Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Communication Lynn Cooper (who has taught at Wheaton since 1978) was featured in the Autumn 1993 issue.

One of the challenges facing educators today is the management of multicultural institutions. This summer I attended the Christian College Consortium conference on campus, along with staff from Bethel, Greenville, Taylor, and Trinity, to discuss strategies for implementing diversity in the curriculum. One often-overlooked strategy we discussed for fostering community in the midst of change was mentoring.

There’s nothing new or magical about the practice of mentoring. In Homer’s classic story, Mentor served as role model, counselor, and teacher to the young Telemachus, who became Mentor’s apprentice, disciple, and student. In modern terms, mentoring is a natural pairing between individuals. Mentors are older and experienced sponsors who take younger members of the organization under their wing and encourage as well as support their progress. The advantages of the mentoring experience is particularly important for both females and culturally diverse students who often face personal and social barriers to achievement.

While most of the research has focused on people in work organizations, the effects of mentoring and role models in learning environments are equally important. “Natural” mentoring which can develop between faculty and students provides opportunity for greater interaction and encourages intelligent, resourceful, and motivated students. However, the findings related to faculty who serve as mentors are varied and sometimes contradictory in terms of their importance to students. For a number of reasons, faculty will not always make the best mentors.

The trend in many colleges and universities is to use “planned” mentoring programs which incorporate faculty as well as alumni, staff, and administrators. Planned mentoring programs help students succeed while in school, focus academic and career goals, and get started once out of college.

Planned mentoring programs are especially valuable for culturally diverse students, Having opportunities to have someone edit papers, interpret institutional norms and jargon, or provide a respected opinion in situations requiring mediation increase the student’s chance for success. Implied in mentoring is a concerted effort to make our campus a place where students learn to emulate Christ. There is a commitment, not to a program, a principle, or a quota. Instead, mentoring implies a commitment to people and a desire to see them succeed.

At Columbia University, alumni are asked to serve as mentors at the beginning of the school year. The Alumni Office matches students and mentors according to their expressed preferences. Although the program lasts a year, the mentors and students decide how often they want to get together. The mentoring program at Lake Forest College matches alumni with students according to shared career interests. There is regular contact from the institution for feedback from participating students. Other than a kick-off and final celebration meeting, the mentor-student contacts are determined by the individual’s needs. At Bell Haven College, students are nominated by professors based on their Christian commitment, their G.P.A., and their need for guidance. The mentors must be successful Christian professionals from the community and local churches who volunteer to take on a protege in their field. This program lasts one semester and requires a minimum of four meetings.

My job as teacher is greatly enhanced by alumni who have been willing to serve as role models and mentors. This last year, my students were able to listen to Dan Balow ’78, Corinne Cruver ’92, Bill Seitz ’77, Ted Harro ’89, Kris Rubow ’89, Deborah Williams Duncan ’87, and Jane Nelson Hensel ’84, along with other visitors from the community. Sandi Londal ’92 and Virginia Blackwell M.A. ’92 arranged to have 29 students visit their corporate employer. Julie Schwemin Garnache ’90 took time to have dinner with a student considering a communications major. Tara Barnett Van Dyke ’91 interviewed graduates for job opportunities in urban ministry. Leslie Nunn ’87 provided another internship for a student, and Julie Lee Logan ’93 helped research the mentor programs reported in this article. There are so many others who have routinely answered questions and given information through the Career Development Center’s Alumni Network, fortuitous encounters, or personal pleas from college departments. Wheaton College is blessed with talented and generous alumni.

As Wheaton College strives to become a more diverse community we need to encourage these new representatives of Christ’s kingdom. Mentoring is effective in helping underrepresented individuals succeed in unfamiliar environments. An emphasis on interpersonal interaction, cooperative problem-solving, multicultural understanding, and institutional commitment creates a learning climate in which diversity is not only valued, but expected.

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Dr. Lynn Cooper has taught courses in public speaking, group dynamics, organizational communication, interpersonal communication, leadership, as well as, gender/diversity and communication during her tenure at Wheaton. Her professional interests include: applied communication research, managerial listening, decision-making and problem-solving, team building, and conflict management. Her research involves quantitative, qualitative, and applied communication research in the areas of organizational listening competency and small group dynamics.

The following obituary for Miss Julia Blanchard and the accompanying eulogy from her funeral service, delivered by V.R. Edman, appear in the July/August, 1959, Wheaton Alumni magazine.

Serving actively in the Wheaton College Library, Miss Julia Blanchard started in 1908 as assistant librarian, and then in 1915 was named Librarian. At the time of her retirement in 1948 she was made a professor emeritus and granted the honorary degree “Doctor of Letters” and appointed the College Archivist. Most Wheaton alumni, with the possible exception of those in recent classes, knew “Miss Julia,” as she was affectionately called by her host of friends. Julia Eleanor Blanchard was born in Wheaton, August 7, 1878. She was the daughter of Dr. Charles Albert Blanchard and Margaret Ellen Milligan Blanchard, and one of the five children of that happy family. She was the granddaughter of Dr. Jonathan Blanchard, the first president of Wheaton and her father served for more than forty years as the second president of the College. Until a few months prior to her death, “Miss Julia” made the old Blanchard House at 623 Howard Street her residence. She died May 6, 1959, at the Geneva Community Hospital where she had been confined during the last months of her illness. The funeral service for Miss Julia was held in the College Church of Christ, of which she had been an active member for many years. Though not planned that way, the funeral service was most appropriate for a librarian who for so many years handled and loved books. From the hymnbook organist Reginald Gerig played and Elbert Dresser sang the favorite hymns of Miss Julia. Her pastor, Dr. L.P. McClenny, read from God’s book portions of Scripture that were the foundation of her faith as well as a source of comfort to all attending. Her former pastor, now College chaplain, Dr. Evan Welsh, spoke beautifully of “The Book of Remembrance” (Malachi 3:16), of them who “feared the Lord and spake often to one another.” President Dr. V. Raymond Edman then brought his message of comfort and hope on “The End of the Chapter.” In another tribute, Prexy had this to say, “To us who knew her these many years, Miss Julia herself was like a splendid book: clear type, bond paper and the best contents.”

“The End of the Chapter” delivered by Dr. V. Raymond Edman

The conclusion of a chapter is not necessarily the ending of the book, unless it is the very best chapter. We have come to the first chapter in the history of the College with the homegoing of Julia Eleanor Blanchard. What a glorious chapter it has been, and how significant that it coincides with the dawning of our Centennial Year. The chapter began a hundred years ago in almost idyllic simplicity. Upon invitation from friends and from trustees of Illinois Institute, Jonathan Blanchard came to the little village of Wheaton on this wind-swept, relatively treeless prairie in 1859 to confer upon the founding of the College, which project was accomplished during the following year. This century-long chapter has been marked by struggles, by strength of character on the part of administration and faculty; and has been crowned with success. It has had its times of deep testing and tears but the outcome thereof has been triumph. There has been prayer with patience, faith with fortitude, consecration with courage, dedication in education with devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. Like the tall elms and the broad maples that adorn its campus, the College has put its roots deep into the heart of God and spread its branches far afield in the earth. The chapter of this century that now closes is spanned by the Blanchards: Jonathan who founded the College and led it for twenty-two years; Charles Albert who carried it forward in days of difficulty or delight for another forty-four years; and concludes with the passing of Miss Julia who had been our librarian for nearly half a century. Miss Julia was always a great delight and encouragement to me. Again and again she told me of her grandfather and father, and when I would report to her an answer to prayer for the College or the provision of new buildings she would say, “Father would be thankful to know the continued blessings of the Lord among us here.” If she were here I would want to say to her again: “Miss Julia, the Book which your grandfather and your father believed to be the Word of the living God, we still believe! The Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom they loved and served, we do still love and serve! The great essentials of the Christian faith as defined in our doctrinal platform we do believe wholeheartedly, and without any qualification or mental reservation! The vision of education that is thoroughly Christian which your grandfather and father had, we have, and will continue to make a reality to our children!”

The chapter of Wheaton’s first century closes, and a new one begins. It is our responsibility to read well what has been written in that chapter so that the one we write today and tomorrow, as our Lord tarries, will conform to what which we have learned from our Fathers. The Blanchards have written clearly and cogently, and at the passing of Miss Julia we reaffirm our faithfulness to the trust committed to us. So help us God!

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Greek Emeritus Gerald Hawthorne (who taught at Wheaton from 1953-1995) was featured in the June/July 1991 issue.

1951. Years ago, now. More than half the span of my life ago, to be exact. Certainly a very long time for one single idea to have been on my mind. But that is the case, nonetheless.

In the fall of 1951 a seed-thought dropped into the furrows of my mind. It germinated quickly, and sprouted somewhat prematurely in the form of my master’s thesis, “The Significance of the Holy Spirit in the Life of Christ,” submitted in 1954.

But my interest in this topic did not end when I handed my thesis over to the librarian, nor did it diminish with the passing of the years. Quite the contrary, its sturdy roots burrowed deep within my thinking; so that while I was busy doing other things, it was always there, taking shape as the years passed. My spare time for reading was taken up with books that focused on this topic. When I was not thinking about more immediate, more pressing matters, my mind turned without prompting to concentrate on this idea, striving to understand ever more fully why it was that the Spirit of God played such an important role in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

The idea that has now come to full term, was at first frightening to me, and then exhilarating. Frightening, because it seemed foreign and “unorthodox.” Even the teaching of my church seemed to so emphasize the divinity of Jesus that it was difficult for me to think of him as genuinely human. Exhilarating, because I discovered a new understanding of and appreciation for the person of our Lord, as well as an ever-deepening gratitude to him. The New Testament writers, while never surrendering the truth of the divinity of Jesus, nevertheless championed the reality of his humanity. Thus, whatever else one may say about Jesus (that he was divine, the eternal Son, God incarnate), it is also necessary for that person to say that Jesus was a human being in the fullest sense of this term, lacking nothing that makes a person human, with the exception of sin.

But how can this be? How can one he God and human simultaneously–fully God and fully human? The answer I have been driven to by the force of the New Testament evidence is this: without giving up any attribute of divinity, the eternal Son, before time began, in obedience to the Father, made a conscious decision to completely “encapsulate” his divinity within the confines of humanity. With his birth in Bethlehem, he began life precisely as any other human being begins life.

I now see that–although Jesus was indeed unique, extraordinary, God become human–in the incarnation he did not know what he knew, think what he thought, teach what he taught, say what he said, or do what he did by virtue of his own inherent divinity. Rather, he did so as a genuine human being, one filled unstintingly with and empowered by the Holy Spirit to think and speak and act as he did. The Spirit, the wonderful gift of the Father, was at work in every phase of the life of Jesus–creating his body from the substance of Mary, giving him gifts and graces that protected him and provided for him in the years of his boyhood and youth, enlightening his mind so that he might understand his unique relationship with the Father and his special mission in life, filling him at his baptism, leading him into the arena of conflict with the devil and assisting him in overcoming that adversary, guiding him throughout his life, enabling him to preach and teach with authority, infusing him with the power to do his mighty works, strengthening him to face and accept his own mortality, being powerfully present with him in his death, and working mightily in raising him from the dead.

Now if this is so, then Jesus is not only our Savior, our Lord to be worshiped and adored; he is also our example to be followed. The penultimate (if not the ultimate) significance of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus was to demonstrate clearly what God is able to do through a human being wholly yielded to his Spirit. The Spirit that Jesus depended on throughout his entire life to enable him to burst the boundaries of his human limitations, the Spirit that helped Jesus to overcome temptations, that strengthened him in weakness, that aided him in the hard job of taking on himself the hurts of the hurting, that infused him with a power to accomplish the impossible, that brought him through death and into resurrected life, is the very same Spirit that Jesus now freely shares with those who in faith and love choose to follow him today (John 20:22; Acts 1:8; Rom. 8:9-11).

This idea has revolutionized my too-limited way of thinking about Jesus. It has also been a life-changing idea, showing me that the Holy Spirit is present and active today, not to make life rich and comfortable for me, hut to equip me so that I might fulfill God’s mission for me in the world–a mission of helping, serving, healing, restoring, giving, and loving. A mission of binding up the broken, of being just and striving for justice, of proclaiming the good news that God is King, and that he has acted to save and transform people in and through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.

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Dr. Gerald F. Hawthorne was a professor of Greek at Wheaton College for 42 years. Having received his bachelor’s degree in Greek and his master’s degree in theology from Wheaton, he earned his doctorate from the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago in 1969. He and his wife Jane Elliot Hawthorne ’53 have three children, all of whom are Wheaton graduates. He is the author of or contributor to several books, including Philippians, in the Word Biblical Commentary Series; Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation: Studies in Honor of Merrill C. Tenney; and The Presence and the Power: The Significance of the Holy Spirit in the Life and Ministry of Jesus (Word, 1991). Gerald Hawthorne died on August 4, 2010.

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Business and Economics Bruce Howard was featured in the Summer 1993 issue.

Depending on who you listen to, the U.S. economy is poised for recovery, recession, significant expansion, or disaster. No one really knows what the economic future will hold, but what we do know is that definite economic challenges face our society today.

One challenge is in the area of productivity. Productivity gains enable a society to increase its standard of living. In 1990, U.S. workers produced, on average, $46,000 worth of goods and services per worker, 25% more than the average Japanese worker and 35% more than the average German worker.

Our growth in productivity, however, has slowed considerably. Over the 35 years from 1937 to 1973, productivity increased by an average of 3% each year. But during the 15-year period from 1973 to 1989, productivity only increased, on average, by .9% a year.

One little-known factor that explains this slowdown in productivity growth is the literacy of our work force. Many estimates show that one in five American adults is functionally illiterate. At least 40 developed nations today have higher functional literacy rates than the United States.

To be illiterate is to be economically disenfranchised. Consider the following: in the decade of the 1980s, college graduates experienced a 16% increase in their real wages. High school graduates saw their real wages fall by 1% and high school dropouts experienced a 12% decline in their real wages. In 1980, a college graduate 10 years into his career was earning 31% more than a contemporary with only a high school diploma. But by 1990, that differential had soared to 86%. This disparity in income is reflected in income taxes. In 1991, Americans with incomes that put them in the highest 5% paid 44.2% of federal income taxes. The top 20% by income paid 72.3% of the federal income tax. The lower 40% by income paid only 1.7% of the federal income tax, mainly because they are generating so little personal income.

We are moving from a manufacturing economy to a “mental” economy. Most of the value that is added to products today is the result of people using their intellect rather than their craftsmanship. Decades ago, people began leaving the farms and moving to factories because that was where the high-paying, value creating jobs were. We had become so good at farming that we just didn’t need as many people to produce all the food we needed.

I was recently in a factory where I watched men and women take plastic caps out of a box and place them on a conveyor belt. They performed this task eight hours a day for a wage of $17.00 an hour. Ten feet away, a million-dollar robot intricately wove and soldered hair-thin wires into a computer for electronic ignitions. What will the future hold for these men and women in a free-trading global economy where billions of others would gladly do the same job for a fraction of their $17.00 wage?

To cope with the changing economic horizon, we need to recognize and deal with the challenge of economically empowering the people in our society so they can participate in the value-creating activities of the next century. One tangible thing that we can do is help people learn to read and develop other basic skills so that they can be full participants in the economy.

Societies today need to focus on the economics of change. In 1960, 25% of the people in France lived or worked on a farm. Today, that number has decreased to less than 6% and continues to fall, Think as well of the enormous changes in the political economies around the world. As people in the world today try to cope with the pace and scope of change, they search for something that is stable, trustworthy, and utterly dependable.

What an opportunity for the Gospel! Christianity offers the glue that can keep a life and world from falling apart. The hope of Christians is based on that which is eternal and unchanging. It is a message for our time; it is a message for all time.

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Bruce Howard is Professor of Business and Economics. Prior to joining Wheaton’s faculty in 1980, he was senior auditor for the Northern Trust Company in Chicago. He received his B.A. from Wheaton and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University. Dr. Howard’s current research explores the impact of interest rates on consumer behavior with respect to the use of debt to fund purchases of consumer durables and housing. He has an interest on the impact of taxation at the state and local level. For the last several years he has been studying the historical underpinnings of societal values as they relate to ordering of economic activity. In conjunction with his teaching career, Dr. Howard maintains an active professional association with Tyndale House Publishers in matters of accounting, taxation and employee benefits. He also has work experience in health care administration and banking. In recent years, Dr. Howard has traveled to Kazakhstan to teach and present papers at Kazak-American Free University and University of Kazakhstan.

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Mathematics Terry Perciante was featured in the February/March 1992 issue.

The Washington Monument stands outside my hotel room window. To the right, I can see the Lincoln Memorial and the White House, shining in the setting Sunday evening sun. This morning I attended the church where Abraham Lincoln worshiped during his presidency and where Scottish immigrant Peter Marshall ministered to multitudes of World War II servicemen.

But sightseeing is not the reason for my visit to Washington. I am part of a three-person team representing the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. With representatives from seven other Department of Energy national labs, we will seek to formulate and implement strategies for increasing the effectiveness of mathematics and science education in our nation’s schools. The National Academy of Science, the Mathematical Sciences Education Board, the Department of Energy, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and other agencies are uniting to provide funds for an extensive and long-term effort to stimulate American mathematics and science education.

The tranquility of the monuments and government buildings outside my window is not shared by the schools in our nation. Tomorrow morning they will fill with young people and then deliver education that is measurably inferior to that which is provided by schools in most other industrialized countries.

What can we do to help our students, individuals who will populate this capital city as leaders and citizens in the years ahead? They will certainly need a profound understanding of many scientific and deeply technical issues. Old ways of knowing will not adequately serve citizens during our age of subatomic particle physics, space exploration and astrophysics, fractal geometry and dynamical systems, biological engineering, and the chemistry of superconducting materials.

Unfortunately, most college faculty (even those who view themselves as liberally educated) remain so mathematically and scientifically illiterate that they cannot comprehend books and articles from those disciplines, which so profoundly shape modern life and decision making. What educational hope can there be for our young people?

Indictment of the causes for malaise in American education and culture is altogether too easy. The loss of a national consensus relative to the nature of education, the effects of urban congestion, the decline of social structures such as the family, and other factors could offer excuses for a lack of personal response to the problems.

If believers abdicate their influence in society to people who are not grounded in the love of God and the light of his revelation, then who will act? Lincoln’s action in the midst of a national social crisis and Marshall’s ministry to those in spiritual crisis both provide examples of the kind of commitment that our current educational problems require.

In our meetings, the Fermilab team will seek to join strategies and resources in order to achieve the maximum effect on our young people’s mathematical and scientific growth. And right now, as I return to the laptop computer on my desk, I’ll write another page in a series of books aimed at improving the teaching of mathematics at the secondary and college level.

In April, and again in July, I’ll join with my German and American coauthors to present seminars in Nashville and Chicago that detail wonderful advances in mathematics, but explain them at a level appropriate for secondary school mathematics teachers. By God’s grace, I want others to see me as an individual who loves his discipline and who wants others to become quantitatively enabled so that they can render more effective service than I can.

Would that we could all become people who are not conformed to standards of educational mediocrity, but are instead transformed and made capable of communicating with people who need to know his mercy and grace. The task involves serving Christ well while also serving young people within an educational system that needs reform.

Together, the multitude of Christian mathematics and science educators in our nation can provide living monuments to Christ’s transforming power in the face of overwhelming odds. If God has given special analytical abilities, considerable mathematical and scientific preparation, and opportunities to teach others, then surely by offering these special abilities to the Lordship of the Christ of creation, opportunities will be given by him to apply these gifts in ministries to people and to the educational infrastructure of our nation.

May God enable all of us to become humble agents of change and conveyors of new life in our disciplines, professions, and communities.

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Terry Perciante received the bachelor of science degree from Wheaton in 1967 and the Ed.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1972, when he began teaching at Wheaton. He was named Wheaton’s Junior Teacher of the Year in 1977 and Senior Teacher of the Year in 1994. In 1990, he was one of 700 educators from private colleges across the nation who was recognized by The Sears-Roebuck Foundation for resourcefulness and leadership. He is a member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and is an organizing force behind Project Teacher, a program funded by the Lilly Endowment. Since 1988 Terry has increasingly worked in fractal geometry and chaos theory with a small international team of writers and researchers headquartered at the University of Bremen in northern Germany. His professional involvement with this team has resulted in his presenting frequent keynote talks at NSF institutes, symposia, and professional meetings especially relating to aspects of dynamical systems.

Throughout his teaching career at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, Dr. R. Lance Factor, George Appleton Lawrence Distinguished Service Professor and Chair of Philosophy, had noticed several odd flourishes adorning the interior and exterior of Old Main, the historic central campus hall where Lincoln debated Douglas in 1858. Investigating its history, Factor unearthed fascinating secrets permeating the very foundation of the building.

Knox College, founded by rock-ribbed Presbyterian pioneers who despised both slavery and oath-bound fraternities, had existed for nearly twenty years when its crosstown competitor, Lombard College, founded by Unitarian Universalists, erected in 1855 an attractive central building. Anxious to equal or exceed this accomplishment, then-president Jonathan Blanchard and the Knox trustees concentrated on raising funds and locating an architect. Rejecting plans presented by a Calvinist firm in Chicago, Blanchard sought Mr. Charles Ulricson, the project’s contractor who had also designed churches, mansions and offices in Galesburg and other midwestern locations. A Swedish immigrant, Ulricson’s cool, competent demeanor appealed to Blanchard and the board, who nicknamed him “the urbane Mr. Ulricson.” Working quickly and efficiently, Ulricson presented an agreeable plan to the administration and construction commenced. Completed in 1857, the three-storey hall, topped by a temple-like belltower, commanded a magnificent view of the prairie, a benefit which the Lombard building did not offer, much to the delight of Knox constituents.

Professor Factor, continuing his careful perusal of ledgers, journals, correspondence and other documents, discovered that Ulricson had studied under renowned architectural masters in New York City, learning the principles of sacred geometry and alchemical engineering. A loyal disciple, he departed their tutelage a member of “the sacred priesthood of architecture” and eventually settled in Peoria, Illinois, happily applying his vast knowledge of mystic ratios and sacred numbers to his projects – chiefly Knox College. In brief, Old Main is a purely Masonic talisman. Its existence as a beloved landmark is particularly ironic considering that Jonathan Blanchard, later president of Wheaton College, founded in 1868 the National Christian Association as an instrument dedicated to eradicating the influence of Freemasonry from American church life. Undoubtedly he and the trustees were entirely unaware of the hidden esoteric meanings and sacred symbology woven into every tile, window and doorway. According to Factor, Ulricson likely believed that his building might capture the positive energies of the “the Great Geometer,” sanctifying and edifying its occupants. Through the influence of occultic design Ulricson might have sought to mystically unify the opposing, aggressive forces of Jonathan Blanchard and George Gale, founder of the college and the city. Both were strong-willed and often locked horns, fomenting division among the Galesburg citizenry. If Charles Ulricson was “urbane,” he was also surely crafty as he advanced the “craft” of Freemasonry through means both brazen and surreptitious.