How I got to Regent:

Before coming to Regent, I worked for the Australian federal government managing community-funding programs to support newly-arrived migrants and refugees. I had also studied photography and was shooting weddings on the weekends, as well as completing a Master’s degree in English. I decided to come to Regent because (a) I wanted to put as much intellectual rigour into my faith as I had put into my study of English, and (b) a friend who’d visited Vancouver brought a hard copy of the Regent catalogue back to Australia, and I fell in love. I felt like I could happily take almost every class in the book.

Most important lessons:

What hunger and forgiveness really mean.

Life after Regent:

Jared and I met in my final semester at Regent, and we moved to small town Alberta soon after we were married. Our daughter, Enye, was born in Calgary a few years later. I am very grateful for them both, as well as for our irresistible golden-retriever-cross-poodle, Henri, who makes friends with everyone he meets.

After Regent, I completed a PhD in Applied Linguistics at Lancaster University in the UK, focusing on how people talk about religion and what that says about who they are. I then taught discourse studies and writing for several years at the University of British Columbia before taking up a lectureship at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, in 2018. Jared and I both wanted to be closer to our parents, and moving to Brisbane gave us the opportunity to buy our first home. It feels wonderful to have our own yard to plant trees in and our own roof to put solar panels on—two things Jared has been planning, as ways to care for the earth.

Both Jared and I love the Anglican liturgy and, following Eugene Petersen’s advice, we have always sought to attend the smallest/closest church possible. Surrounded by the Australian bush, with windows and doors that open onto gumtrees and birdsong, Kenmore Anglican Church is now our church home.

How Regent made a difference:

Some of my dearest friends are people I met at Regent. Sharing life with them—faith, food, questions, heartaches, joys—over the years (and across the miles) has given me a precious “belonging-ness” and “being-understood-ness.” Encountering Regent faculty as people and fellow travellers was also a surprise and a joy for me, which has shaped and continues to shape how I seek to be as a university lecturer: human and hospitable.

Studying at Regent felt like a homecoming for me: things I had previously believed about God and church were corroborated, making me wonder why none of the churches I had known beforehand viewed life in such a beautifully integrated way. After I graduated, however, I was confronted by the opportunity cost of theological study. I never doubted the quality of the education I had received, but I did question the wisdom of spending all of my life savings on theological education just before an international property boom made housing unaffordable. That took quite a bit of working through.

However, I believe Antoine de Saint Exupery’s observation that l’essentiel est invisible (“the essential things are invisible”) – and I know that I learned many essential things, both at Regent and in the struggling that followed.

Three words that describe Regent College:

1. Cocoon-like
2. Fluid
3. Intense

Best Regent memory:

Meeting, TA-ing for, and photographing Eugene Peterson.

Funniest Regent memory:

Packer and Houston, bouncing off one another like Laurel and Hardy, in their Puritans and Cistercians class.

Favourite Regent class:

The Christian Life with Loren Wilkinson (and team).

Favourite place to study:

Upstairs in what used to be an empty space beside a classroom, overlooking the atrium.

Favourite thing about Vancouver:

Cherry blossoms in the spring, and Grounds for Coffee cinnamon buns.

As a donor, I'm supporting Regent's ongoing mission.
Would you join me?