Comings and Goings
The Office of Spiritual and Intercultural Life welcomes Kearsten McCoy as an administrative assistant and Serve Day coordinator this fall. She recently moved to Oregon from Michigan, where she worked as the director of college ministries for Central Wesleyan Church of Holland, Mich., for the past two years. Before that, Kearsten was a graduate resident advisor at Wheaton College in Illinois from 2011 to 2013 and worked as an office assistant to the residence life coordinator at Wheaton in 2012. Kearsten earned a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies from Indiana Wesleyan in 2010 and a master’s degree in Christian formation from Wheaton College in 2013. She lives in Newberg with her husband Justin, who is working on a graduate degree in marriage, couple and family counseling at George Fox.
George Fox alumnus Rick McNeal joined the marketing communications department last month as digital marketing administrator. Rick graduated from the university in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in music performance (saxophone) and worked in the university’s marketing communications office as a student from 2003 to 2006. Most recently, he has spent the last two years as a communications manager for Holiday Retirement, a national retirement living company headquartered in Lake Oswego. He has been a writer for Mad Fish SEO and a content manager for MyBinding.com. In addition to his degree from George Fox, Rick holds a master of worship arts degree from West Coast Bible College and Seminary (2012) and recently completed the MBA program at Marylhurst University. He lives in Newberg with his wife, Christine, a former admissions counselor at George Fox. They have two children, Ariy and Ava, and attend Sherwood Community Friends Church, where Rick is the director of worship arts.
Lawrence Metzger has moved from Oman to work at George Fox as a visiting assistant professor in the English Language Institute. For the past two years, he was a lecturer at Sultan Qaboos University’s Language Centre in Oman, specializing in educational grant writing on critical thinking research, content-based course material design, and teaching of law, engineering and commerce students. Previously, he worked for three years teaching business ethics and commercial law at Abu-Dhabi Women’s College in the United Arab Emirates. Lawrence has also developed conflict resolution course materials and taught English as a Second Language at Qatar University’s International Affairs Program (2009-10). Lawrence taught at the Kwansei Gakuin University School of Policy Studies in Japan (2005-07), where he served as academic writing course coordinator and interactive materials designer for advanced students after having taught fundamental English integrated skills courses in Kobe, Japan (2000-04). Lawrence was a former coordinator of the Fulbright Scholarship Program in Ukraine (1993-95) while teaching American Sociology of Education at Kharkov State University. He is a former Fulbright Scholar in Polish Church-State relations at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (1987), holds a master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Columbia University Teachers College in New York (2007), a master’s degree in Soviet and East European studies from Kansas University (1983) and a bachelor’s degree in Russian language and literature from Kansas (1982). He has been happily married for the past 15 years and lives in Newberg with his wife, Natsuyo, and two teenage sons, Kentaro and Shinjiro.
The university welcomes Colleen Sump as a Career and Academic Planning (CAP) coach in the school’s IDEA Center. For the past year and a half she has worked as the director for alumni and parent engagement at Willamette University. Previously, she spent five years as the assistant director of the Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program at Pacific University, and five years as the education coordinator for Friends of Historic Champoeg. Colleen earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University in Ohio and lived in Newberg for 23 years before recently moving to St. Paul with her husband, Damon. Her children include twin adventurer sons – one who recently graduated from Alaska Pacific University and the other from Azusa Pacific University – and a daughter who currently attends Azusa. Colleen attends Newberg Friends Church.
Steve Gilday (Security) retired from the university on Sept. 1.