Posted: Friday, February 6, 2015 9:39 am

By Alayna Wood

Photo by John Vicory

Kim Stave, Dean of Students at Northwest University, will be leaving NU at the end of this semester. Stave said she is looking into doctoral programs as a way to further pursue her career in Student Development.

“This transition is very bittersweet,” Stave said. “I know it’s the right thing and God has given me peace about this transition, and yet there is a lot of deep sadness about leaving people that we feel our family has loved and have been loved well by.”

Stave said she feels very committed to Christian higher education and feels it is the vocation into which God has called her.

Stave began working at NU in June 2012 and has facilitated many changes within the two and a half years she has been here. Stave has been involved in restructuring many of the student development positions and programs, rewriting the Community Handbook and Judicial Manual, making new visitation policies and increasing visitation hours and remodeling the dorms and Pecota Student Center.

“I think she has done a great job with organizing the personnel there and I think she certainly cares a great deal about the quality of the student experience,” said Provost Dr. Jim Heugel, who accepted and announced Stave’s resignation January 9th. “Kim is a very spiritually minded person with strong ethics. She is a real person of character and has a great capacity to work hard.”

Stave has been working in student development and other student support roles for almost eighteen years with five years spent working as an Area Coordinator at George Fox University in Newberg, Ore.

Prior to coming to NU, she and her husband Andrew spent ten years (2002 – 2012) in Lithuania where she worked at LCC International University – formerly known as Lithuania Christian College.

While in Lithuania, Stave worked as the Director of Community Life and was later promoted to Vice President of the Student Life Department for the last three years of their time there.

Stave said her drive and passion ultimately lies in her love of students and her desire to see them become the men and women God has called them to be. She loves all of the opportunities her job gives her to interact and engage with those on campus.

“I want students to understand that we are for them,” Stave said. “I am here, my position, and my staff are here to advocate for students and support them in their own growth, not just in their college life, but for their own personal growth and development.”

Stave said she believes that grace and transformation can be shown even through the judicial and disciplinary processes students may face. Her passion for student support through the more difficult times comes from her past experiences and especially from her faith.

“There are so many stories of how people have made major life mistakes, but through that there is beautiful redemption in hitting rock bottom and how God transforms their lives,” Stave said. “I am really passionate about how that can happen during this developmental period of someone’s life. I was in that scenario as a college student and my life was one of those that was transformed through the judicial process and what I learned through that and the people who cared for me and walked me through it.”

Ultimately, Stave trusts that God will continue to provide and bring her through this next phase in life.