Northwestern University

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

News Keywords

MBA Ministry

Believers in Business

University of Chicago

Booth

Northwestern University

Christians in Business

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

Choosing the Path that God Leads

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 19:42:23 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Choosing the Path that God Leads

The Chicago Public Schools’ February decision to make computer science a graduation requirement is a victory for a group of visionary teachers that includes University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) professor and ��ñ�� alumnus Dale Reed. Dale has a history of helping to launch new initiatives. He helped start one of ��ñ��’s first Graduate & Faculty Ministries chapters at Northwestern University.

After growing up in a missionary family in Ecuador, and getting an undergraduate degree, Dale arrived at Northwestern in 1985 ready to begin graduate studies and find fellowship with other Christian students. ��ñ�� was the second campus ministry he tried, and ��ñ��’s undergrad group was still not the best fit.

But he met other Christian grad students and veteran campus staff member Dave Ivaska suggested they pray about forming a graduate chapter. Soon a group of about 30 Christian grad students were meeting in resident adviser Kathy Tuan’s living room. “It was a dynamic and vibrant group,” Dale remembered.

The bonds that were formed in that fellowship were strong. A few years later, when Dale was despairing of completing his computer science PhD, some of the same people formed a dissertation support group to pray for each other. “That was the impetus, both spiritually and through tangible emotional support, to help me finish my degree,” he said.

The Fellowship frequently discussed how each of their vocations could further God’s redemptive work in the world. Dale recalled a Bible study of the book of Daniel by Dave Ivaska, which Dale referenced years later when he was invited to speak to some ��ñ�� students at the University of Chicago.

Dale saw firsthand how God could use a Christian professor to influence others when he worked with Eric Hamilton, a professor at Loyola University Chicago. With Eric’s guidance, Dale applied for education grants to reach out to high potential/low opportunity students in the Chicago public schools to help them understand the types of careers that are available in the computer science field.

He continued his outreach to public school students when he became a professor at UIC. Over a period of six to seven years Dale spoke to more than 10,000 Chicago high school students about computer science careers.

“This is both a justice issue as well as important economically in the U.S,” Dale said. “What we are trying to do for every CPS student is to give them a sense of the breadth of what computer science is about.” Students would be less likely to choose computer science as a career if all they understood about computers was learning typing skills, how to browse the web, play video games, and master Microsoft Office.

In 2007, Dale joined with some other educators to form the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) to improve computer science education. They realized early-on that the lack of a curriculum was a major problem. Their efforts started to gain traction when they discovered a UCLA-developed class called Exploring Computer Science (ECS), which turned out to be exactly what they needed.

“My involvement with ECS has revolutionized my own teaching as a university professor,” Dale said. Before ECS he would often pause to ask, “Any questions?” The response was usually a long pregnant pause. “Currently, if I'm explaining something in my class and getting some blank stares, I would say, 'take 20 seconds with your elbow partner and discuss your level of understanding from 1-5.'" The comments that follow give a much clearer idea of where the class is at in its understanding.

Dale calls ECS a “sandbox” for teaching students how to think better; it’s more than just about computers. Now the biggest challenge is how the cash-strapped CPS will be able to move forward with implementation of the computer science requirement. Dale often prays with Brenda Wilkerson, the CPS computer science program manager: “Lord, you can figure out a way to do this. We certainly don’t know, but we think this is really important for our kids to have this option in the future.”

Dale’s missionary-family background has made him a strong proponent of education. “I saw firsthand how an education could make a big difference,” he said. “Education can open doors that might otherwise be closed to people who grow up in a low economic opportunity environment.”

Dale’s achievements have led to his appointment as a clinical track full professor at UIC, not an easy accomplishment for someone who chose the teaching path instead of the research path. But he recognizes who actually has guided his career, starting with the fellowship of other grad students in ��ñ�� at Northwestern University: “The Lord orchestrated this because a person couldn’t make a plan to do something like this.”

News Keywords

Northwestern University

��ñ�� alumni

Graduate and Faculty Ministries

Education

computers

"Why Would God Want Me to Have a PhD?"

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 15:26:17 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

"Why Would God Want Me to Have a PhD?"

Kathy Tuan-MacLean is one of the few staff members who were involved with ��ñ�� in high school. Growing up in Hawaiʻi, she was a leader of the InterSchool Punahou Christian Fellowship. Hawaiʻi was the “mission field” and not a state when ��ñ�� was planted, and high school ministry was included in our mission.

Despite her early involvement with InterSchool, a call to ministry at age 14, and peripheral undergraduate involvement at Northwestern University, Kathy didn’t really plunge into ��ñ�� until she began her PhD program in human development and social policy at Northwestern. Veteran campus staff member Dave Ivaska invited her to help him plant graduate ministry there. “Northwestern Graduate Christian Fellowship met in my living room for those first two years,” Kathy said. Conveniently, as a resident hall coordinator, she had an exceptionally large living room.

Kathy’s goal to study faith and moral development was foiled before she even began the program, due to her advisor moving away, resulting in a struggle to understand why God had called her to a PhD program. She attended ��ñ��’s Urbana Student Missions Conference in 1987, asking everyone she met, “Why would God want me to have a PhD?”

Because her program focused largely on urban poverty issues, she wondered whether God was calling her to serve him in the city. At that point she knew she didn’t really love the poor, so she gave God the opportunity to change her heart by signing up for ��ñ��’s Chicago Urban Project (CUP). “It was a dangerous prayer—God always says yes when you ask him to help you love the poor,” she said.

The following summer Kathy served as an on-site staff member for CUP and discovered her unique gifts in helping students process the experience, leading her to finally join ��ñ�� staff (after five years of being recruited by Chicago area director Jeanette Yep). She wanted to serve campuses in Chicago, work with CUP, and finish her dissertation.

However, her love life (and God?) led her instead to join staff in New York City, serving Columbia and New York University, with the goal of also starting the New York City Urban Project (NYCUP). She not only was supervised by Bobby Gross, the newly minted regional director, but also shared an apartment with him, his wife Charlene, and their son Evan for three-and-a-half years. After suffering through the worst first year on staff of anyone she knows and the breakup of the relationship that brought her to New York, she met Scott MacLean, a new staff in Boston, at Orientation of New Staff. They married two years later, after Scott moved to New York City and joined her at Columbia.

While in New York, Kathy planted the first Metro New York graduate student fellowship; designed, launched, and directed NYCUP in partnership with fellow staff member Orlando Crespo; and, working with Scott, saw the Columbia fellowship triple in size.

In 1996, Kathy gave birth to their first child 13 days after turning in her PhD dissertation, “The Interracial Friendships of White and Asian College Students,” and two months before moving to Boston so Scott could attend business school. She joined the Harvard Graduate & Faculty Ministries (GFM) team, serving PhD and policy students over the next eleven years, as a part-time staff member while she bore and raised two more children. “I’m grateful for the flexibility ��ñ�� gave me as a mother to both do meaningful work and parent,” she said. “I especially appreciate ��ñ��’s long memory—so that when I was ready to re-engage more fully, I was welcomed and encouraged to step up.”

In 2007, Kathy became the area director for Boston GFM and planted the Boston Faculty Fellowship, a city-wide ministry with faculty from nine campuses. “We noticed God was bringing missional faculty to Boston, many of whom had been student leaders in our Fellowship,” she said.

Now, as the newly appointed associate director of GFM (beginning July 1), she will be working closely once again with her first supervisor, GFM director Bobby Gross.

“Kathy brings so many strengths to our leadership team from her own personal journey,” Bobby said. “She earned her PhD as a working woman, she led GFM teams at the campus and area level, and she has thoughtfully achieved a balance between her roles as a minister, wife, and mother. Her wisdom, experience, and leadership in the area of multiethnic ministry will be strategic for GFM as we aggressively pursue our goal to see multiethnic growth and ministry effectiveness.”

Kathy, for her part, relishes the opportunities she will have to advance GFM’s mission in her new position. “Figuring out how to grow the ministry—that’s what I’m excited about,” she said. “There’s so much room for growth. And working with ��ñ�� means working with the best colleagues in the whole world.”

News Keywords

NYCUP

Northwestern University

Graduate and Faculty Ministries

CUP

Boston

Listening on the Margins

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 17:04:29 +0000

Alumni Profile

News

Kathryn Brill

Listening on the Margins

God commands us to care for the most vulnerable, but this can often seem like an impossible task in our daily lives. Anthropology PhD student and ��ñ�� alumna Almita Miranda of Northwestern University discovered that her life experiences, research skills, and faith could help her advocate for a group on the margins: undocumented immigrants and their families.

Finding a Place

Almita’s parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the 1970s. Because of their experiences and others in Almita’s community, “immigration was always part of my life,” she said. But it wasn’t until her undergraduate years at Northwestern University that Almita first came to terms with her ethnic identity and learned about the historic and ongoing forms of systemic discrimination against racial minorities. It was these things that helped her recognize her calling to work with undocumented Mexican immigrants.

As a first-generation college student, undergraduate life was overwhelming for Almita at first. “I felt alienated at times, both for being Latina and for coming from a working-class background,” she said. Almita found a safe community that helped her through this time of transition when she joined ��ñ��’s LaFe (Latino Fellowship).

Northwestern’s LaFe Bible study provided a place for her to explore the ways her ethnicity and her faith intersected. “Attending the first LaFe national conference in 2004, where we read the book of Esther, helped me realize that being a Christian did not mean having to deny my ethnic identity,” Almita said. “Rather, I could embrace it as it informs my unique experiences, which can be used for God’s purpose.”

As Almita explored her ethnic identity, she also discovered her academic passions. Taking courses on Latino ethnography transformed her career path—she found herself drawn to anthropology.

One summer, she received a fellowship to do research about “mixed-status families,” or families where some members are undocumented while others are U.S. citizens. Her interviews with these families struck a chord, leading her to pursue a PhD in cultural anthropology at Northwestern. “God gave me a calling,” Almita said.

Stories for Justice

That calling involves using her research skills for more than just discovering new information. Almita spends a lot of time doing ethnographic fieldwork, interviewing individuals who have been affected in some way by the current U.S. immigration system, as well as local pro-immigration rights activists.

Almita has heard from members of mixed-status families, undocumented workers, and migrants who have been deported. She sees her interviews as a way to bear witness to their struggles and listen to stories that might otherwise go untold.

Many of these stories will be part of Almita’s dissertation as well, which will give them an even wider audience. It’s a kind of advocacy that doesn’t immediately spring to most people’s minds, but Almita sees it as one of the most important ways she can help these families.

“God can work through us in whatever field or profession we’ve chosen to work,” Almita said. “I can contribute to the fight for social justice through my writing on immigration.”

Trusting in God

Because immigration reform requires systemic change, it can be a discouraging thing to advocate for, and Almita has often felt as though “it’s so close and yet so far.” But the people she interviews are an inspiration to her as she works.

“Mixed-status families are often faced with incredible challenges, but they remain hopeful. Many of them turn to God for that hope. They’ve taught me that prayer is the fuel that helps us keep going,” she said. When she feels stuck, prayer restores her motivation and reminds her of God’s faithfulness and mercy. “Even when I feel like no one else is listening to the cry for change, I know that God is listening,” Almita said.

Almita’s advocacy on behalf of immigrant families goes beyond her PhD research. She helps members of her community study for the naturalization exam and has participated in many marches and rallies for reform, both in Chicago and in Washington, D.C. She has also traveled to D.C. along with the community group Centro Sin Fronteras (Center Without Borders) to speak to representatives and senators about changing immigration policies.

“The families I work with teach me more about faith and la lucha (the fight) for social justice than what I could ever give them back. But I try to use my position as an academic to write about their experiences and struggles, and contextualize them within the larger political and economic processes that can contribute to undocumented migration and family separation,” Almita said.

And in all these circumstances, she’s been reminded of an important truth: “God loves all people. And he is a God of justice, for he promises to defend and protect the most vulnerable.”

News Keywords

Northwestern University

LaFe

��ñ�� alumni

Fostering Interracial Understanding

webteam@intervarsity.org — Thu, 20 Nov 2003 06:00:00 +0000

News

Jenna Griffin

Fostering Interracial Understanding

The Multiethnic ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship at Northwestern University is responding positively to a challenging situation.

A freshman student, Xander Saide, recently reported that he was the victim of two hate crimes on campus in the beginning of the month of November. Some members of the student body reacted by staging a protest on at The Rock on November 12th.

During this time of heightened awareness, the Multiethnic ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship on campus initiated a series of forums for students to discuss issues of race.

The Multiethnic ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship at Northwestern University is responding positively to a challenging situation.

During this time of heightened awareness, the Multiethnic ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship on campus initiated a series of forums for students to discuss issues of race. These were well received and even endorsed by a November 18th article in the school paper, the Daily Northwestern. One columnist wrote, “Intervarsity Christian Fellowship has started holding forums designed for students to ask not-so-politically correct questions about other ethnicities. Students should take advantage of opportunities like this to break down a stereotype.”

In an unexpected turn of events, Saide’s claims of racial slurs on his dorm door and a threat with a knife, were both found to be fabricated. He maintains that he concocted these incidents to provoke campus discussion about racial issues. He has since been charged with 2 counts of federal disorderly conduct and is not currently in school.

Many students were confused, and some, indignant. Though the events that Saide invented were a hoax, other circumstances are quite real, from swastikas on campus buildings and in the dorms, to use of derogatory racial slurs among students. In the midst of these tensions, ��ñ�� continues to hold programming reported by the Daily Northwestern on November 20th as, “fostering communication among students and improving diversity.”

Praise God for this opportunity to not just underscore interracial understanding within the ��ñ�� chapter, but also to bring healing to the campus at large.

News Keywords

Northwestern University