Westwind, Spring 2018

Wisdom with staying power

Rosenthal Prize winner

Reconnecting with a faculty muse p. 20

Engle teaches more than math p. 30

THE MAGAZINE OF WALLA WALLA UNIVERSITY SPRING 2018

Spaceships and 747s are just another day at the office for four WWU alumni p. 12

Homecoming Weekend 2018 at Walla Walla University

Generosity in Service April 26-29, 2018

CELEBRATING Bachelor and Master of Social Work program anniversaries

Theology and Religion majors Thailand Cultural Mission Trip anniversary

Home Economics majors

Gateway to Service Class of 1918

Week end Events

Alumni homecomin g banquet, young alumni event, Prism vespers, honor class reunions and photos , seminars

Honor Years

3, 1958, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 198 1988, 1993, 1998, 2008

For more information and the weekend schedule, go to wallawalla.edu/homecoming or call Alumni and Advancement Services at (800) 377-2586.

ALUMNUS OF NOTE // TEACHING MATHEMATICS

“Education is for using information, not just having it.”

—Matthew Engle ’10

p.30

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College Avenue

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Taking to the skies

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Sweet memories

THE MAGAZINE OF WALLA WALLA UNIVERSITY // SPRING 2018

About the cover

Big sky, space to dream, and engineering faculty with a vision for just the right experiences can be a recipe for success for students interested in aeronautics.

PHOTO: HEBER PEREZ

PHOTOGRAPH BY CARLOS FERNANDEZ/GETTY IMAGES Westwind Spring 2018, Volume 37, Number 1 // Westwind is published three times a year by Walla Walla University, a Seventh-day Adventist institution and is produced by the WWU Marketing and University Relations office.

This issue was printed in March 2018. © 2018 by Walla Walla University.

Mail Westwind, 204 S. College Ave., College Place, WA 99324 E-mail westwind@wallawalla.edu Editor Kim Strobel Telephone (509) 527-2363 Toll-free (800) 541-8900 Online westwind.wallawalla.edu Guest news editor Kyler Alvord Student staff writers T. Brooke Sample, Charles Riseley Design L/Bailey Design

From the President The latest from across campus

Agents of change

The 2017 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer considers the power of doing justice Careers in aeronautics take flight for four engineers

Three alumni interview their favorite faculty muses

Currents

28 Alumni 28 AlumNotes, 29 In Memory, 30 Alumnus of Note

FROM THE PRESIDENT

The business of the kingdom A centerpiece of that celebration was the official opening of the renewed Bowers Hall as the shiny new home for our high-performing School of Business. (See “Back in business” on the next page.) We celebrated the past with this decidedly forward-looking project. For me, it has been extremely satisfying to walk repeatedly through Bowers Hall and see students enjoying its beautiful, atrium-style lobby; spacious, well-furnished classrooms tuned to project-based learning; and the many nicely appointed collaborative-learning areas.

Part of the satisfaction comes from the fact that the project proved to be a lot of work. It took years to settle on a plan for the building. Having persevered, the finished project is all the more rewarding. Much of the warm glow is inspired by generous donors who saw the need and participated in an important, transformative project at the center of our College Place campus.

There’s something still deeper, yet more satisfying, about the project. The new Bowers Hall exists for a very special reason. Not to bring honor to the project team or the architects or the contractors. Not even to add luster to Walla Walla University as it presses on from its 125th anniversary.

It exists as a place in which to celebrate and actualize a very special and eschatologically significant model of Christian higher education. It is here that we will seek to teach students how to make a buck—and make a difference. We will share the good news of a kingdom that is yet to come in its fullness.

We will invite students to explore the eternal values of that kingdom and to activate those values in real-life projects that address the needs of this often-traumatized world.

How should a businessperson, committed to that coming kingdom, do business in the meantime? How might he or she signal a different business plan, a spirit of grace and generosity that harkens back to the founding principles of Walla Walla University and reaches toward the dawning kingdom of Christ? To make a difference not just for time but for eternity—that is the great goal of a Walla Walla University education and of every new resource we deploy.

Having reflected on the past, we now turn to the present and consider the future with renewed dedication to a distinctively Adventist model of higher education. As we do so, we are grateful for our alumni who personify the values of such an education and for all who invest in and pray for this grand endeavor that we call Walla Walla University. Thank you!

Cordially, John McVay President

FIND MORE NEWS ABOUT WWU AT WALLAWALLA.EDU/NEWS.

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PHOTO: COLBY KUSCHATKA

It has been a good season for Walla Walla University, a time when our attention has been directed to the past, to the founding of this institution 125 years ago.

And, as you’ll discover in the pages of this edition of Westwind, we did celebrate! (See “A history worth celebrating” on p. 6.)

College Avenue The latest from across campus

Back in business

Bowers Hall reopened on the WWU 125th anniversary after a year of extensive renovation.

Ribbon-cutting marks opening of renovated Bowers Hall

PHOTO: CHRIS DRAKE

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EARLY 500 PEOPLE attended the ribboncutting ceremony of Bowers Hall, home of the WWU School of Business, on Dec. 7.

A year-long renovation project added more than 3,000 square feet to Bowers Hall and reorganized existing classroom and office spaces.

The transformed facility includes an innovation classroom and laboratory, technologies that enhance digital learning, efficient group study areas, and multifunctional meeting spaces.

“It is no haphazard choice to renovate and expand Bowers Hall,” says John McVay, WWU president.

“This building signals our intentions to further strengthen Walla Walla University by growing our School of Business.”

The business curriculum includes project-based learning and internships, with students assisting local businesses in the Walla Walla Valley with market research

and analysis, business planning, and other projects.

“The new building means a new space for collaborative learning,” says Madilyn Malott, junior business major and president of the WWU Business Club. “It also serves as an important reminder that the donors to the project believe in both me and my potential, and are willing to invest so that I will have a better learning experience.”

In 2017, WWU senior business majors scored in the 97th percentile on the Major Field Test in business. In 2015 and 2016, seniors scored in the 96th percentile. Every year the MFT is taken by tens of thousands of students at hundreds of business schools across the nation.

Initial construction on Bowers Hall, then named Science Hall, was completed in 1924. In 1955, it was renamed in honor of George Bowers, chair of the chemistry department and later the 13th WWU president.

The School of Business moved into Bowers Hall in 2009.

SPREAD THE WORD! Fast facts about the School of Business: • 97th percentile on Major Field Test • Accredited by ACBSP • 25 percent growth in enrollment in the last six years • 100 percent of students complete internships

Learn more at

business. wallawalla.edu Westwind Spring 2018

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College Avenue The latest from across campus

A history worth celebrating Day-long birthday party marks WWU 125th anniversary

Watch the 125th birthday commemoration service at

wallawalla.edu/125.

in front of the Administration Building to reflect on the past and celebrate the future. After the bell rang 125 times, Terrie Aamodt, professor of history and English, and Don Weaver ’56 took the crowd back to opening day, speaking in character as 1892 matron Sallie Sutherland and WWU benefactor and former Walla Walla mayor Nelson G. Blalock. The crowd sang “Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow” as they did in 1892 on the first day of classes. At the close of the program, a gift of $185,035 from former ASWWU and ASWWC presidents was presented to kick off a new Student Life and Ministry Center project.

WWU President John McVay spoke to the crowd gathered on the front lawn for the celebration on Dec. 7.

The daylong celebration featured yogi burgers at The Express for $1.25 off, three popup parties across campus, and a birthday party in Kellogg Hall.

That afternoon, an open house in Havstad Alumni Center kept people warm until the start of the College Place Winterfest when the City of College Place teamed

A good sign

Key marker of student satisfaction at all-time high The freshman retention rate—the number of students that return for their sophomore year—is 86 percent this year at WWU, marking a 5 percent increase over the 2015–16 school year. The national average retention rate at four-year colleges is 75 percent.

WWU registrar Carolyn Denney says the high retention rate at WWU indicates that students are happy

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both academically and socially and that they are receiving the support they need to be successful. She credits several programs at WWU for contributing to student retention.

“JumpStart is an important element of orientation. The program introduces students to campus facilities, policies, and expectations, and connects them with other students,” she says. Other factors

Mentors help new students navigate the challenges of adjusting to college life.

up with WWU for a parade down College Avenue, a tree lighting at City Hall, and a fireworks show.

The community turned out to be a part of something special.

“It’s good to remind ourselves of who we are,” says Aamodt. “This place didn’t just sprout up out of nothing for no reason. It’s bigger than any one of us, it’s bigger than any day of the year or any department or any particular classroom or any particular teacher.”

include renewable merit scholarships, the freshman mentoring program, which partners freshmen with a personal mentor, and a class introduced fall quarter 2016 called On Course, which teaches life-skill strategies and study skills.

Denney credits other factors as well: “Advisement is more consistent and systematic, faculty are responsive to students who need special attention, and Student Financial Services proactively works with students who are in financial need or in danger of losing their

merit scholarships.”

Retaining students from the beginning can be significant for their progress. When students transfer from one college to another, they often lose credits, which costs time and money.

Increased retention can improve the chance that a student will meet their expected graduation date.

Learn more about WWU resources that support student success at

wallawalla.edu/ student-success.

READ WESTWIND ONLINE: WESTWIND.WALLAWALLA.EDU

PHOTOS: CHRIS DRAKE

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ALLA WALLA UNIVERSITY first opened its doors on Dec. 7, 1892.

On that cold morning, a small community gathered in the snow to consecrate an unfinished building that lacked central heat, running water, and a functional kitchen stove. They knew conditions would be rough for a while, but celebrated anyway, because that bleak morning represented a bright future.

Flash forward 125 years to Dec. 7, 2017. At 8:30 a.m., students, faculty, staff, and guests gathered

BY THE NUMBERS

College Place residence halls

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Resident assistants who foster community on the halls through regular programming and open-door hours

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Furnished study spaces available to residents

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Student chaplains who live in the residence halls and promote spiritual well-being

ON THIS ROCK ASWWU Global Service raises funds for Haiti trade school

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EARLY 4,000 schools were forced to close after a catastrophic earthquake flattened Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 2010. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti still relies on foreign aid to carry on.

The Associated Students of Walla Walla University Global Service department is partnering with Beehive International, a Seventh-day Adventist humanitarian organization, to help build a trade school in Bohoc, Haiti, where Haitians can learn the skills to build infrastructure

ASWWU representatives met with Beehive staff and students last summer.

and sustain themselves through agriculture. Through their campaign, On This Rock, ASWWU is working to raise $60,000 during the 2017–18 academic year to support the Beehive International mission.

“A lot of development work has been done in Haiti

Excellence in thought

Three faculty members complete doctoral degrees

PHOTOS: CHRIS DRAKE, BOBBY LOCKE, AND ASWWU PHOTO

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Decades that OPS and AGA have been sponsoring events for residents

Find info about WWU residential life at wallawalla.edu/ residencehalls.

Maria Bastien,

assistant professor of education, successfully defended her doctoral dissertation at the University of Ottawa in July. In her research, Bastien used Multiple Literacy Theory to examine the experiences, practices, and processes of visitors of parents who are instructing preschool youngsters at home.

Her doctorate was conferred in November. Bastien joined the WWU faculty in 2017.

Jinhyang Park,

instructor of music, completed a doctor of musical arts degree in collaborative piano at the Boston University School of Music in November. Her project, “Mohammed Fairouz’s Cello Sonata Elegiac Verses,” included a formal lecture and recital based on an analysis of Fairouz’s “Elegiac Verses” for cello and piano.

Michaelynn Paul, associate

professor of nursing, received a doctorate in nursing practice from Walden University in November.

Her dissertation is titled “Medical Floor Confusion Assessment Method: Implementation and Assessment of Risk Factors.”

Paul has taught for the WWU School of Nursing on the Portland campus since July 2000.

since the earthquake, but most of it has been short-term disaster relief,” says ASWWU Global Service director Karisa Ing, senior international development major. “This project is going to provide sustainable, long-term development for people in Haiti for many years to come.”

To watch a short video about On This Rock or to learn how you can support the project, visit

aswwu.com/ globalservice.

New members join WWU Board of Trustees 1 / Douglas Bing is president of the Washington Conference.

He pastored in the Midwest before joining the Washington Conference in 2001 as ministerial director. He served as vice president of the Washington Conference from 2002 to 2016.

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2 / Daniel Linrud is president of the Oregon Conference.

3 Prior to serving as assistant to the president of the Oregon Conference from 2013 to 2016, he served as executive secretary for the Ontario Conference in Canada. Linrud was raised in Washington state and pastored in the greater Seattle area from 1988 to 1998.

3 / Elden Ramirez is president of the Montana Conference. As a youth civic leader in San Francisco, he provided guidance for young drug addicts and worked to stop violence among gangs. In 1996, he began full-time ministry for the Seventhday Adventist Church.

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College Avenue The latest from across campus

TOY HACK

I CANTORI RELEASES NEW CD I Cantori, the WWU select choir, has released a CD titled A Colony of Heaven in the Country of Death. Inspired by a phrase in Eugene Peterson’s commentary on Ephesians, the album aims to remind listeners of the importance of working toward unity, fellowship, and growth in a world that desperately needs God’s love.

Student clubs modify toys for children with disabilities

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HILDREN WITH SPECIAL needs face obstacles that most kids never will. Common toys that line the shelves are often incompatible with disabilities. When Brian Hartman, assistant professor of education, learned about toy adaptation programs that make toys more accessible for children with special needs, he decided to bring the idea to student clubs on the Walla Walla University campus. “Since special needs children don’t have any of these resources in the valley, I thought it would be a great program to start,” Hartman says.

In November, the Education Club and the Society for Biological Engineering Club (SBEC) hosted a toy hack workshop in Kretschmar Hall, where students modified a dozen toys to make them more functional for children with disabilities. For example, they added large external buttons to an electronic alphabet toy and an air-powered ball-popping toy, both of which came wired with difficult-to-access control buttons.

The Education Club led fundraising efforts for the event and purchased the toys with donations from Walmart, the WWU Center for Educational Equity and Diversity (CEED), and private donors. CEED is operated by the WWU School of Education and Psychology to increase research and improve practices on issues of diversity and equality. The SBEC prepared tools for the event and provided technical aid to the hackers.

The 12 toys that were adapted during the workshop were placed in a toy library located in the CEED offices on the first floor of Smith Hall, where multiple people can benefit from them.

“We intend to continue to grow the program and hope to involve engineering students in their senior projects in the future,” Hartman says.

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“All year long, the choir had fun discussing this phrase and thinking of ourselves as a little colony, a small congregation, a group of like-minded individuals needing to take care of each other,” says I Cantori director Kraig Scott. “As the original idea started to sink in and influence our daily behavior, the joy in caring for each other grew along with our understanding and love of the music.”

Contact the WWU Department of Music at

(509) 527-2561 to learn more about the CD.

books sites Reading and browsing recommendations from our experts

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

by Lindsey Fitzharris (Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017)

“Modern” medicine is a relative term. The Butchering Art focuses on the period from 1850 to 1875, when body snatchers sometimes provided unwitting subjects for highly entertaining public surgeries held in theaters. During this time, the medical elite were certain that infectious diseases were transmitted via poisonous vapors. Joseph Lister had the audacity to claim that germs might cause infections (ridiculous!) and to suggest that surgeons should use antiseptics and wash their hands (never!). Be prepared to cringe while you read about fetid pus, putrefying limbs, and rotting abscesses as this book takes you through Lister’s journey to elucidate and eradicate the causes of infections.

—Jim Nestler, professor of biology

A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea

by Melissa Fleming (Flatiron Books, 2017)

This incredible true story had me riveted from the first page to the last. If you are looking for a book that captures one of the largest humanitarian crises of our time through the eyes of one Syrian refugee’s experience, this is the book for you. A powerful and moving story of both hope and loss.

—Wafia Kinne, adjunct piano faculty and student teaching director

What Every Body is Saying

by Joe Navarro with Marvin Karlins (HarperCollins Publishers, 2008)

Understanding what someone is really saying can be difficult.

With nonverbal behaviors comprising 60 to 65 percent of all interpersonal communication, Joe Navarro helps navigate what your body is telling others and what others are saying to you. For more than 25 years, Navarro has studied people as an FBI agent. This book provides great insight into the various micro expressions and movements that help us better understand others and what signals we are sending.

—Scott Rae, associate dean of men

READ WESTWIND ONLINE: WESTWIND.WALLAWALLA.EDU

PHOTO: BRIAN HARTMAN

Bioengineering students provided technical expertise for the toy hack project.

From the archives / If memory serves

’80s

Bed racing 1981

CREDIT TK

Grab a bed and some friends and get running! Even in the winter cold, Walla Wallans brought energy and speed to College Avenue during the first-ever campus bed race, sponsored by the Associated Students of Walla Walla College to raise money for United Way. A recurring event for decades, the bed races encourage a break from studying to enjoy some friendly competition.

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Faculty in First Person

Pedrito Maynard-Reid Professor of biblical studies and missiology The 2017 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer issues a ‘radical, prophetic call to the academy and the pew’

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HE 21ST CENTURY Christian institutions of higher learning (the academy) and the institution of the church (the pew) are being challenged by a generation of millennials to be more involved in issues of social justice. Millennials are not satisfied with an indirect and unintentional approach that postulates that the Christian should not be involved in matters of justice that smack of politics, even if it is for the betterment of humanity. Rather, this generation desires that the church and its institutions become prophetic places of power that actively address issues of injustice.

A biblical paradigm My millennial students are taking their cues from the Bible and the early history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. A dominant theme in Scripture is that of justice. The same Hebrew and Greek words that are translated “righteousness” can be translated “justice,” and in many instances, refer to social justice. The same is true for many theological truths that we have viewed only through personal and spiritual lenses—they should be viewed more wholistically with a social and corporate dimension as well.

An example pertinent to us is the Sabbath. In the Pentateuch, we find three Sabbath institutions, all of which focus on social justice. The weekly Sabbath gives the laborer a day off from toil and celebrates liberation from physical and social slavery (Deut. 5:15). The seventh-year Sabbath requires that all debts be forgiven—slaves were freed, the land rested, and immigrants were allowed the blessings of the Sabbatical year (Lev. 25 and Deut. 15). And, during the Sabbatical Jubilee year, not only were captives freed and debts forgiven, but all land and

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property were restored to the original owners.

It was a great equalizer.

God promised in Deut. 15: 1–12 that if His people followed these commandments that provided structural relief to the marginalized, there would be no poor in the land. But they did not follow the commands. Thus God sent prophets who spent significant effort challenging the political and religious leaders to do justice, to repent of their sins of oppression and exploitation, and to engage in worship that would be sensitive to the needs of widows, orphans, homeless, and strangers. (See Isa. 1:10–18, Isa. 58:5–7, Amos 5:21–24, and Micah 6:6–8.)

Too often we miss the rigor of Jesus’ concern for justice. We focus on the Pauline emphasis in letters like Romans and Galatians and ignore the strong social dimension of the Incarnation in the Gospels.

WATCH THE DFL ONLINE: WALLAWALLA.EDU/DFL

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God’s people today in the academy and the pew need to be as forthright and unapologetic as were the biblical prophets, Jesus and the early church, and our forefathers and -mothers in Adventism.” the slaves.2 The first General Conference president, John Byington, used his home as a station in the Underground Railroad as slaves fled from the south to Canada.

Most significant was the voice of Ellen G. White.

She condemned slavery, calling it a national sin and dubbed it “a sin of the darkest dye.”3 She went even further to advocate civil disobedience. There was the second fugitive slave law and the Dred Scott decision of 1857 in which Congress and the Supreme Court determined that slaves were property and all were obligated to return slaves to their owners.

Ellen White made it very clear that those laws and rulings must not be obeyed. She said, “The law of our land requiring us to deliver a slave to his master, we are not to obey; and we must abide the consequences of violating this law.”4 She went even further to tell a member of the church that unless he renounced his proslavery political opinions, he should be disfellowshipped.5 White went as far as calling on the federal government and private citizens to make restitution to African-Americans for the wrongs done in the past—even if they had taken no active part in the dastardly acts.6

Jesus is clear regarding the reason he came as the Messiah: He was anointed to (among other social actions) bring good news to the poor and to restore the Sabbatical Jubilee year (Luke 4:18–19). The early Jerusalem Church followed that trajectory. They not only baptized thousands, but they also made sure that justice was done, and there were no needy within their midst (Acts 4:32 and cf. Deut. 15).

PHOTO: CHRIS DRAKE

An Adventist historical paradigm The dominant social issue during biblical times was economics, and the prophets addressed it with vigor. In North American Adventism for the past almost two centuries, the dominant issue has been race and racism. Early Adventist leaders and laypersons, like the prophets of old, addressed it and condemned racism and slavery with vigor. Joseph Bates, cofounder of the Adventist church, condemned the United States as a “slave-holding … murdering country.” 1 The foremost theologian in early Adventism, Uriah Smith, used the pages of the Review and Herald to chastise President Abraham Lincoln for “following his present conservative, not to say suicidal, policy” in his attempt to win the war without working to free

A contemporary challenge God’s people today in the academy and the pew need to be as forthright and unapologetic as were the biblical prophets, Jesus and the early church, and our forefathers and -mothers in Adventism.

We must speak truth to power—political, social, and ecclesiastical power. We must call for change and be agents of change for justice whether it be economic, social, or religious.

1. Cited in Zdravko Plantak, The Silent Church (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 75. • 2. Cited in Roger Dudley and Edwin Hernandez, Citizens of Two Worlds (Berrien Springs, MI, Andrews University Press, 1992), 63. • 3. Testimony to the Church (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press, 1948), 1:359. • 4. Ibid., 202. • 5. Ibid., 360 • 6. The Southern Work, (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Association, 1966), 54.

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Spaceships and 747s are just another day at the office for four WWU alumni

by AMY WILKINSON ’04 Photographed by JUSTIN CALHOUN, AMBER FOUTS, MATT NAGER, AND JENNY SIEGWART

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CREDIT TK

T

HE SAME YEAR Walla Walla University opened its doors in 1892, some 2,000 miles away two brothers named Wright began their own bold venture: a bicycle sales and repair shop in Dayton, Ohio. A mere 11 years later, those two entrepreneurinventors would achieve the seemingly impossible—executing the first successful powered flight in their 40-by-21-foot biplane off the sandy banks of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their invention, simply dubbed the “Flyer,” would change the course of history. At WWU that spirit of innovation continues to set many careers aloft as engineering alumni land at prestigious aeronautical and aerospace agencies and firms, such as NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX. If you were to scroll through the WWU academic bulletin in search of the aeronautical engineering major, you wouldn’t find it. WWU students choose from several engineering concentrations with which to get the necessary baseline—typically mechanical engineering in this case—and then supplement with aeronautical-specific electives, projects, internships, or eventually advanced degrees.

“My vision is to give students that initial experience they need in order to get a really good internship—the steppingstone to a good career at an aerospace company,” says Brian Roth, professor of engineering, who teaches WWU’s aeronautics courses.

Indeed, dozens of students have used that steppingstone to launch successful careers in the field. Meet four whose careers have really taken off.

CREDIT TK

TWO INTERNSHIPS AT Boeing led to a full-time position at the Seattlebased company for Derek Lee ’06 (p. 15). He was photographed at The Museum of Flight near Seattle.

LIKE MANY OF HER classmates, Nadine Lashier, a 1997 mechanical engineering graduate, had her sights set on a career at Boeing.

Then the company instituted a hiring freeze—putting those dreams on ice.

“We started scrambling, looking for alternate options,” she recalls. “That’s when I started looking into grad school.”

With the help of her advisor, Roger Baltrusch, former WWU professor of engineering, Lashier focused in on the University of Tennessee, impressed by its small-campus feel and professors’ ties to NASA at nearby Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

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STAY ON TARGET “I liked the leadership. I liked having more responsibility.

I liked being able to be more engaged with all of our international partners.”

And so Lashier spent the next two years earning a master’s degree in aerospace engineering with an assistantship helping one of her professors fine-tune satellite orbit models. But to hear Lashier tell it, her fondest memories from graduate school were the hours spent flight testing helicopters under the tutelage of a former military man.

“That’s what I figured I was going to do after I graduated,” says Lashier.

After another unsuccessful flirtation with Boeing (“It was coming down to not having any real-world experience”), Lashier agreed on a whim to accompany one of her friends to a job fair in Nashville. She was offered a position at United Space Alliance, a NASA contractor, that very same day.

As a contract instructor at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Lashier taught guidance, navigation, and control to the flight controllers and astronauts of the International Space Station, which at the time was gearing up to launch its inaugural crew. Of course, Lashier first had to teach herself all of the intricacies of the station—though the learning curve wasn’t as steep as it could have been. “I managed to be in kind of from the beginning, so we only really had to learn a little bit at a time,” explains Lashier. “As each

FEATURE PHOTO DIRECTION: SARINA FINKELSTEIN; PHOTO: JUSTIN CALHOUN

Nadine Lashier

new mission, each new piece came to the Space Station, you were like, ‘Now I’ll learn that piece.

Then I’ll learn that piece.’ It’s different than if I started now, ‘Hey, go learn everything!’”

Lashier spent six years as an instructor before earning a promotion to chief training officer, overseeing her own group of instructors. Lashier reveled in her expanded role.

“Oh, I loved it,” she says. “I liked the leadership. I liked having more responsibility.

I liked being able to be more engaged with all of our international partners.”

Those international partners? The Space Station is a joint venture among 15 different countries and is split into two parts: the American side and the Russian side.

So, in addition to trips to Japan, Germany, and France to oversee training, Lashier also had to learn Russian.

“I wouldn’t say I was fluent,” Lashier says. “I would say I was conversational.

I was at the point where I could get around Moscow by myself.”

Lashier admits that her Russian has gotten a bit rusty over the ensuing years, though, since her most recent promotion to certified flight controller doesn’t necessitate it. But there have been other perks: With this new role, Lashier transitioned from being a contract employee to a civil servant, meaning she’s a direct employee of NASA—something she’d wanted for a long time.

Her current position also puts her smack dab in the middle of the action in mission control. Lashier and her team are responsible for being the experts on whatever other vehicle is docking at the ISS—whether it’s carrying new crew, bringing supplies, or even emptying trash. And while pop culture might have you believe mission control is a never-ending flurry of high-wire maneuvers and last-minute saves, Lashier admits it’s a little more civilized than all that.

“It can be very stressful,” she says. “But that’s why we train and practice.”

Between missions to the ISS (there are about five to eight per year, though Lashier’s team doesn’t participate in all of them), Lashier consults with commercial firms like SpaceX and—you guessed it—Boeing, on their vehicle development. She’s also helping with NASA’s Orion program, which will effectively relaunch NASA’s space shuttle program that was retired in 2011. (American astronauts going to the ISS since 2011 have had to travel on a Russian spacecraft.)

Yet, after her nearly 20 years in aerospace, Lashier’s greatest sense of accomplishment still comes from a mission well done.

“That feeling of satisfaction when they get in ... that only worked because I’m here,” she says. “You feel like you’re part of the team achieving something.”

PHOTOS THIS PAGE AND PREVIOUS SPREAD: AMBER FOUTS

In her work with NASA, Nadine Lashier ’97 consults for companies, such as Boeing and SpaceX. She was photographed at NASA Johnson Space Center.

Derek Lee WHILE MOST OF Derek Lee’s high-school classmates were perfecting their three-point turns and parallel-parking maneuvers, 17-year-old Lee was studying for a very different sort of license—his pilot’s license. As a kid, Lee had always loved to fly, and the opportunity to get a bird’s-eye view of the world proved irresistible.

“While I enjoyed the ability to go places, what I think I appreciated more was just getting up in the air and seeing the world from that perspective,” says Lee. “My interest in airplanes as a machine, and in developing the skill to make it do what I wanted it to, was also a big driver in my pursuit of flying.”

When Lee arrived at WWU, he toyed with the idea of becoming a professional pilot—even earning a commercial license over the course of those first couple of years—but he also wanted to have a degree that wasn’t in the industry.

Given his interest in design, an engineering major seemed like the right fit. His junior year brought an internship at Boeing and with it (continued on page 16) the opportunity to

NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS “That should tell any graduate—if this is a field they’re interested in—there are opportunities for them.”

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Derek Lee

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CREDIT TK

not only gain real-world experience but to see behind the curtain of the aircraft manufacturer.

“It was a three-month internship in the flight deck design organization,” explains Lee. “I got exposed to the way Boeing does design and the philosophies for designing flight deck, and you see all kinds of neat things you don’t get to see when you’re an employee. For example I flew the simulators. It was a great exposure to the company and the diversity of innovation that happens there.”

The internship also helped Lee come to an important realization: “I decided flying wasn’t what I wanted to do—I wanted to sleep in my own bed every night.”

And so, after graduating with a mechanical engineering major in 2006 and another summer internship at Boeing, Lee accepted a full-time position at the company that fall, where he continues to work as a hydraulic systems engineer.

“Right now I am assigned to the 777X program. I work in the group that certifies the hydraulic systems. I’m responsible for generating and reviewing data— safety or technical analyses, component, lab, and airplane testing, etc.—that show that the airplane’s hydraulic system meets the FAA’s requirements.”

It’s a specialized field—Lee estimates that only about 100 people in the world do what he does. So you could say he has a certain level of job security, although the flip side is that any mechanical engineer with the proper training should be able to do the job.

“That should tell any graduate—if this is a field they’re interested in—that there are opportunities for them.”

The job has also afforded Lee some amazing opportunities—whether it’s being flown to Hong Kong to troubleshoot an aircraft or bundling up in frigid Alaska for cold-weather testing.

“It’s been a diverse exposure to different aspects of the industry,” Lee says. And he has no plans to leave Boeing anytime soon.

“If you don’t like what you’re doing in your current job, there are lots of opportunities in the company,” says Lee. “There’s no compelling reason for me to go at the moment. If I were to move anywhere else, I’d probably be supporting what Boeing is doing instead of working directly for Boeing.”

And while Lee still loves to fly, that expired pilot’s license may have to wait just a bit longer.

“It’s something I’d love to do,” he says.

“But time goes by ... .”

PHOTO: JENNY SIEGWART

(continued from page 15)

Jonathan Anderson ’13 translated his senior project on drones into work on aircraft software development. He was photographed at his home in San Diego.

Jonathan Anderson

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THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LUCK “I love software— I have found a passion and a creative outlet there.

It really feels like an amazing mix between art and science.”

IT’S A RARE AND wonderful thing when a graduate can draw a straight line from his senior project to a job he landed in the real world. And such is the case for Jonathan Anderson, a 2013 computer engineering graduate, now a software developer at San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. “I applied to GA-ASI and that project is what I really think got me the job,” says Anderson.

Professor Roth agrees that Anderson’s senior project did indeed prove pivotal.

“I think that was a real turning point for him and his education,” says Roth. “He just caught fire—it captured his imagination and he went way above and beyond what I would expect of a student.”

So what of this project?

About six years ago, Leo Wilson, a former aerospace executive and the owner of Solution Engineering Inc., approached the School of Engineering about the possibility of sponsoring and mentoring projects within the school—to give back to higher education. That first joint venture focused on an unmanned autonomous vehicle—otherwise known as a drone. Anderson and fellow classmates Nathan Curry and Michael Kudla were tasked with creating a drone that could fly over a farmer’s field and take a series of photos that would be stitched together in hi-res.

“The end goal was that a farmer could have a daily top-down view of his whole farm,” Anderson explains. “He could see this part of the crops looks a little weaker, maybe I need some water or some work here. It’s a very quick way for him to survey his whole land.”

As a computer engineering major,

Anderson worked on the plane’s software, writing his own code to communicate with the drone’s autopilot system.

By the end of the trio’s senior year, they had built a prototype with a one-foot wingspan that was flying—albeit not particularly well. It was enough, however, to impress Wilson who agreed to let Anderson and Curry stay on through the summer developing the drone as paid consultants.

Ultimately, the project was a bit behind market—other companies had developed operational drones with similar capabilities—but Anderson’s experiences went a long way toward paving his job path. After working nine months as a contract web developer for a Northern California-based firm, Anderson landed his current position as a software developer at GA-ASI. Anderson’s work largely focuses on communication among aircraft software— a somewhat abstract idea known as a message bus.

“I develop the vernacular and the word set that different types of software use to talk to each other,” Anderson explains.

Whether Anderson will continue in aerospace five, 10, or 20 years down the line is hard to say. With software development, he has found a field that he not only enjoys, but one which lends itself to numerous possibilities.

“I love software—I have found a passion and a creative outlet there,” he says. “It really feels like an amazing mix between art and science. You have a lot of expressibility within these constrained rules. The cool part about software is as long as you can understand the problem that you’re trying to solve, the concepts used in these solutions are kind of universal. The same building blocks that are used in your toaster can also be used on an aircraft.”

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Bryce Hill

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PASS ON WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED “The private sector in aerospace is booming right now and that’s where I want to be because they can just move faster.”

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at the University of Colorado Boulder to pursue a graduate degree in aerospace engineering and also accepted an internship at the private aerospace manufacturer SpaceX. And once again, he found himself divided between multiple interests: While his master’s work focused on control systems (much like those drone projects at WWU), his internship centered around rocketengine testing.

“I wasn’t even sure if I should take it since it was out of where I was trying to go,” Hill recalls of the internship. “But it was SpaceX, and I wanted to see the private sector. I wanted to understand how that felt. And I also knew that SpaceX was doing some really cool stuff along the lines of where I was interested in going long-term, so getting in some experience and making some contacts would be beneficial.”

Hill finished his master’s degree in 2017 and cast a wide net during the job hunt. He ultimately didn’t end up going too far from Boulder, accepting a software-engineering position at the small, Denver-based firm SpaceNav. And, as you may have already guessed, he’s once again venturing into unfamiliar territory.

“We do orbit determination for satellites, collision-avoidance space situational awareness,” says Hill.

“I don’t know anything about orbits.

I kind of just pivoted into the space realm as opposed to the aeronautical realm that I had been working in through all of my master’s. It’s not at all what I thought I was going to be doing, but it’s fun, so I’m doing it.”

Thankfully, the firm has its own orbital guru on staff, so Hill doesn’t have to understand all the ins and outs just yet.

As for the future, Hill’s only real plan is to ... just go with the flow.

“Now that I have the software thing on my résumé, I have pretty much everything on my résumé across the board,” he says. “The 10-year plan is just see what happens.”

PHOTO: MATT NAGER

IF BRYCE HILL WERE to ever author a selfhelp book, it would probably be titled Just Go With the Flow. The 2015 Spanish and mechanical engineering graduate readily admits his interests are wide-ranging and ever-changing.

“My whole career is hilariously disjointed,” he says.

“Everything I do is all over the place. And when I interview with people they actually say this: ‘Man, you’re not really focused, but it looks like you can do whatever you want.’”

Case in point: After a year studying abroad in Spain—part of Hill’s plan to pursue an international rescue and relief degree at Union College—he started thinking that he’d like an additional degree track, something a bit more technical.

As a kid, he’d always liked planes and been curious about how everything worked, so he googled around (as one does) and stumbled upon aerospace engineering. Hill then consulted a professor at the University of Arkansas, near where he was living at the time, who recommended getting a broader education in mechanical engineering. When the University of Arkansas wouldn’t honor his Spanish credits, Hill decided to transfer to WWU. This complete one-eighty transpired over the course of just three weeks.

Hill pursued a mechanical engineering degree, with an eye toward aerospace, and through the WWU chapter of Engineers Without Borders, he met his eventual mentor, Professor Roth. A shift in Hill’s sophomore-year schedule allowed him to incorporate a senior-level aeronautics elective, and he also earned a role as a support member on Jonathan Anderson’s drone project (see p. 17), which for Hill also proved to be critical hands-on experience.

“You’re never going to be able to design a whole passenger aircraft, so if you work on these small planes you get to touch every component: propulsion, electronics, avionics, aerodynamics structures,” says Hill. “It was a really good way to get a lot of experience with the different systems.”

That experience, coupled with a recommendation letter from Roth, helped Hill land an internship at NASA, with surprisingly little extra fuss.

“The work I had been doing on these aerospace projects was almost exactly what they were looking for at NASA,” says Hill. “They didn’t even interview me—they just called me and said, ‘Do you want an internship?’ And I said yes.”

Hill describes his summer at NASA as an “amazing” experience, but says he also came away with an important realization: He didn’t want to work at NASA. “I liked working with them a lot, but they’re large and they’re crippled by government bureaucracy,” says Hill.

“They’re not fast-paced enough—the private sector in aerospace is booming right now and that’s where I want to be because they can just move faster.”

To that end, after graduating from WWU, Hill enrolled

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For 2015 graduate Bryce Hill, his work in satellite orbits at SpaceNav in Denver is expanding his sphere of expertise. Bryce was photographed at Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado Boulder.

WE’RE SHAPED BY THE PEOPLE WE RUB SHOULDERS WITH. BY CONVERSATIONS AT KEY MOMENTS. BY WHERE WE’VE LIVED AND WHERE WE’VE TRAVELED. BY CLASSES WE’VE TAKEN AND THE PEOPLE WHO TAUGHT THEM.

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BY BECKY DE OLIVEIRA ’94, TERRI DICKINSON NEIL ’82, AND KARL HAFFNER ’85 ILLUSTRATIONS AND LETTERING

BY SAMANTHA HAHN

RECONNECTING WITH A FAVORITE FACULTY MEMBER REMINDS THREE ALUMNI AFRESH OF PERSONAL AND INTELLECTUAL GROWTH, EMERGING CONFIDENCE IN DEVELOPING SKILLS, AND WISDOM WITH STAYING POWER.

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POSITIVE INTELLECTUAL HABITS Becky De Oliveira ’94 interviews Terrie Aamodt, professor of history and English

DE OLIVEIRA: I think I bumped into you a couple of times when I worked at Andrews University and you were in town doing research at the James White Library. I graduated from WWU with a degree in history back in 1994 and I haven’t “used” it in any traditional way. I didn’t go to law school like I planned.

My graduate work has been in English and education, and whenever I tell people I majored in history there’s almost always a kind of snort. Lots of people seem to think that degrees in history are “useless,” but I always credit the training I received in history for most of my positive intellectual habits.

I learned to write as a history major. Can you talk about what you think the study of English and history does for students?

You used to have a dual appointment, right?

AAMODT: I just about remember seeing you at Andrews—I knew you worked there. Yes, when I taught you, I was professor of English and history. It can be hard for me to disengage the two disciplines because I had a double major as an undergraduate and my master’s degree was in English entirely, but my doctorate was interdisciplinary and I’ve taught in both disciplines.

They’re very distinct from each other, but there’s also a lot of congruence, I guess. The thing I think happens when you study history is that you’re constantly being asked to develop causal reasoning. These skills are also important in the business world and in the medical and scientific worlds. People who graduate with majors in history don’t necessarily do history as a profession, but they are using that training in a whole variety of ways.

There are a significant percentage of CEOs and university administrators who are history majors, and they routinely go to the best law schools, to medical school, or into business or academic leadership.

DE OLIVEIRA: I had you for both Survey of English and American Literature and Thesis Research for my history major. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on prison reform at the state penitentiary.

I have always enjoyed research (and am currently applying for a doctoral program in research methods) and I first really discovered this affinity in your Thesis Seminar. I loved going to the State Library in Olympia and visiting an entire room filled with boxes of artifacts from the former commissioner of prisons. It was so exciting to open one of those boxes, having no idea what I was going to find.

What was your first experience with loving research?

AAMODT: I remember your thesis! Well, when I was an undergraduate, we had senior projects in both majors. In my history major, it was a research paper related to the American Revolution. We were studying various parliamentary leaders in Britain who were sympathetic to the Revolution.

Because I was also an English major, my professors suggested I study the career of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was a member of Parliament, a sympathizer with the American Revolution, and also a famous playwright. In the process of doing my research, I went down to the Jefferson Building in the Library of Congress— not far away [from Columbia Union College]. In those days— we were so spoiled—you could just walk into the reading room and fill out a slip and they’d bring you books within the next hour or two. I would just order my books and get lost in all this 18th-century material.

Just to sit there in that big, circular reading room with those wooden desks and these huge stacks of books was amazing.

But when it comes right down to it, whether you happen to be sitting in a gorgeous reading room or in your boring house looking at your computer, the thrill of discovery is really very similar. Unfortunately, they still haven’t taught computers how to duplicate the smell of an old book or an old manuscript!

BECKY DE OLIVEIRA graduated from WWU in 1994 with a major in history and a minor in English. She has lived in England, Michigan, and Colorado, and has worked in radio, advertising, editing, graphic design, communication, and higher education. She is the author of three books—two of them for children. She is married to Japhet De Oliveira, senior pastor of the Boulder Adventist Church in Boulder, Colorado.

TERRIE DOPP AAMODT, WWU professor of history and English, has taught at WWU since 1979. She has a bachelor’s degree from Columbia Union College, a master’s degree from The College of William and Mary, and a doctorate from Boston University.

She is married to Larry Aamodt, WWU professor of engineering and computer science.

DE OLIVEIRA: I’m sure that’s somewhere on the horizon!

Related to research is the problem of how information is disseminated and received, which is now almost totally

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along partisan lines. People don’t agree on facts, which makes having reasonable discourse impossible. It feels like higher education has something to say to this—particularly the discipline of history.

AAMODT: Students sometimes ask, “Why in the world do I have to study history? I’m never going to use that.” I tell them that it teaches you to analyze material and figure out when someone’s telling you the truth and when they’re not. You’re going to use that skill every day of your life—even in your personal relationships. The only thing we can do as educators is continue to insist on scrupulous attention to established facts.

We also have to continue to develop critical-thinking skills to help us sift through all the bewildering information. This isn’t just an intellectual game.

It’s a survival skill—not only for individuals, but for societies.

Newspapers are the primary documents of our society.

Imperfect though they may be, newspapers still have a broadly accepted set of journalistic standards they are expected to follow. If newspapers die, it’s going to be really hard for our democracy to survive. I tell students that if they care about living in a democracy, subscribe to the local newspaper.

DE OLIVEIRA: I get the local paper and the New York Times— digital versions in both cases.

Now I have a personal question: when you were my professor, you were pregnant— I think with your youngest child. It was the first time I’d

encountered a woman working as a professor while pregnant.

I remember observing you and wondering how that goes—and whether it would be possible for me, as a woman, to balance all the things I wanted to do.

Can you talk about that experience of being an example?

AAMODT: As a student, I had no clue of the complications of my professors’ lives and wasn’t particularly interested knowing about them. My favorite English professor—I took five classes from him—was a full-time doctoral student and a fulltime teacher with little kids.

His office hours were 6:00 to 8:00 in the morning. And a couple of times during a very tough class we had with him— Renaissance Literature—we’d actually call him at home.

I remember thinking very vaguely that his life must be complicated, but I had no clue.

By the time I had kids, I was done with my doctorate and I had a bit more ability to work out a teaching schedule that was as congruent as possible with their needs, but it was always complicated and difficult. One thing I deeply appreciate was when the academic dean said, “You need to make sure you take time with your kids when they’re young, no matter how much pressure you feel professionally.” That gave me validation.

DE OLIVEIRA: Thank you so much for your time! It was great to talk to you and I hope we can catch up again soon— perhaps if my son ends up out there at Walla Walla University next year.

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CONFIDENT COMMUNICATION Terri Dickinson Neil ’82 interviews Donnie Rigby, professor emeritus of communication TERRI NEIL: As I think back to my many college courses, one of the first classes I took was Speech Communication 101. I was excited about this course because I knew my teaching career would depend on good presentation skills—and because I had heard a lot about communication growing up with a professor of communication. Some of the things I recall are learning how to give a speech with clarity and good pronunciation, effective preparation skills, organizational techniques, and the various types of speeches. Describe your intentionality of helping students develop these kinds of skills.

DONNIE RIGBY: Well, you note something that you have remembered and that’s always encouraging to a teacher to think that everything they taught was not forgotten. With any class, but certainly with a public-address class, it’s a two-way process on the part of the student as well as the teacher. I probably learned as much as the students did.

I learned about the student, what they could do, what they couldn’t do. Speech 101 was a very practical class for any major. Most students would find themselves using these skills at some point.

As the instructor, it was my responsibility to come prepared, to make friends with the students, to ease their tensions, and to create a friendly atmosphere. It was helped by having a smaller class size, usually 25 students.

One specific method of interrelating with the students was I met individually with each student twice each quarter.

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I used a tape recorder to record the student’s presentations and they would come to my office to listen to it together and analyze it. In later years, we began using the television. These individual sessions helped me become better acquainted with the student and to understand what their tensions and fears were.

NEIL: I remember that fun classroom atmosphere, but I also recall anticipating with some fear and trepidation the oral and written feedback after each speech.

I’m grateful you took the time to reach out to students individually. I’m sure each student had a different level of comfort with public presentations.

RIGBY: One student came to class every day with no shoes. I thought, now why is he doing this?

Is he doing this to gain attention or get a response from me? I wasn’t going to give a response. I was just going to let him do his thing, which he did throughout the quarter. He gave his speeches with no shoes on. I never said anything and that was it.

Another student came to me at the beginning of the quarter and described a difficult upfront experience she had in fifth grade.

I didn’t ask her the specifics, but it was something very traumatizing. She suggested that if she could be allowed to walk back and forth while she gave her speech, that might control her nervousness. We agreed this would be fine. The first couple of times she did her walking back and forth and then she started to calm down. Eventually she could stand behind the lectern.

NEIL: What about the young man who didn’t wear shoes? If I’m recalling correctly, appropriate dress was considered part of our overall presentation and grade.

RIGBY: I made my expectations clear, but what is appropriate to one is not always appropriate to another. I let it ride and didn’t make an issue out of it. Terri, I have a question for you. I was wondering why you took Speech 101 from me rather than your father [Loren Dickinson, professor emeritus of communication]?

NEIL: Both of you had reputations for being excellent instructors.

Since I’d had the privilege of learning from Dad at home, I thought it would be interesting to learn from someone else. And truthfully, I was self-conscious and a bit reserved. I was concerned about living up to potential family expectations.

RIGBY: You measured up and did very well and that’s the important thing.

NEIL: I loved the classroom where my section of 101 was.

It was in the Ad Building on the west side overlooking the power plant. It had windows on all sides. It was a bright, cheery classroom. Do you have a sense for how many students you taught speech communication?

RIGBY: Between my teaching at Southwestern Junior College (now Southern Adventist University), Walla Walla University, and a short stint in Europe, I taught thousands of students. It was a goodly number for sure.

TERRI DICKINSON NEIL is a 1982 graduate from WWU. With a degree in business education, she has taught high school, home-schooled her children, Jenna and Mason, and run a greenhouse program for elementary students. Most recently she was Alumni and Parent Relations director where she put to good use her public speaking skills. She and her husband, Jay, live in Maine.

DONNIE RIGBY, lives in Los Gatos, California, where she has retired after more than 40 years of teaching. During her time at WWU, she directed more than 100 drama productions.

In 2001 a new theater at WWU was named the Donnie Rigby Stage in her honor. In 2014, a student cottage at the Rosario Beach Marine Laboratory was named in honor of Rigby and her husband, Don Rigby, WWU professor emeritus of biology.

courage to try out for one of the plays. Am I remembering correctly that you posted the scripts at the library?

RIGBY: Yes. NEIL: I recall one evening leaving my cozy Conard Hall dorm room and heading to the library to read the newest script. Somehow, I never read the script. It was part timidity and also knowing it would involve more time than I thought I could devote to such a production.

RIGBY: You would have been great. You should have come. But you are correct; it did take much time on the part of the students.

NEIL: That time commitment and your education and expertise in theater produced excellent pro-

NEIL: What are some specific speeches/presentations that were remarkable in some way?

RIGBY: There were many, but there is the one that really stands out. There was one young woman who had a unique presentation for our visual aid speech. In her talk, she described how people’s diets around the world were quite different and included intriguing ingredients. For instance, she said, in some places they eat grasshoppers. So she dumped a jar of grasshoppers into a hot skillet and started sizzling them. As she finished the main part of her speech she began to eat the insects.

NEIL: Oh my.

RIGBY: She offered them to all of us but no one came forward, not even the teacher.

NEIL: You taught other classes, of course, and one of the things I remember about your leadership at WWU were the dramas as well as being the emcee for various events. Some of my favorite memories as a child were the Christmas parties for faculty and staff at Columbia Auditorium.

RIGBY: Those were fun, weren’t they? I did teach in a variety of fields. My undergraduate degree was in public address, my master’s degree was in speech therapy, and I took numerous courses in theater. Through all my teaching I had fun and enjoyed being a teacher.

NEIL: That was very evident, Donnie. Your verve, energy, and your passion were evident in the classroom but also in the many venues where you presented.

I’d always wished I had had the

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ductions. These were programs that made up part of the Donnie Rigby legacy.

RIGBY: The students who were in those productions were not always the shining stars on campus.

Some were very shy and their self-image was low. After they had been in the play, it changed them.

It gave them confidence and they realized they had something to offer. That to me was just as important as putting on the production.

NEIL: That’s wonderful.

RIGBY: Do you remember the motivated sequence paper that I handed out giving the different kinds of speeches and what should go into each type of speech? I used to tell the students they could throw away everything else but keep this one paper.

I have had many students over the years say they did indeed keep

it and it has helped them continue to prepare quality speeches.

NEIL: When I think back over my career in education after college I certainly used the communication skills. I remember those first several years of teaching spending hours preparing.

Of course, it became much easier with time. It was my goal to engage the students, to create the desire and joy of learning, and to make those 50 minutes count.

RIGBY: Wonderful, wonderful.

You’re a chip off the old block.

Your father was an excellent teacher, and I’m sure you are, too.

NEIL: When I returned to WWU as alumni director a few years ago, I had many opportunities for public speaking. As I represented the school, the board,

and the president to the alumni and parents, I took seriously the challenge of providing quality communication. Donnie, I go back to those days in 1979 when I had the privilege of being in your class that helped to solidify those skills.

RIGBY: You’re a sweetheart, and it was my privilege to have you in class because I knew your standards were high coming from your background. I hope that I measured up.

NEIL: You certainly did. By the way, I remember you dressed impeccably—and that often included scarves.

RIGBY: Thank you, and yes, I still wear scarves!

NEIL: Thank you so much for the opportunity to reminisce with you, Donnie.

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FINDING YOUR VOICE

BRUNT: I always remember your class as being one of the most fun groups I’ve ever worked with.

HAFFNER: It really was.

BRUNT: It was a delight to just be among all of you. That made it lots of fun. There were lots of laughs. You could rib each other, but do it in a way that was positive and, you know, you all went away laughing and friends. It was an unusual group. Your class was memorable in that way.

Karl Haffner ’85 interviews John Brunt, former professor of theology KARL HAFFNER: Thank you, Dr. Brunt, for the extraordinary influence you have had on my life.

I can thank you for inspiring in me a strong work ethic, a profound appreciation for well-crafted sermons, and a passion for sharing the gospel in a relevant way. After 30 years as a pastor, as I reflect on the amazing opportunities preaching has afforded me, I credit you for developing my skills and passion for ministry. As you remember those days of teaching, were you intentional about inspiring and shaping each unique student in a personal way so that, as it happened in my case, we would each experience a profound life change in your classes?

JOHN BRUNT: It was very intentional on my part. I really believe that God has given us all different gifts, even as preachers. I think God chooses people with very different kinds of approaches to be able to reach the minds of the people who are listening. It’s always a diverse group every time we speak and they’re at different places. It takes a lot of different kinds of voices to reach people with the Gospel. I think that trying to make everyone sound alike or preach alike is a huge mistake.

The important thing is to try to help people discover their voice and what works for them.

HAFFNER: We certainly had a lot of diversity in our class. Do you remember a lot of the students?

BRUNT: Oh, sure. And, of course, there’s nothing better than seeing those students go on and do so well. Following your ministry has just been a joy to me.

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HAFFNER: Thank you. That is very kind. So, in your own career, how has the preaching shaped it?

BRUNT: Well, first, let me say that I learned over the 25 years of teaching homiletics at WWU that the students taught more to me than I did to them. I saw the different kinds of people that God had called into different styles of leading and preaching, and I feel that I learned way more than I taught in that class. It helped prepare me for the 13 1/2 years I would be at the Azure Hills church to preach nearly every week. Which is, as you well know, different from being an itinerant preacher, where as a teacher you go out and preach here and there.

But when it’s the same congregation every Sabbath, you can’t recycle, and it means being at a creative edge all the time. I could never have done that without what I learned from my students over the years in preaching.

HAFFNER: One thing that has stuck with me over the years is your checklist for a sermon. To this day, before I preach I ask the questions you drilled into me: Is this sermon Christ-centered?

Is it the Gospel? Is it biblical? Is it interesting? Is it challenging people toward life change? Is it clear? Now perhaps I changed your checklist a bit, but as best as I know it’s close to what you gave us.

BRUNT: Yes, you remember the teaching well. I think the four words that I emphasized were “Gospel,” “biblical,” “alive” and “clear.”

HAFFNER: What stands out in your memory from our class?

KARL HAFFNER is senior pastor for the Kettering Adventist Church and a mission strategist for Kettering Health Network. He has degrees in theology and business administration from WWU, a master of divinity degree, a master of business administration degree, and a doctorate in leadership. He served as senior pastor of the WWU Church for 10 years.

He met his wife, Cherié Gruesbeck, on a blind date to church when they were WWU students.

JOHN BRUNT began his ministry as a youth pastor and retired in 2015 as the senior pastor of the Azure Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. He served for 31 years at WWU in the School of Theology and as vice president for academic administration.

He has graduate degrees from Andrews University and Emory University and has written 12 books.

His wife, Ione, is a retired nurse midwife who delivered more than 4,000 babies in Washington and California.

HAFFNER: No question that your class didn’t feel like a course or college or any of that. It really was great fun.

BRUNT: Well, that’s good. I believe that we learn a lot more when we’re having fun than when we’re not. Now, when I started I was not as much fun.

What I learned over the years was that we should have fun and enjoy the learning experience.

I think when I started out, I was too prone to try to be academic, and I learned to let the hair (that I don’t have!) down a little more.

Of course, that doesn’t mean letting people slack off. As you recall, even though we had fun, I would not accept late sermons, for instance, because my theory was you can’t come in on Sabbath morning at 11:00 and say, “Sorry, but I’m not quite done. All of you come back at 2:00, and I’ll have a sermon for you.” I really drew the line there and said, “It’s what you can do in this amount of time, because that’s the discipline you’re going to live with the rest of your life.”

HAFFNER: So very true!

Just the other day I was talking to my daughter (who is a senior at WWU this year) about the importance of preparation. I said, “My homiletics teacher in college used to tell us a story of a guy who sat down after preaching a very long and boring sermon who said to my teacher, Dr. Brunt, ‘Can you believe the Holy Spirit just gave that to me, and I didn’t

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have to prepare at all.’ Dr. Brunt said, ‘Yeah, I definitely believe you didn’t prepare at all.’”

BRUNT: That’s a true story.

HAFFNER: That’s one of many lessons you taught me that has served me well over the years.

Namely, that good preaching all goes back to disciplined preparation. I’ve learned the sermons that come off as the most impromptu and natural are the ones that I spent the most time preparing.

BRUNT: You have to work so hard to make it look so easy.

HAFFNER: I find that it doesn’t get easier.

BRUNT: No. If you’re still doing it well, it doesn’t get easier.

It’s no accident, for instance, that when you look at a lot of the pastors whose primary role is preaching in a large church, that so often they leave to do something else rather than pastor another church. You’ve been an exception to that, and I have really appreciated that.

HAFFNER: A big reason for that is you! There’s no way I would have stayed a pastor were it not for the preaching. My congregation will attest that I’m not a strong nurturing pastor. I’m not good at administration. But the preaching piece? That’s what I love to do.

BRUNT: I believe that what holds the church together is strong preaching. You can’t expect the kinds of churches where you have served to survive on weak preaching.

to yourself, “You know, what I was teaching the kids all those years, that was right.

It really does work in the real world, in the real pulpit.”

BRUNT: I would say all those years I was at Azure Hills preaching most every week, that I was often going back to homiletics class. Sometimes I thought, “Oh my! I would hate to have had my students critique that sermon.”

BRUNT: That’s true, too.

You do have that experience.

I want to emphasize what a blessing it is to see you just doing everything that I have hoped that my students would end up doing, and doing it so well. It’s a blessing, and I continue to be blessed by seeing my students excelling in the real world and knowing they’re doing a lot of things that I could never do. It really does a teacher’s heart good.

HAFFNER: Ha! I love that! Of course, I’m sure there were many times you also thought

HAFFNER: Well, thank you.

And there’s nothing that does a student’s heart good like

HAFFNER: I agree. Have you had experiences since your time at WWU that take you back to your teaching days there?

hearing that coming from a professor who has been so influential in their life. I have so much respect for you.

Your influence in my life has been transformational.

And now I serve on a team of pastors who would echo my sentiments about the vital role you have played in their lives. You continue to make a big difference to a lot of people. I’m profoundly grateful that God crossed our paths many years ago and continues to allow us to see each other from time to time and reminisce.

BRUNT: It has been a delight!

Could we do this again?

Westwind Spring 2018

27

Alumni Currents Staying in touch with our family of graduates

1970s

AlumNotes

Get up to date with fellow WWU alumni. Submit your information at wallawalla.edu/alumnotes.

1950s

Ruby (Bader) Hain ’58 lives in Walla Walla with her husband, Dieter att. She is retired now from her career as a registered nurse.

She and Dieter have two sons, Mark att. and Tim att.

Warrine (McDuffie) Harden ’58 and her husband, Hal ’59, live in Wenatchee, Wash. The Hardens spent five years as missionaries in West Africa. Hal worked as a physician and Warrine was a teacher.

Warrine also put to good use her bachelor’s degrees in nursing and medical science. She and Hal have also made trips with Maranatha International to Jamaica and Honduras. Warrine writes that some of her fondest memories from her time at WWU were “marriage and baptism by Paul Heubach.” Other favorite memories include her time on the tumbling team and as a member of the choir as well as the many lifelong friends she made, and the special teachers. The Hardens have four children: Stephen ’83, Sharon, Bryan att., and Philip.

Dennis & Betty Woodland Dennis W. Woodland ’63 and ’65 and his wife, Betty (Alderson) ’63, have retired to Gresham, Ore., to be closer to their two daughters, Cherie, who lives in Seattle, and Heather, who lives in Gresham, and their families.

Dennis retired in 2014 after teaching for 34 years at Andrews University where he is a professor emeritus of botany. Betty was an instructor in music at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame where she taught voice and keyboard. She was also the organist for the First United Methodist Church in South Bend.

After completing a doctorate in botany at Iowa State University, Ames, Dennis’s first academic appointment was as assistant and associate professor of botany at McGill University in Montreal from 1971-79. Through the years, he taught specialty courses at Oregon State University, the University of Wyoming, and Kellogg Biological Station at Michigan State University. For 12 summers, he attended as a student or taught at the WWU Rosario Beach Marine Biology Station.

Betty has a doctor of music degree in church music and organ performance from Indiana University, Bloomington. She has taught voice, piano, and organ at various community colleges, Indiana University, South Bend, and at St. Mary’s College. Over the years, she has played for 14 different denominations.

Dennis writes, “We are happy to be in the Pacific Northwest again.”

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Westwind Spring 2018

1960s

Patricia (Drake) Cople ’66 and her husband, Ronald, live in Frisco, Texas. Patricia is program manager/ construction manager for the U.S. Department of Defense. Following graduation from WWU, she worked with the Department of Defense in many capacities from time in the field to headquarters in the Pentagon. She writes, “Probably the most memorable time was spent interfacing with the Congress from the program development phase thru congressional approval and finally implementation of the annual Military Construction Program.”

Working on construction of the metro system in Ankara, Turkey, was a highlight of her career. Patricia also writes, “At the time I was [at WWU], the Engineering Department was in WWII buildings behind most of the main campus. … I especially appreciated the personal attention given to each student by the engineering staff.” The Coples have one daughter, Denise Bond.

Carol (Davis) Jacobs ’68 lives in Knoxville, Tenn., where she retired in 2015 from her career as a nurse.

She lived in the Netherlands for many years. She and her husband, who is now deceased, have one daughter, Amy Hargis Rynio.

William “Bill” Taylor ’67 and his wife, Dorothy (Hoffman) ’67, live in Valdez, Alaska, where Bill is retired after teaching high school science for 34 years with the Valdez City Schools. He also taught fifth through eighth grades for one year in Sitka, Alaska, and grades nine through 12 for two years at Bristol Bay Mission School. His favorite memories from WWU are of trips to the biology lodge in the Blue Mountains, Skyline Road, biology field trips, and summers at the Rosario Beach Marine Laboratory. Bill and Dorothy have two daughters: Linda Fowler att. and Karen Woodcock ’94.

Cheryl (Graham) Lapworth ’72 and her husband, Roger, live in Portland, Ore., where she works as a registered nurse in the Family Birth Center at Legacy Mt. Hood Medical Center. Cheryl began working as a registered nurse right after graduating from WWU and has worked full time ever since. Cheryl says, “I married my sweetheart, Roger, in October 1972, and we have now been married 44 years.” Her favorite memories from WWU include “walking across campus in the fall and seeing the beautiful fall colors on all the trees and the ivy in fall colors on the side of the Ad Building” and “going to worship in the dorm with the room packed with people.”

Cheryl and Roger have three children: Heather David att., Matthew, and Meagan.

1980s

Lori (Darnell) Burns ’87 and her husband, Brent, live in Franklin, Tenn., where Lori is a stay-at-home mom and is getting ready to go back to school. She writes, “[I] still travel to Oregon several times a year to see my parents.” She says her favorite memories of WWU are of dorm life and that her parents met and fell in love at WWU. Kurt Mehrer ’88 and his wife, Jennifer, live in Seattle where Kurt is an estimator for the family construction company. His hobbies include skiing, kitesurfing, and spending time with his wife and their four children, Kyle, Dylan, Brock, and Bridgit. Kurt’s favorite memories of his time at WWU include “trips to the Blue Mountains for off-roading, hiking, and skiing. Living and going to school with so many good friends.”

1990s

Mike Stafford ’97 and his wife, Andrea (Bryson) ’99, live in Selah, Wash. Mike went to dental school at Loma Linda University and then worked for the Adventist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, and Saipan.

In 2013, he and Andrea returned to Washington and settled in Yakima, where Mike provides dental services at Stafford Dental Center. He enjoys

KEY: att. = attended

family campouts, church outreach, and singing. He writes, “Now snow skiing has taken over SCUBA diving and snorkeling.” He has fond memories of small-group outings and deep discussions with friends at WWU. The Staffords have three children: Allen, Andrew, and Alissa.

Jack Wollens ’98 and his wife, Andrea, live in Ferndale, Wash., where he teaches business and computer classes at Bellingham Technical College and manages several degree/certification programs. Jack has a master of business administration degree, and he and Andrea have a business investing in real estate. Of his hobbies, Jack writes, “Our passion is to help as many older pets as possible that are in need of a new home. All of our pets have been older rescues from people that we know that are no longer able to care for them or from the Humane Society, as many of the senior animals struggle to find a willing home.”

2000s

Jordan Brown ’08 and his wife, Stephanie att., live in Spokane, Wash., where he is a nurse anesthetist for Providence Medical Group. Jordan worked five years as a critical care nurse in Portland, Ore., before completing the certified registered

nurse anesthetist program at Gonzaga University, where he obtained a master’s degree in nurse anesthesia. His favorite memories of WWU include “making friends that I still have to this day and love to spend time with, adventures around town ... and spending two years in Portland for nursing school.”

The Browns have two children, Finley and Maisy.

Crystal (Kandoll) Garver ’08 and her husband, Benjamin, live in Loma Linda, Calif.

Crystal was a pediatrics nurse for nine years, seven of those years in pediatric ICU. She has a master of public health degree with emphasis in maternal child health from Loma Linda University. She currently stays home with daughters Lilianna and Audrey while Benjamin studies dentistry.

One of her fondest memories from WWU is “Dean Bunny made the most wonderful (stick to your hips!) cookies, and when she was on duty Friday nights they would be there at the desk when you would check in! It was a delicious goodnight treat I always looked forward to!”

Malcolm Hardy ’07 and his wife, Hannah (Tempchin) ’07, live in Walla Walla. He and Hannah have three children: Alina, Alastair,and Claire. Malcolm had the opportunity to go to Malawi, Africa, for a month during residency training. His favorite memories of his time at WWU are of intramurals, the Onion Bowl, and road trips with classmates to the Oregon coast for surf trips.

In Memory Joseph N. Barnes att. was born July 7, 1927, in Denver, Colo., and died Oct. 22, 2015, in Anacortes, Wash. Surviving: wife Agnus of Anacortes; daughters Lorinda Snow ’78 of Troutdale, Ore., and Sherilyn Wolford of The Dalles, Ore.; and son Joseph D. ’77 of College Place, Wash. Barnes was a faculty member in the WWU School of Theology and also taught classes for the School of Social Work.

Marvin Dale Bischoff ’52 was born Sept. 2, 1929, in Ruff, Wash., and died April 10, 2017, in Walla Walla. Surviving: wife Nathalie (Ladner) ’64 of Walla Walla; daughter Sharon Hibbs of Pasco, Wash.; and son Robert of Ephrata, Wash.

Orason L. Brinker was born May 7, 1916, in Ft. Collins, Colo., and died Aug. 26, 2017, in Nampa, Idaho.

Surviving: daughters Bonnie Harlan att. of Nampa, and Mary Lou Pribie att. of Bangor, Penn. Brinker taught in the WWU Department of Mathematics from 1939 to 1959.

Wayne Christensen ’63 was born March 6, 1940, in Williston, N.D., and died June 9, 2017, in Sequim, Wash.

Surviving: wife Sandra att. of Sequim; daughters Kristi Kaas ’89 of Puyallup, Wash., and Sheri of Spanaway, Wash.; sister Linda Kroshus of Billings, Mont.; and brother David ’67 of Bigfork, Mont.

Bernie Gene Myers ’61 was born Feb. 11, 1933, in Bloomington, Texas, and died April 1, 2016, in Eagle, Idaho. Surviving: wife Ruth (Owen) of Eagle; son Daniel ’86 of Portland, Ore.; daughter Anita Erhart

of Eagle; and brother Bob ’60 of Huntsville, Ala. Loreta Carol (Helms) Perry att. was born Dec. 31, 1935, in Ione, Ore., and died Aug. 17, 2017, in MiltonFreewater, Ore. Surviving: daughter Dorita Tessier ’80; and sons Steve att. of Milton-Freewater and Stan of Johnston, Iowa.

Wallace Eugene Platner ’54 was born June 9, 1932, in Los Angeles, Calif., and died Oct. 19, 2017, in Yountville, Calif. Surviving: former wife LaBreta Logan Platner Dietrich; daughters Cheryl Platner of Red Bluff, Calif., and Beth Ann Vye of Yountville; son Kevin of Redding, Calif.; sister Nadine Dower att. of College Place, Wash.; and brother C. Elwyn Platner ’57 of Walla Walla.

Ruby (Holbrook) Snell ’49 was born Nov. 20, 1926, in Mabton, Wash., and died June 30, 2017, in Goldendale, Wash. Surviving: husband Robert att.; daughter Gayla Blackley of Colorado Springs, Colo.; and sons Kenneth of Goldendale and Dennis of Reading, Penn.

Shirley Anita (Brane) Thomas ’60 was born Oct. 12, 1936, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and died May 15, 2017, in Fort Worth, Texas. Surviving: husband Griffith ’57 of Tillamook, Ore.; daughters Marcene att. of Keizer, Ore., Delbe Meelhuysen ’82 of Joshua, Texas, and Jill att. of Bozeman, Mont.; and sons Lloyd ’87 of Cleburne, Texas, Joseph, and Hugh ’94 of Moses Lake, Wash.; and two stepsisters.

CREDIT TK

August 24-26, 2018

Alumni Sabbath at

Rosario

Join guest speaker Carl Cosaert, WWU professor of biblical studies, for a relaxing weekend with fellow friends and alumni. Come for Sabbath or the full weekend. Reservations available beginning June 18, 2018.

wallawalla.edu/rosario-sabbath (800) 377-2586

AC

Alumni Currents Staying in touch with our family of graduates

Alumnus receives 2017 national Rosenthal Prize for innovation in math teaching

By Kyler Alvord

T

WELVE YEARS AGO, if someone had asked Matthew Engle about his career aspirations, becoming a teacher wouldn’t have made the list. “Teaching was the last thing I ever wanted to do as a career,” says Engle. More than a decade later, however, what was once the unlikeliest of professions has become one of his greatest successes. In December, Engle was awarded the 2017 Rosenthal Prize for Innovation and Inspiration in Math Teaching.

Struggling with direction while a student at Walla Walla University, Engle decided to take a gap year and serve as a student missionary in Palau, where he taught a class of eighthgraders. Before long, he realized that teaching was right up his alley.

“I had a handful of kids who came to me at the end of the year and said they always hated math, and they connected with it after having me as a teacher,” Engle recalls. “That was probably the thing that inspired me to teach math specifically.” By the time he left Palau,

30

Westwind Spring 2018

Alumnus of note

2010, bachelor of science, major in mathematics

his perspective had changed. He returned to college with an unexpected plan in place.

After graduation in 2010, Engle found work teaching in China then in Montana.

He now teaches math at Monterey Bay Academy in Watsonville, California. At the start of the 2017–18 school year, Engle spent long hours outside of class applying for the Rosenthal Prize.

The Rosenthal Prize, sponsored by the National Museum of Mathematics in New York City, recognizes fourth- through 12th-grade math teachers who aim to reinvent the classroom and promote hands-on learning.

Applicants write a series of essays. Those who advance to the final round must design and submit a classroom activity that creatively demonstrates an important mathematical concept.

Engle’s winning 22-page submission, titled “Bringing Similarity into Light: Experiencing Similarity and Dilations Using Shadows,” explores geometric concepts surrounding similar figures and equal ratios. The lesson

plan extends beyond math, guiding students into a deeper discussion about collaboration and appreciating others. “Everyone’s perceptions together are closer to the truth than our individual perception alone,” his submission reads. “We need to strive to understand each other’s viewpoints so we can grow together in our communities and the world.”

“A lot of math classes are boring really, and old and irrelevant,” he says. “I believe learning must be at the core of education, but many classrooms are focused on answergetting instead.” Engle values intuition over memorization, and he uses math to help students develop reasoning skills and think critically about the world around them.

“Education is for using information, not just having it.”

Engle received a $25,000 cash award with the Rosenthal Prize, and his lesson plan will be made available to teachers across the country. He accepted the award at a ceremony in New York City in February.

READ WESTWIND ONLINE: WESTWIND.WALLAWALLA.EDU

PHOTO: HEBER PEREZ

Matthew Engle

Share Walla Walla.

Do you know students who should be at WWU this fall?

Encourage them to visit campus, where they can:

You loved Walla Walla— they will too.

Schedule a campus visit at wallawalla.edu/visit.

Go on an informative campus tour customized to their interests.

Attend classes with our students based on their interests and meet with our professors.

Meet with financial counselors, learn about admissions, and discover student employment opportunities.

Receive complimentary transportation to and from the Walla Walla (ALW) or Pasco (PSC) airports (when flying).

Participate in life on campus by meeting our students, attending worship, and receiving free access to our gym and other facilities.

Enjoy food and lodging for up to three days and three nights on us.

NONPROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE

Walla Walla University 204 S. College Ave. College Place, WA 99324

Paid WALLA WALLA UNIVERSITY

See you there!

Upcoming events to note on your calendar

AUGUST 25 Gather with us at the Rosario Beach Marine Laboratory for

Rosario Alumni Sabbath. We’ll worship

together, walk in nature, and enjoy food, fellowship, and great music. For more information, call the alumni office at (800) 377-2586 or visit wallawalla.edu/ Rosario-sabbath.

APRIL 9

APRIL 19–20

APRIL 26–29

MAY 4–5

JUNE 15–17

Cast your vote for new

Benjamin Madley, associate professor of history at UCLA, will be the keynote speaker for the annual

Join us for “Generosity in Service” during

The WWU Campus Ministries office will host the second annual

Commencement Weekend 2018 will

the insert in this issue of Westwind, read bios about the candidates, and mail in your ballot. You can also vote online at wallawalla.edu/alumvote.

Donald Blake Center Academic Conference. Learn

more about the WWU Donald Blake Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture at wallawalla.edu/dbc.

Homecoming Weekend 2018.

We’re planning more than 50 events to help you reminisce and make new memories on campus.

Register and learn more at wallawalla.edu/ homecoming.

Follow2Lead Conference. High

school students will visit WWU to develop leadership skills in the context of ministry.

begin with a consecration vespers service on Friday, followed by a variety of events throughout the weekend. See the complete schedule at wallawalla.edu/grad.

For a full calendar of events, visit wallawalla.edu/calendar.

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PHOTO: CALEB RISTON

Alumni Association officers! Find