Teela Ruehle, director of student missions and service, is leaving the university this month after 15 years of service to ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ University students. Ruehle helped engage students in various domestic and international service efforts out of the Center for Faith Engagement (CFE) and also served as Change Day coordinator. Ruehle has spent her entire professional career at ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ and has either been a student or employee of ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ since she began her undergraduate studies in 2003.
Shortly after completing her graduate degree at ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ, Ruehle worked as a Lamson Hall dean for seven years and a University Towers dean for one. She explained she had felt inspired by Change Day and its massive service efforts during the first years of its existence, which ultimately led her to take on coordinating ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ’ community engagement and service efforts.
“They started Change Day in 2017, and I participated in it. I loved community engagement and community service, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool!’” said Ruehle. “I had been doing the dean thing for a while and had just been feeling like maybe it was time to switch.”
Ruehle fondly reflected on her time as a college student, which was full of memorable moments while she studied social work.
“Residence hall life was fun,” she said. “You’d have your girls around you, just hanging in the dorm, having ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ nights, …random 1 a.m. Taco Bell runs, just stupid stuff with your friends, that’s always gonna be the best.”
She went on to describe her experiences as a faculty member as memorable and touching as she’s seen many students and employees enter and leave the university over time.
“It’s the bittersweet of this environment, where it's really cool to see so many incredible leaders go through this campus,” she said. “We have an incredible population of students that come through ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ, and I don’t think we always acknowledge how awesome you guys are. That’s definitely what I’ll miss for sure.”
Ruehle has decided to leave CFE to pursue full-time remote counseling, a career that she has looked forward to and is passionate about. The timeliness of the job and her long-time desire to work more as a counselor led to her deciding to take the job offer mid-semester. She also added that this year is the first time in a while that CFE has been somewhat fully staffed with the additions of chaplains Simona Pitcher and Jacob Gibbs to the spiritual life team, so Ruehle felt as though the timing was right to step away and “let somebody who has new ideas and new passions come in and try something.”
Ruehle certainly gave her all to serving students and served as a spiritual mentor and source of encouragement for several students. Excluding some of the years that were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, student missions sent out about 30 students per year to different long-term service projects in communities all over the country and the world. Ruehle said that helping to make mission work affordable for students, sharing the various work opportunities students had outside of just Bible work and being able to get students to earn academic credit for their missionary efforts. Still, Ruehle thinks there may have been times when she could have and should have advocated harder for students and done more to bridge the gap of communication between students and school administrators.
Mikey Archibeque will serve as the interim director of Student Missions starting later this month. Ruehle was told that at the end of the semester, the university will look to hire a permanent director of Student Missions and hopefully address the void of Change Day coordinator.
Although there is a long list of people she has enjoyed working with and for, one particular shoutout she had was for Sharon Moore, CFE’s administrative assistant. Moore also worked with Ruehle at University Towers before they both moved to CFE.
“This whole team [CFE] is hilarious, and we have a great time at work,” said Ruehle. “There’s so many good people here. That’s the biggest thing. I’m looking at ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ, and it's not a perfect place, but the staff and faculty, they really try, and they’re not here for the money; they’re actually here for the ministry.”
When asked what she would like to see ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ improve upon in her absence, Ruehle shared that she hopes that service is seen more as a priority to the school and the administration, as she fears it may be less of a priority to current administrators now when compared to Andrea Luxton’s time.
“The spiritual opportunities need to be looked at and funded, and there needs to be a plethora of opportunities for [students],” she said. “Hopefully, people are here to engage their spirituality in some form, so we need to provide opportunities for that.”
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.