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John Walkup
Professor Emeritus, Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Texas Tech University













[October 17, 2010] —
Do you have mentors who strongly affected your Christian life?

When I think back to my years in graduate school, I was powerfully influenced by Dave Roper, our college pastor. He mentored a group of men, meeting weekly with us on the Stanford campus for a Bible study.

Dave was always available to help me put things into proper perspective by taking me time and again to the Scriptures. He also helped me understand how to reach out to my not-yet-Christian friends by inviting any who were curious about the Christian life to a series of events. Without his encouragement, those challenging years might well have had a much less positive outcome.

When I became a professor my Texas Tech colleague Marion Hagler was one person I frequently consulted for advice on both departmental and professional issues. Also a believer, Marion collaborated with me in my optics research and advised me on writing successful proposals. He also went to bat for me with our department chairman more than once when I stumbled into various departmental quagmires.

Later, my wife Pat and I attended Faculty Commons national conferences where we were introduced to Walter and Ann Bradley and Rae and Peggy Mellichamp. This brought incredible blessing. Both couples modeled creativity and caring in their outreach to students and colleagues. They also helped us see the importance of being yoked together in community with other Christian faculty on our campus and beyond so as to expand our circle of influence for the Lord.

Because of these mentoring examples, I wanted to become a mentor myself when I became a senior faculty member. Recalling the anxiety I had experienced while trying to get those initial research grants and contracts, I looked for ways to help.

While I didn’t take graduate students with me on my trips to Washington D.C., I did introduce them to program managers at professional conferences or meetings so they could make those important contacts. I also sought out opportunities for them to give presentations of their work.

When a program manager would visit our campus, I had the students present their work in front of the manager so they could gain experience. In the process I was able to better know these students, and it provided some opportunities to share how God had met these needs in my own early years in academia.

We all need mentors in these areas, but we should also be considering the call, as we mature, to mentor the upcoming generations of Christian academics who follow us. Are you intentionally serving as a mentor to others?

If, by God’s enabling, we provide good mentoring models,I believe there will be special joy and a sense of fulfilling our life’s calling. To me, it doesn’t get any better than that!

© 2010 John Walkup