside Ruth to help her navigate this process. After earning her BA in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2015, an even bigger challenge awaited Ruth: making the cross-country move from California to Illinois for graduate school.

Exchanging balmy afternoons on the beach in Santa Monica for the Windy City’s blustery winters would have been challenge enough. But Ruth faced even greater obstacles. “I missed my family,” she said. “We’re very united, so it was very, very hard on me mentally and emotionally to start from scratch and build a new community. A lot of the time, to be honest, it felt lonely.”

In those still moments of sitting alone in her apartment, Ruth sensed that she needed something beyond just a new set of friends. She needed God. “I grew up going to church, but it was more of a chore,” she said. “It felt like I needed to do it because my parents made me. I never felt it internally.”

With these things on her mind, Ruth began her first quarter at UChicago. Receiving an invitation to a Friendsgiving and then a Bible study with ��ñ��’s Graduate Christian Fellowship chapter, she went, a little nervous to meet so many new people. Looking back on those first moments, Ruth is grateful she took the risk.

From evening bonfires on the shore of Lake Michigan—helping Ruth feel a bit closer to the beaches of Santa Monica—to final exam study sessions and regular home meetings, the UChicago Graduate Christian Fellowship was exactly what she needed. “We’re able to empower and uplift each other during hard times in graduate programs,” she said. “We create an environment of trust, where we’re able to be inclusive and nonjudgmental, where we’re able to create long-lasting friendships with each other and with members in the community.”

Ruth’s perspective on her faith has completely changed as well. “The difference now is that I feel it in my heart to go to church,” she said. “I feel it in my heart to praise God. I feel it in my heart to read the Bible and pray. That’s the huge difference. It’s the drive, the motivation, the passion to commit and live a Christlike life. Being part of ��ñ�� has given me an opportunity to connect more with God.”

First for a Reason

As Ruth continued in her studies at UChicago, going first just for the sake of going first wasn’t enough anymore. There needed to be something more, a purpose behind it. Attending Urbana 18 with three other friends from her chapter, Ruth discovered a key part of that purpose.

Of the many insightful Urbana seminars she heard, Ruth particularly resonated with Women of Color in Urban Ministry. After it was over, she talked with one of the speakers, Janet Singleterry, who shared more about her ministry with Servant Partners, a nonprofit dedicated to community transformation by walking alongside the urban poor.

Returning to UChicago, Ruth stayed in touch with Janet and began looking into an internship with Servant Partners. Through these programs, interns join Servant Partners in gathering and equipping leaders and also identifying other ways to partner with local communities. “I told God I wanted to work in a faith-based organization and work in church planting and community organizing. That’s exactly what Servant Partners does,” Ruth said.

This summer, she will begin a two-year internship in San José, California, with the nonprofit. She looks forward to moving to the inner city and helping to serve the Latino immigrant community—a community close to her heart, being a child of Mexican immigrants. “I want to do everything and anything I can to help that community just because it hits close to home,” she said.

Reflecting on her journey of firsts, Ruth said, “I always feel like God has been guiding me ever since I was a little girl.” And even as she looks ahead to possibly being the first in her family to earn a PhD after her internship, her focus has never strayed far from them: “I think that I would want to further my studies as a way of combining my educational skills and personal disadvantaged struggle to create broader social change in my own community. One of my long-term goals is to create a nonprofit that assists low-income students struggling with academics. I hope to encourage them to find their passions while also taking pride in their own identities.”

Are you starting graduate school this fall or know someone who is? ��ñ�� ministers to not only undergraduate college students, but graduate students, like Ruth, and faculty as well. Find out more about Graduate and Faculty Ministry (GFM) and find a community at your campus by clicking the button below.

Learn More about GFM and Find a Community

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University of Chicago

MBA Ministry Flourishes in Chicago

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 20:17:02 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

MBA Ministry Flourishes in Chicago

Moises (Moy) Mendez identifies with characters in the Old Testament, perhaps more than most of us. Just as God called Abram to leave his home and travel to a new land, God called Moy out of business school to seminary. So Moy followed God’s leading, not knowing where he would end up.

Moy joined the staff at his church and helped develop its ministry in several areas. However, like David, who was invited to fight Goliath wearing Saul’s ill-fitting armor, Moy felt uncomfortable with the idea of becoming a senior pastor at the church. That was not where God wanted him.

But when a mutual friend connected Moy with Mark Washington, the director of ��ñ��’s MBA ministry—part of our Graduate and Faculty Ministries—he knew he had found his calling. “[MBA ministry] is helping students understand the integration of faith and work,” he said. In this sense he feels a connection with Frederick Buechner, who famously said, “The place God calls you to is to a place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Moy works with students in two of the top business schools in the country, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Both schools have an ��ñ�� chapter for full-time students as well as a chapter for part-time students.

Moy identifies with students who have a desire not only to be successful in business, but also to succeed in a way that honors God and testifies to his role in their lives. “There’s a large body of believers who seek to do the same thing that I want to do, honor God in the workplace,” he said. “It’s a genuine desire to honor and worship God.”

In academic cultures that produce some of the top business leaders in the world, it’s not always easy to be known as a Christian. “As soon as somebody finds out you’re a Christian, right away they take 15 points off of [their perception of] your IQ,” Moy said. But regular Bible studies as well as occasional conferences give the students new perspectives on ways to be better at business while following biblical principles. Almost 80 students recently turned out for a conference on private equity sponsored by the two MBA fellowships at Booth, about double the usual attendance.

The full-time students at Booth also sponsor a weeklong business ethics conference every year. Last year the dean of the school opened the conference, and attendance was around 700. It also won an award from the school for the quality of its programming. Members of all four Chicago chapters participate in the annual Believers in Business conference in New York City as well.

The part-time groups at both schools are composed of busy professionals who are working while taking classes. Some participants in the executives’ program fly in from other states for weekend classes. Moy uses technology to keep in touch with them, including social media and video conferencing.

His own immersion in the world of manufacturing and business began in high school, operating lathes and mills for a tool company. Moy’s employers recognized and rewarded his skills and interest by underwriting further education for him. He became an aerospace machinist, educating himself on computer robotics and international business relations in his business school classes.

At the same time, he was also yearning to honor God with his life and his work. “It was there in business school that I started having this crazy idea for full-time ministry,” Moy said.

Moy joined ��ñ�� staff in January of 2015. Mark Washington says Moy is a fast learner and the MBA ministry in Chicago is flourishing under his leadership. “We are very excited to have someone who combines experience in vocational ministry with business experience, in addition to having a love for students and faculty,” Mark said.

Moy said that one of the reasons his work is flourishing is ��ñ��’s culture. “I’ve never known of a Christian organization that has such a deep desire to know God through the Scriptures and also looks to balance that out in such a holistic way,” he said.

Moy shares that culture with students at Booth and Kellogg, believing that it will become part of the businesses that they work in for the next few years and for decades to come.

News Keywords

University of Chicago

Northwestern University

MBA Ministry

Kellogg School of Management

Booth School of Business

The Presence of Christ in a Hurting World

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 19:36:41 +0000

Alumni Profile

News

Lisa Rieck

The Presence of Christ in a Hurting World

��ñ�� alumna Ann Dominguez has one driving passion. As she puts it, it’s to “bring the transformative power of the gospel into every situation in my life.”

It’s a passion that springs from her years in ��ñ��, when she watched her staff workers live out their faith in very practical, authentic, consistent ways. Now she seeks to model that faithfulness in her own life through a deep commitment to be exactly who God has made her to be and allow God to use her at every moment in whatever situation and place he’s called her to.

Serving People

After working at an afterschool program in inner-city Chicago during college, Ann thought she’d become a teacher. But she noticed a particular detail about the families she was meeting through the school. “I worked with mostly single moms with lots of kids,” she said. “And I saw in their lives the difficulty of getting their kids to the doctor.” She also loved science, and began to ask God how she could combine that with her love of individual teaching and her heart for the inner city.

Ann sensed God leading her to medicine, a profession that has taken her to countries like Haiti, Thailand, and Guatemala, as well as to inner-city Denver (where she serves a largely immigrant population, particularly moms and kids). And while she loves her work, she’s clear that the most important piece of her calling is people, particularly those who don’t have easy access to doctors.

Praying for Patients

Serving and being fully present to her patients often means praying continually throughout the day. “As I’m listening to someone, as someone is pouring out their suffering, I am praying for them,” Ann said.

Those prayers change what can easily become a detached doctor-patient relationship. “Praying for patients has the effect of softening my heart toward them,” Ann said. “They cease to be the diabetic in room four, or the person with emphysema in room six. They become a person with a story, and they’re on a journey.

Passing on Values to the Next Generation

Ann’s commitment to allow Christ to use her in each moment extends to five other very important people: her husband and four kids. And it’s a job she takes no less seriously than her role as a doctor. “I think there are people for whom being a doctor is their persona,” she said. “For me, it feels like one of many hats I wear. . . . Being a doctor isn’t my existence. It’s one part of who I am and I serve, but it’s not all of it.”

“Mom” and “homeschool teacher” are two other important hats Ann loves wearing every day. “I have an opportunity to help my kids see the world, or their piece of it here, through eyes of ministry,” she said.

��ñ�� shaped Ann’s own view of the world in important ways when she was a student. “The emphasis that ��ñ�� has on personal Bible study as well as fellowship of the believers—I hope that’s a gift I pass on,” she said. “Right now it’s mostly being passed on to my children. But as my husband and I work with students and residents, . . . we hope that we are pointing them to the Bible and to church and to listening for the Spirit as they look for where they’re supposed to be going with their lives.”

As Ann and her family continue to listen for the Spirit and look for where they’re supposed to be, they’re sensing a call to Guatemala, where they’ll continue to allow God to use their unique gifts and skills to bring Christ’s presence to patients and medical students. “I think in medicine, specifically, there is a temptation to think that lowering someone’s blood pressure is the point,” Ann said. “What I really want to do is to allow them to encounter the living Christ through me and allow that to transform them, beyond what the medicine can do.”

Ann Dominguez - Staff Conference 2014 from ��ñ�� twentyonehundred on Vimeo.

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University of Chicago

Red Cup's New Role On Campus

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:34:25 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Red Cup's New Role On Campus

The red plastic cup is ubiquitous on campus because, well, students are thirsty. But students are seldom reflective about their drinking habits. Until ��ñ��’s Red Cup Campaign comes to campus.

This fall the Red Cup Campaign was launched by ��ñ�� staff and students on campuses across the country. The students were trained in evangelism and then set up the Red Cup display on campus. Thousands of students are hearing a presentation of the gospel.

The Red Cup Campaign uses an interactive display (called a Proxe station) that asks students what they are most thirsty for: love, purpose, fun, or success. Their response often starts a conversation that leads to an opportunity to discuss Jesus’ statements about Living Water and eternal life.

Red Cup Gets Results

More than 1,300 conversations took place in one week at the Red Cup Campaign Proxe station at UCLA. Students were invited to ��ñ��’s Large Group meeting. At the UCLA chapter’s first Large Group meeting of the school year, 47 students stood to make first-time decisions or recommitments to follow Christ.

Over a four day period at the University of Chicago there were 250 conversations at the Red Cup Campaign Proxe station. At the first Large Group meeting of the year, three students stood to make first-time commitments to Jesus. At the second Large Group, 12 people raised their hands to commit to Christ.

Making contact with incoming students at the beginning of the school year is a priority for every ��ñ�� chapter. The Red Cup Campaign not only facilitates contacts, but immediately establishes the evangelical character of ��ñ��’s outreach.

“Almost everyone who went through the Proxe station heard the gospel and was prayed for,” reported Mac Smith, ��ñ�� Campus Member at Weber State University in Utah. “We had 161 students show up to Large Group and seven students become Christians during the call to faith. More than 60 students who were already Christian believers stood to give Jesus control of an area of their life where they were trying to get their thirsts met on their own. We have never done so well with contacts during the first week of school.”

Students are Lining Up

A Campus Staff Member at the University of Northern Arizona called it their most effective Proxe station ever. “It’s drawn both Christian believers and seekers,” he said.”Thanks for designing something that students are lining up to interact with.”

An ��ñ�� student at West Virginia University said: “It’s very easy to get into conversations with students about what they want out of their college experience and life. I think the transition from talking about our thirsts to talking about the gospel is very natural. I think the Red Cup is effective because it gets college students thinking about how our earthly thirst quenchers never satisfy us.”

Some ��ñ�� chapters jumped into the Red Cup Campaign at the very beginning of the school year, others are setting up the display on campus as the year goes on. We praise God for the effectiveness of this tool for reaching students with the gospel message.

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West Virginia University

Weber State University

University of Northern Arizona

University of Chicago

UCLA

Red Cup Campaign

Bold Faith as a University Administrator

webteam@intervarsity.org — Mon, 17 May 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Alumni Profile

News

Gordon Govier

Bold Faith as a University Administrator

Santa Ono now serves as president of the University of British Columbia. When this article was written, he was working at Emory University as Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs.

“Senior Vice Provost Santa Ono won the Brit Katz Senior Appreciation Award for his involvement in the Emory community and his ability to serve as a role model and friend to the senior class.” – The Emory Wheel newspaper, May 6, 2010

While working with Emory University students as Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs, Santa Ono also continues the medical research for which he trained at McGill University and Harvard. An article in Emory Magazine reports that his team at the Emory Eye Center’s Dobbs Laboratory is investigating the role of the immune system as the team looks for treatments for macular degeneration and other forms of eye inflammation.

Santa serves as faculty adviser for ��ñ��’s three chapters at Emory: Emory Christian Fellowship, Asian Christian Fellowship, and B.A.S.I.C. (Brothers and Sisters in Christ, for African-American students). He also enjoys being faculty advisor to Emory’s Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity, a chapter with strong ties to Greek ��ñ��.

Santa admits that holding two full-time jobs at the same institution can be challenging. “Especially, if on top of that you’re trying to connect with students and faculty. But I love every aspect of what I do with my life. I feel very blessed to be at an institution like Emory, to be able to interact with students of the caliber that we have. It enriches my life to interact with them, not only through ��ñ�� but through other organizations.”

The Path to Faith

Santa Ono’s path to faith began in his dorm room as a freshman at the University of Chicago. His roommate, Steve Barry, was involved in the ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship chapter. Steve invited Santa to Bible studies and large group meetings, and they talked a lot about faith. As a child of Japanese immigrants Santa was not without faith in God but he described himself as uninformed.

His journey to faith in Christ started slowly, anchored in the witness of his roommate. Their visits to Bond chapel on the University of Chicago campus encouraged him to investigate further. “Steve would take me there. I felt immediately touched by being in that space. I felt like I had never felt before in any other place growing up,” Santa said. “That was the beginning of my search for and eventual finding of Christ.”

During his graduate studies at McGill University in Montreal, his faith in Christ continued to grow through the witness of a friend named Wendy, who became his wife, and their local fellowship, Westmont Baptist Church. After receiving his PhD in Experimental Medicine, he received a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, focusing on gene regulation in the immune. He held faculty and administrative positions at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard, and University College London before arriving at Emory in 2006.

Known for his Faith

The “transformative” witness of his ��ñ�� friends at the University of Chicago has allowed Santa to fully embrace ��ñ��’s vision for renewing the campus. He not only accepted the invitation from campus staff member Glenn Goldsmith to become ��ñ��’s faculty adviser, he has also become one of the most high-profile Christians at Emory.

“I actually think it’s very healthy for the university community to know of the religious beliefs of faculty and administrators,” he said. “I see no reason why I as a Christian should hide Christ in my life, as long as I show respect for those with different faiths.” He recalled a phrase used by a faculty friend who was a priest, “stealth Christians,” which applies to many Christian faculty members. “Students learn from diverse perspectives across the university community and they can only learn from the richness of a multi-faith community if they can actually see people thinking about, struggling with and practicing their faiths.”

He thinks students are willing to accept the fact that some faculty are followers of Christ, and that others are Jews or Muslims. “Students know that faculty members and administrators have religious beliefs but they rarely see that side of these individuals. I know that many students look to faculty and staff as role models, and seek conversations with them about their faith.”

Santa is energized by his interaction with students, especially those who are in the campus fellowships. “It’s really beautiful to watch them worship and see the fellowship they have with each other and with Christ,” he said. “They’re not shy in talking about the role of Christ in their lives. The students have it figured it out.”

Santa Ono realizes that at some point he may have to make a decision between advancing his administrative career and continuing his medical research. But for now he is thankful that God has blessed him by allowing him to continue both paths and to interact with some of America’s brightest students. He has also served on ��ñ��’s Board of Trustees.

UPDATES:

In June 2010 Santa Ono was named Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Cincinnati.
In 2011 Santa Ono addressed ��ñ�� Graduate and Faculty Ministries Staff Conference on the topic, The Future of the University.
On October 23, 2012, Santa Ono was named President of the University of Cincinnati
On June 15, 2016, Santa Ono was named President of the University of British Columbia, where he is also involved with a local congregation.

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University of Chicago

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Emory University

��ñ�� alumni