This week marks the beginning of Whitworth’s 122nd academic year. But before classes started on Wednesday, the Whitworth campus came together to welcome our newest freshman and transfer students. More than 630 freshmen and transfers arrived early Saturday morning for the opening of residence halls and the beginning of Orientation and Traditiation. We were blessed with wonderful weather (highs in the low-90s) and great spirits. The first family arrived two hours before residence halls opened, driving into campus, their new student hanging out of the vehicle’s sunroof with video camera in hand. Dick Mandeville, Whitworth’s associate dean of students, told me he found one new freshman by himself waiting patiently an hour before his dorm was to open. Dick asked him where his parents were. The student replied, “I don’t know, out celebrating somewhere.” That about sums it up, I guess.
Hundreds of volunteers met our arrivals, ready to carry boxes and clothes to their assigned rooms. Parents and students marvelled at how
efficiently the whole process was executed. Once rooms were unpacked (which for some took longer than others), students and families found their way to the campus bookstore to purchase Whitworth gear and textbooks. That night, in true Whitworth style, we welcomed our newest Whitworthians with our annual skit (yours truly played Smokey the Bear — no pictures, please) and the singing of Amazing Grace before students finally retreated to their new homes and family members collapsed with exhaustion.
In was a great weekend. Whitworth does this well, I’ve discovered. I asked our team in university communications to compile a short video highlighting some of the activities. I’m happy to share it with you.
When Julie and I sat down shortly after July 1 and reflected on all of the many great and rewarding experiences we had during our first year of service to Whitworth, one of our fondest memories took us all the way back to last summer’s Whitworth Institute of Ministry (WIM). WIM is an annual 5-day ministry conference for pastors and lay leaders, as well as for other community members, focussed on biblical teaching and preaching, as well as fellowship and encouragement. Last year, WIM was the first official university event that Julie and I had the pleasure of officiating. Our heads were spinning from all of the newness in our lives after having arrived on campus only two weeks before, but we remembered that last year’s WIM was an amazing experience to see how Whitworth reaches out to support those in ministry.
Timothy George preaches on the great reformers of the church
So, as Julie and I looked forward in our calendars to our sophomore year at Whitworth, we immediately circled WIM as a highlight that we were both looking forward to attending. WIM concluded last Friday after five wonderful days of worship and learning. I invited my good friend and former colleague at Samford University, Dr. Timothy George, to preach our evening services. Timothy serves as dean of Samford’s Beeson Divinity School, and he is a world-class scholar and teacher on the history of the church. Each evening, Timothy delighted us with his incredible story-telling and historical insights into the great church reformers, such as St. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemöller and Karl Barth. What was made so apparent through Timothy’s masterful teaching is how each of these giants of the church stood for one thing primarily, that the church of Jesus Christ would benefit from the reading and preaching of the Word of God. Through persecution, war, imprisonment and other obstacles, these men stood for Christ, and we benefit tremendously from their insights and wisdom, even today.
Dale Bruner teaches on the death and resurrection of Christ from all four gospels
Also teaching for us at WIM this year was Whitworth favorite and professor of theology emeritus, Dr. Dale Bruner. Dale is a biblical scholar of the first order who delighted decades of Whitworth students before his retirement, and his gospel commentaries have enlightened pastors and biblical teachers and students across the globe. Dale, using his patented stick figure drawings to illuminate his teaching, drew on all four gospel accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It was an amazing thing to watch as Dale gave each and every one of us new and fresh perspectives on familiar accounts. One new Whitworth staff member told me afterward, “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.” Dale’s next project is a commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans. We can’t wait!
Finally, rounding off our amazing trio of teachers was Whitworth’s own professor of theology, Dr. Karen Petersen Finch. Karen is a masterful instructor, and Whitworth students rave about her classroom. We all got a glimpse of her genius as she brought John Calvin’s complex and often misunderstood teaching down to the congregation. I know we all left with a much richer and clearer understanding of Calvin and his teachings, and also much encouragement through Karen’s remarkable giftedness and ministry.
Karen Petersen Finch lectures on the teachings of John Calvin
Next year’s WIM is scheduled for July 9-13, 2012. You will want to make plans to attend now. Podcasts of this year’s programs will be available soon on the WIM website. I encourage you to listen. Soli Deo gloria!
Over the last week or so, I had the opportunity to meet with incoming Associated Students of Whitworth University (ASWU) President Eric Fullerton as well as with mathematics professor Donna Pierce, who was just elected to a two-year 
term as faculty president. Whitworth long has been blessed by great student and faculty leadership, and Eric and Donna will certainly carry on that tradition.
Eric, a junior international studies major from Roseburg, Ore., has been active in student leadership and brings a commitment to making the work of ASWU more transparent and accessible to students. He told me he is committed to engaging students where they are – in the residence halls, in the coffee shop or in the loop – to get their input on issues facing student government.
Likewise, Donna emphasized her role in being a communication liaison between the faculty and the 
administration but also in creating more opportunities for faculty to interact with one another across departments. As the university has grown, it has become more difficult for faculty and staff to know their colleagues in other departments around campus and to see how they collectively are advancing Whitworth’s mission. A strong desire to preserve and strengthen that sense of common cause is one of the drivers behind the goal in the Whitworth 2021 vision and strategic plan to stabilize undergraduate enrollment.
We were able to reach a clear and strong consensus about campus size and other elements in the Whitworth 2021 plan thanks in large part to the outstanding leadership of our outgoing ASWU and faculty presidents, Josh Boyden and Richard Strauch. Josh facilitated several rich discussions among students about the future of the university and served as an important student voice on University Council. Rich engaged faculty in small- and large-group discussions and a survey that provided invaluable input to the strategic planning process and was a great representative for faculty on University Council.
After all, we are united by a compelling mission to provide an education of mind and heart that equips our students honor God, follow Christ and serve humanity. The unity and purpose we find in that mission is especially clear as we enter commencement weekend and celebrate the amazing achievements of our graduates. God is good!
Whitworth is among the first 20 colleges nationwide to launch chapters of Students for Education Reform (SFER), a high-profile new advocacy and awareness organization dedicated to mobilizing the next generation of leaders to close the educational achievement gap. Founded at Princeton University in the fall, SFER recently announced that new chapters are opening this spring at Columbia, Duke, Florida State, NYU, Ohio State, Penn State, Stanford, SUNY-Geneseo, North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of Georgia and University of Texas as well as at Whitworth.
Macy Olivas, a sophomore elementary education and sociology major, is the driving force behind the Whitworth SFER ch
apter. Joining her in leadership of Whitworth’s SFER are: Haley Atkinson as vice president, Marissa Ranno as secretary and Joshua Dagnachew as treasurer. Political Science Professor and incoming Lindaman Chair Julia Stronks is their advisor.
“As a student that was statistically supposed to fall into the achievement gap, I want nothing more than to give future generations the same opportunity that I have been given,” Olivas says. “I had many teachers and mentors that helped guide me on my journey to college and now it’s my turn to fight for students the same way I was fought for. We look forward to working hard and closing the achievement gap in Spokane”
In a recent speech on the Princeton campus, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised Students for Education Reform for providing a critical student voice to the next generation of the education reform movement. As an estimated 1.6 million teachers from the Baby Boomer generation begin to retire, Duncan observed, the nation faces the potential of a severe teacher shortage. And we don’t need just more teachers; we need more of our hardest-working, smartest, most passionate and interculturally competent students to become those teachers.
Whitworth is doing its part. This year, Whitworth will graduate 59 students from its undergraduate teacher preparation program – five times as many as Princeton produces in an average year. Our Continuing Studies Evening Teacher Certification program and Master in Teaching program – tailored especially for people seeking to make a career shift into teaching – also produce about 50 teachers per year.
And Whitworth’s teachers are well prepared. Representatives from the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, which provides the most rigorous and recognized accreditation for teacher-education programs in the U.S., and the Washington Professional Educator Standards Board recently made accreditation site visits and gave our School of Education an outstanding review. That’s not too surprising since our School of Education has such an outstanding reputation and its graduates are in such high demand.
With passionate and capable students like Macy in the pipeline, I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Earlier this morning, I sent the following message to the Whitworth campus, and I would like to include the broader university community as well. Our commitment to cultivate deep intercultural competencies in our students, staff and faculty is a high priority in the Whitworth 2021 vision and strategic plan because it is at the heart of our mission to equip students to honor God, follow Christ and serve humanity in an increasingly diverse world.
This year, we’ve learned some important lessons about ourselves. In the face of Westboro Baptist Church’s demonstration of hate and condemnation, we learned we can pull together to embrace and support all members of the Whitworth community. Yet, on other occasions, our actions – individual and corporate, conscious and unconscious, subtle and blatant – failed our commitment to reflect God’s love and grace to all people. Many of us learned, for example, that the N-word – burdened with its history of pain and oppression – cannot be used by anyone, regardless of race or intent, without hurting valued members of our community. These lessons remind us that
we are all sinners and have much to learn but, by God’s grace, are capable of being agents of justice and reconciliation.
So, as Whitworth today joins with organizations around the country in the YWCA’s “Stand Against Racism” campaign, I think it’s important to affirm together that there is no place at Whitworth for any form of bigotry or hate speech. Our “Big Three” campus code of conduct prohibits all behavior that threatens the safety or emotional well-being of another member of the campus community. When hate speech, including the N-word, is used by anyone on our campus, people we love feel threatened, hurt and marginalized. When we stand up to the ugly or careless use of such hate speech, we embody the kind of diverse, welcoming and vibrant community Whitworth aspires to be.
The Whitworth 2021 vision and strategic plan calls us to demonstrate courageous leadership for an increasingly diverse world by cultivating in students, faculty, staff and trustees the capacity to relate effectively across multiple dimensions of human difference. This is one of eight priorities in the strategic plan and is central to Whitworth’s mission to equip students to honor God, follow Christ and serve humanity. Indeed, what it means for us to be an inclusive community is rooted in the very nature of the Triune God, in the rich and varied beauty of God’s creation and in the image of God that every person bears.
We are preparing now to launch several initiatives that will advance this important work. A permanent representative body will be established to provide leadership and accountability for our goals related to diversity and intercultural competency. We will complete a campus-wide audit of diversity-related initiatives; an evaluation of current general education, American diversity, and global perspectives requirements in achieving their intended student learning outcomes; and a comprehensive assessment of Whitworth’s learning, working, and living climate. These assessments will occur on a regular basis and will inform new approaches for recruiting students, staff and faculty, new professional development and training opportunities and new curricular and co-curricular programs. While we hope that these efforts will help us to attract and retain students, faculty and staff from underrepresented racial and ethnic populations, we know they will better prepare all graduates to pursue their vocation with intellectual competence, moral courage and deep compassion in an increasingly diverse world.
Important leadership is being provided by many, including Asst. Vice President for Intercultural Relations Larry Burnley, Associate Dean for Intercultural Student Affairs Esther Louie and Dean of Spiritual Life Terry McGonigal. But we are all assigned to this work. We each have the responsibility to acknowledge our own biases and to work actively to build bridges of understanding with people from backgrounds different than our own. We each have the responsibility in our classes, in our residence halls and in our places of work to confront assaults on the Whitworth community with grace and truth. And we each have the responsibility to be agents of grace and reconciliation where there is pain and discord. We still have much to learn. But I am confident we are up to the task.
While I was preparing for a devotional earlier this week, God led me to the following two scripture passages, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament, that dramatically reveal the work of Christ. Emmanuel, “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” In doing so, he revealed the glory of God, once hidden and now revealed.
Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the Lord said, “I will cause my glory to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But you cannot see my face [glory], for no one may see me and live.” Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back, but my face [glory] must not be seen.” Exodus 33:18-23
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:1-5; 14
May God’s glory, in the person of Jesus Christ, be yours this Easter as we celebrate Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. To God be the glory. Amen.
John Calvin
Since its founding in 1890, Whitworth’s mind-and-heart mission has been grounded in being both Reformed and Presbyterian, and in being committed to the liberal arts. Whitworth simultaneously elevates the life of the mind (through a courageous and critical search for truth) and the life of the soul (through the integration of Christian faith and learning). I was reminded this weekend in San Antonio at the annual meeting of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities that the Reformed tradition, and specifically the teachings of its founder John Calvin, have always favored a distinctive approach to education dependent upon and grounded in the liberal arts. I was particularly drawn to this passage from Calvin’s Institutes (Book 2, Chapter 2, Section 15) that articulates this connection well. Enjoy…
“Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole foundation of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. For by holding the gifts of the Spirit in slight esteem, we contemn and reproach the Spirit himself. What then? Shall we deny that the truth shone upon the ancient jurists who established civic order and discipline with such great equity? Shall we say that the philosophers were blind in their fine observation and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably? Shall we say that they are insane who developed medicine, devoting their labor to our benefit? What shall we say of all the mathematical sciences? Shall we consider them the ravings of madmen? No, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without great admiration. We marvel at them because we are compelled to recognize how preeminent they are. But shall we count anything praiseworthy or noble without recognizing at the same time that it comes from God? Let us be ashamed of such ingratitude, into which not even the pagan poets fell, for they confessed that the gods had invented philosophy, laws, and all useful arts. Those men whom Scripture [1 Corinthians 2:14] calls ‘natural men’ were, indeed, sharp and penetrating in their investigation of inferior things. Let us, accordingly, learn by their example how many gifts the Lord left to human nature even after it was despoiled of its true good.”
I wrote the following op-ed column, which appeared in today’s (March 19) Spokesman-Review to make the case for the Washington State Legislature to continue full funding of the State Need Grant for students attending both public and private colleges in the state. This public-private partnership not only maximizes access to higher education for lower-income students but it expands capacity at a time when budget cuts are making it harder for our public colleges to accommodate all of the students who want to enroll at their campuses and to offer the course schedules that allow students to graduate on time. Independent colleges like Whitworth stand ready to do our part.
Cuts may hurt Need Grants
Washington state has difficult choices to make right now, choices with consequences that will negatively affect the lives of real people – neighbors and co-workers, parents and grandparents and current and future college students. The choices became even more difficult after Thursday’s announcement that the projected revenue for the 2011-2013 biennium will be $698 million lower than expected. This means that the legislature will need to cut $5.1 billion from the state budget, assuming tax increases remain off the table. Read more…
Whitworth is hogging the national stage a bit this week. As our top-ranked men’s basketball team prepares to host Chapman in the second round of the NCAA Division III national tournament tonight, we just learned that Whitworth’s team tied for third in the nation at the 15th Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl competition in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The ethics bowl pits teams of students from colleges and universities at all levels in a competition that tests their intellectual and reasoning abilities, ethical understanding and communication skills. In the competition, a moderator asks teams of three to five students a set of questions that may concern ethical problems on topics ranging from making voting compulsory to banning bull-fighting. Read more…
Whitworth Choir celebrates Christmas
The Taylor family has eagerly joined the Whitworth community for the past few weeks as our community has prepared for the end of the fall semester, and the coming of Christmas. The Whitworth choirs ministered to so many as they sang in the season, reminding each of us of the incredible blessing that is Emmanuel.
My wife, Julie, had the opportunity to share a short Christmas devotional with the Whitworth staff on Friday. I thought I would share it with you below. Merry Christmas from the Whitworth community! May God bless you. See you in 2011!!
From Julie:
Thank you for your invitation to come and join you today. Since our arrival in Spokane this summer, our entire family has been so warmly welcomed by the Whitworth community. We have loved getting acquainted. We have appreciated all of your suggestions about the fun family activities offered in this area.
One fun opportunity that our family had earlier this fall was to embark on a family outing to enjoy the fall foliage and ride the scenic train from Ione to Metaline Falls. Forrest Baird had extended the invitation to our family to join the families of the philosophy department on this Sunday afternoon outing. He arranged for the group to travel in the university’s 15- passenger vans. In order to foster conversation and getting to know each other, Forrest provided a list of some conversation-starter questions. Each passenger, including the kids, took a turn picking a question for the group to answer. One of the first questions asked was, “What season of the year do you anticipate the most?” Read more…
Miantsa Rsamimanana and the Mawingu Band
I just returned from a great trip to visit Whitworth alumni and friends in the San Francisco area and heard from Julie about the amazing International Club banquet I missed Friday night.
The menu, developed from recipes provided by our international students, included Norweigan beet salad, Madascan achards de legumes, Benihana fried rice (Japan), Serbian cheese souffle, Korean bulgogi, Kenyan coconut chicken curry, Bibinka Supreme (Philippines), Biscocho de Yogurt (Spain), mbatata biscuits and croissants. Will someone tell me where I can get some leftovers?
The real treat, I understand, was the post-dinner program. The International Club invited Dr. Larry Burnley, assistant vice president for intercultural relations, to be the keynote speaker. Larry made the observation that, thanks to the faithful contributions of many people over 120 years, Whitworth is good. But thanks to the contributions of our 56 international students from 26 countries this year, Whitworth is even better. The learning that takes place in our classrooms is more rigorous. The conversations that take place in the dining hall and in our dorms are more robust. And the fabric of the Whitworth community is more vibrant. Amen to that, Larry. I pray that the lives of our international students are as blessed by their time at Whitworth as we are by their presence here.
The entertainment that followed was so impressive that Julie wonders whether there’s some kind of talent requirement for admission of international students. A powerful kick-off by the Exceptional Praise gospel choir was followed by Englishman Paddy Power-Moore (sporting a pink-tipped mohawk, I hear), leading the crowd in a sing-a-long while accompanying on ukulele; Annick Foyen, of Norway, playing “Amazing Grace” on a saw (huh?); Dominic Noble (U.S.) presenting a spoken-word poem; Chauncey Shi (China), accompanied by Midera Rasamimanana (Madagascar) performing a collection of pop songs; Jay Asumanu (U.S.) and Dominic Noble sharing their hip-hop dance moves; Keilah Fanene and her band performing Island music; Shawn Agustin (Hawaii) playing a mean ukulele; and two dances by members of our Hawaiian club. Closing out the night was a performance of songs in English and Swahili by Mantsa Rasamimanana and the Mawingu band, which features students from Germany, Madascar, Hawaii and the U.S. Talk about music being the international language!
Thanks to International Club President Ariella Chi and her fellow officers, and to their faculty advisor Lulu Gonzales, for putting together such a wonderful evening for our community. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure I don’t miss it next year. Especially that Kenyan coconut chicken curry.
I was blessed yesterday to speak at Whitworth’s 19th annual Veteran’s Day ceremony. It was a beautiful and touching tribute to veterans, to women and men currently in the military, to those who have served so ably in the past, and to those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in service of their country. On a crisp fall morning, more than 150 people from campus and the Spokane community gathered around the memorial to Whitworth’s fallen alumni: Tom Hajji, Harry Olson, Forrest Ewens and Frank Tiffany.
Whitworth's Veterans Day Ceremony
The debt of gratitude we owe to members of the military, particularly those who have fallen in the line of duty, can sometimes feel overwhelming, particularly for those of us with no military service. To give into that feeling would dishonor their service and sacrifice. For my remarks yesterday, I found inspiration and challenge in the Gospel of John, chapter 15, verses 12-13, where Jesus says: “This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: that one lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Here is an excerpt from my remarks:
So what does it look like to love one another – particularly our veterans and active-duty military personnel – just the way Jesus loved us? What does it mean to lay down our life for our friends?
First, we must remember their service. There are much more than names represented on Whitworth’s veterans memorial. These were young men, each with a dream, whose lives were cut short before they had a chance to pursue those dreams and before the world had a chance to see the mark they would leave on it. These are young men who were sons and brothers, husbands and friends, whose deaths created painful voids in the lives of their family members and friends. Time certainly helps to heal the wounds, but their loss is felt even over generations. These young men represent countless others who have served, and continue to serve, in the military.
In the rush of our own lives, we can easily forget that the freedoms we enjoy were purchased with the blood, sweat and tears of military veterans and are being protected today by service members around the world. I challenge you to seek out the veterans in your families, places of employment or even here at Whitworth and thank them for their service. And likewise I challenge all of us to pay attention to what’s going on now in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places where our soldiers are in harm’s way. Grieve for those who are killed or injured in combat; pray for their families. It’s the least we can do.
Second, I challenge us to honor the freedoms that our service members have served, and died, to protect. I hope you all voted last Tuesday and that you always take advantage of the right we have to participate in our democratic government. When we think about the cost, in lost lives, to establish and protect that right, we should never take it for granted. Nor should we complain about our government when we haven’t exercised our right to participate in the process of shaping the government.
Exercise your right to free speech with courage and responsibility. We dishonor our veterans and fallen soldiers when we fail to speak up against injustice and oppression. Likewise, we dishonor them when we invoke our freedom of speech to defend frivolous, nasty and destructive rhetoric. I’m told by our political science faculty that campaigns have been even uglier historically than the ones we just passed through in the last election cycle, but I still doubt that baseless negative campaign advertising is what the authors of the first amendment thought they were safeguarding and what most service members believe they are defending. We can and should aim for a higher level of civic discourse. We should demand it.
Finally, exercise your freedom of religion by following Christ in such a radical way that you show his love and hospitality to the Samaritan, to the gentile, to the prostitute, to the Leper, and to the Centurion – to all of the outsiders in our midst who are too often excluded from our places of worship and from our understanding of the protections of the First Amendment.
So, Jesus tells us: “This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: that one lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” We have a chance, every day, to love one another as Jesus first loved us, even to the point of laying down our lives – or simply dedicating our lives – for our friends and for all of those Christ calls us to befriend. On this Veteran’s day – during the 11th hour, on the 11th day of the 11th month – Christ calls us to love others as he loved us.
May we be faithful to this call. Amen.
Fall is already a great time at Whitworth, with the energy of new and returning students, the intellectual vitality of the start of classes, and the touchstones of mission and purpose from opening convocation – amplified for us this year by the events of inauguration week. Thrown in is the extraordinary beauty of Whitworth’s campus – as trees across campus display brilliant yellows, deep reds and burnt oranges (that’s a Longorn reference for Whitworth’s dear Texas friends I’m visiting later this week) and then drop their leaves to create a patchwork of autumnal carpets across the loop. It’s hardly even fair to winter, spring and summer.
Even as I extol the wonders of autumn at Whitworth, I am quick to recognize the merits of Fall Break, a four-day weekend that concluded this past Monday. After sprinting through September and October, I think everyone on campus needed to catch their breath. Many of our students headed home to reconnect with family and friends, enjoy some home cooking and, in some cases, we hope, get some laundry done. Other students holed up on campus to work on papers and other academic projects. Our faculty engaged in the common academic ritual of bemoaning all of the grading they have to do (as a result of their own assignments, mind you) only to be reminded, in the process, how exhilarating it is to see evidence of students understanding and applying the material in their courses. Staff members were able to take advantage of training opportunities organized by our fabulous HR department and to enjoy the generally slower pace of campus during the break.
I blocked out the weekend to catch up on reading and correspondence and to spend some quality time with the family. I put a major dent in the piles that had mushroomed on my desk and the emails that had accumulated in my inbox. And we enjoyed taking our 3-year-old Chloe around to do some trick-or-treating. We did learn, however, that the short-sleeved princess costume did not work as well here as it would have in Birmingham. Chloe was adamant that wearing a coat over her dress would ruin the look, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she chooses to dress up as a polar bear next year.
I did have some welcome interruptions to cheer on the Pirates, who had a fantastic weekend. The men’s cross country team raced to its second conference championship in three years while the women finished second. Volleyball beat Pacific and Linfield to move into a tie for first place. Men’s soccer won both of their games, including a dramatic overtime win over Linfield, playing a man short for most of the game. Women’s soccer also swept both of their games to move into second place in the conference standings. And football, without all-everything tailback Adam Anderson, gave a powerful Willamette team all it could handle. All in all, the Pirates wind up their fall seasons on pace to capture the conference all-sports trophy for the fourth year in a row. As if I needed one more reason to love this time of year!
Whitworth in lights at the Bing Crosby Theater
Whitworth’s inauguration week has begun, and I must say, I’m quite excited about all of the planned programs highlighting Whitworth’s “community of courage.” I love the theme for the week as it highlights the university’s courageous mission that seeks to elevate characteristics that the world often pits against each other, like grace and truth, curiosity and conviction, responsibility and compassion.
Last night, Whitworth University was in lights at the Bing Crosby Theater in downtown Spokane as the university hosted a community forum which asked the question, “What does it mean for Spokane to be a community of courage?” Moderator Ted McGregor, publisher of The Inlander, asked a series of important and thought-provoking questions of panelists Breean Beggs ’85 (civil rights attorney and former chief catalyst for the Spokane Center for Justice), Betsy Cowles (Cowles Company chair), Anne Kirkpatrick (Spokane police chief), Lonnie Smith (senior pastor of Spokane’s Bethel AME Church), and Julia Stronks (Whitworth professor of political science).
Each panelist shared their thoughts on what currently makes Spokane a courageous community, and what could be done to be more courageous as the city and region think about difficult social, economic, political, and health issues. All of the panelists commented that Spokane has made great progress in many areas, and that the community is more aware of its systemic challenges than ever before, but that more work and more collaboration must be accomplished to sustain real change. Panelists identified high drop out rates among Spokane teens, pockets of deep poverty within the city, and the lack of “regionalism” among various government entities as important issues to address in the future.
The answer of the night, however, came from Whitworth’s own Julia Stronks. When asked about her keys to “happiness” that she would want to pass along to her students, Julia stated that as a Christian, “happiness” was not the goal, but rather she encouraged her students to seek joy in combining their passions, experiences, skills, and gifts to accomplish good things in a community of great need. In the process of serving others, Julia said, Whitworth students would find true joy and satisfaction. Well said! Thanks to all of our wonderful panelists for making the first night of the inauguration one to remember!
Beck & Julie Taylor with student-athletes at Pirate Night
On Friday night, more than 300 Whitworth supporters gathered at the Lincoln Center in Spokane for our 16th Annual Pirate Night banquet and auction. The purpose of the evening was to raise funds to support our wonderful student-athletes and our successful athletics program. It was fantastic to see our student-athletes in attendance, talking with supporters and alumni about their great experiences at Whitworth, both on and off the field of play.
Whitworth athletics is experiencing an unprecedented period of success. Competing in the very competitive NCAA Division III Northwest Conference, Whitworth has won the all-sports trophy for the best overall athletics program in the NWC for three years in a row, and four out of the last six years! Last year, the Bucs won nine out of 18 conference championships. Read more…
There are plenty of things that can make it difficult for a college president to connect with the students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends he or she serves – schedules, distance, even the office itself. We can't afford to let that happen. This blog is but one way I hope to engage with the larger Whitworth University community and with all those who value an education of mind and heart. 
