“I hoped that at least one of my professors would identify himself as a believer. None ever did.”
The year was 1958, and John Walkup was a homesick freshman at Dartmouth College (left) in New Hampshire, a continent away from his family and friends in Seattle. “I was in class or studying about 18 hours a day,” John recalls. “I might as well have slept in the library stacks and showered at the gym.”
A new Christian, John longed for a spiritual mentor. “If I had met even one professor who was open about his faith, it would have been a great encouragement to me. I was a new believer and was sorting out how to live the Christian life in a very competitive and secular environment.”
When John returned to the West Coast for graduate school at Stanford, he found the spiritual mentors he needed. “I met a few professors who were unafraid to identify themselves as followers of Christ. One even hosted a weekly Bible study for students. Their examples played a major role in my decision to embark upon an academic career.”
By the time John earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering, he was a married father of two. As he applied for faculty positions on the West Coast, John and his wife Pat prayed about where God would have them serve Him. As a Christian professor, John wanted to mentor his students in the way his graduate school professors had mentored him.
God’s answer was a complete surprise: He led the Walkups to the wide open spaces of Texas to start a research program in optics at Texas Tech University. Though not at the time a prestigious university in an especially scenic location, John quickly discovered its attractions.
“I collaborated with several outstanding colleagues and students who were also followers of Christ,” John recalls. “Raising our three daughters in family-friendly Lubbock, Texas was a great blessing, and the short commute to campus meant that I was able to have more time with them in the evenings. It also allowed me the time to be engaged in ministry with students.”
Remembering his own lonely experience as an undergraduate, John determined to “raise his flag” as a Christian on campus. “In starting each semester’s first class with a brief indication of my personal faith in Christ, I was privately praying that God would provide opportunities to mentor my students. . . . Little did I know all the ways He would answer that prayer over my 27-year career.”
Students, John says, knew he would be a “safe person” to talk to when they faced a personal or academic crisis. “I once had a student come into my office and break down in tears while he shared with me that his roommate had died in a gun accident,” John recalls.
A 1990 trip to the Soviet Union with a team of professors and Faculty Commons staff changed John’s career plans. He discovered that, in an officially atheist country, professors encounter “open doors” to talk about their faith where regular missionaries are denied entrance.
“I was invited to address 200+ researchers at the leading optics research center in Russia,” John says. “In addition to a talk on optical computing research, I spoke on parallels between physical light and spiritual light that permitted me to share many New Testament verses relating to Jesus Christ and our need of the salvation found only in Him.”
The spiritual hunger of the Russian people made a deep impact on John. Back on campus at Texas Tech, John experienced a paradigm shift in his thinking about success and significance. He now realized, “No amount of worldly success and recognition is as significant as that which we do to represent Christ as His ambassadors on our campuses.”
John eventually took an early retirement from his tenured faculty position at Texas Tech and joined the staff of Faculty Commons full-time. He and Pat moved back to the San Francisco Bay area, where they mentor faculty at Stanford (right) and three other strategic universities.
John has discovered that the things he built in the temporal world were fleeting. His optics research program at Texas Tech terminated within two years of his retirement. But the investments he made in the spiritual lives of his students have continued to bear fruit.
Shortly before he left Texas Tech, a former student stopped by to tell him the impact his first-day-of-class testimony had 20 years earlier. He had been a new believer at the time, and John’s testimony had helped him to get his priorities straight. “I didn’t know until that moment that I had spiritually impacted his life in any way,” John relates. “It was as if God lifted the veil a bit and showed me my life had more impact on my students than I had ever imagined.”
Dr. John Walkup continues to mentor others as a Faculty Commons staff representative. Now he mentors professors, encouraging them to see their spiritual investments in their students and colleagues as their most lasting accomplishment. “My lasting legacy is not the papers I published or the NSF, DOD or NASA grants – it is the impact I have had for Jesus Christ on the lives of my students and colleagues.”
Stanford University photo courtesy flickr user wallyg