Humans of Regis: RUSGA Nominee Melissa Rangel

(Photo courtesy of Melissa Rangel)

By: Samantha Jewell, Humans Editor

Melissa is running for Vice-President of Involvement, here's what she had to share with The Highlander about herself!

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I am a junior studying Environmental Science and double minoring in Business and Biology. I am from Chicago, IL. I was a competitive varsity cheerleader in high school and was Co-President of Letterman Club. As part of Letterman Club, I was in charge of hosting different events for all the athletes to participate in and make the student body a part of those events as well. My freshman and sophomore years here at Regis I was a member of Student Involvement Committee. I have also participated in many intramural sports since freshman year. I studied abroad in Poland last Fall of 2017. After my experience abroad, I truly feel like I have grown in overall confidence.

What is something that we may not know about you but sets you apart from the rest?

I grew up with a single parent and from that person I was able to learn to be a well functioning independent person. I am the first out of my entire family to go to college more than two hours away (Denver is 15 hours away from Chicago). Friends tell me I am very exuberant, kind, and I portray myself very well.

Why are you running?

I am running for VP of Involvement because I feel like Regis lacks in school spirit and I want to try my best to change that. I believe that if more people would get involved, they would be able to see how fun being a Ranger really is!

Humans of Regis: RUSGA Nominee Reyna Revelle

(Photo courtesy of Reyna Revelle)

By: Samantha Jewell, Humans Editor

Reyna is running for Vice-President of Clubs and Organizations here at Regis, here's a little bit that she had to share about herself with us!

As a Latina American woman and 3rd-year student, Reyna is currently pursuing a major in Communication/ Media Studies with a double minor in Spanish and Religious Studies.
Being a former Miss Colorado Continents titleholder in 2016 and being named Miss Colorado American Dream 2018 back in January, Reyna finds that being bilingual enhances her communication skills, as well as forming relationships with some incredible women.

Her extensive involvement in the Regis community in addition to being a part of the Senate Body for the last 2 years, has provided her with the skills of creating and maintaining organizations on campus. She’s currently Co-President of the Regis Chapter of Global Medical Brigades, volunteers with Father Woody’s and much more. Reyna has represented Regis at the National Jesuit Student Leadership Conference, former President of Euphonic Vox ACapella, and is currently an active member of Regis Ramblers and the News Anchor for Highlander Digital News. For Reyna, being a news reporter isn't just a career path, it's about ethical responsibility. She has devoted her time to making sure that people have access to the information they need in order to be engaged students on this campus. 

Reyna is also currently Co-President of the Regis Chapter of Global Medical Brigades, volunteers with Father Woody's, Canyon Cares, and the annual 9News Health Fair. She have also represented Regis at the National Jesuit Student Leadership Conference, former President of Euphonic Vox A Capella, and currently is active member of Regis Ramblers.

Her extensive involvement in the Regis community has provided her with the skills of creating and maintaining organizations on campus, in addition to curating various pitches for a multitude of projects. Her overall involvement includes the Senate seat for Somos and the previous Senate seat for the Highlander. She understands the ins and outs of how the senate meetings need to be run and how the affinity groups need to be better represented  on our campus. Stop by and get to know her throughout her Campaign Week!

Humans of Regis: Fr. John P. Fitzgibbons, S.J

(Photo: Emily Schneider)

By: Samantha Jewell, Humans Editor

What brought you to Regis University?

Well as you know there are a number of Jesuit Universities in the country, 28 and around 200 in the world. So I always thought I would be a professor and I was for a time, but, the Jesuits in my home province asked me to be Novice Director for a while. I was doing some administration, a lot of teaching and they asked me to be Novice Director; which is the person who forms young Jesuits in their first two years before they take vows. It was a good and an important job and I really liked it but I knew I wanted to go back and do academics when I was done. I got a sabbatical at the University of San Francisco and my mentor and boss there was the President of the University and after sometime he said, “I think you would make a really great President do you want to learn?”, I said, “well, let me think about it”. When my sabbatical was about halfway up I was interviewing at a number of Jesuit Institutions and I received a couple pretty nice jobs offers and they tended towards administration to my surprise, so my boss Father Stephen Privett, said, “I know you are getting some job offers, I’ll make you a job offer, I will teach you how to be president, I will make you Dean and ask you to be a Vice President and this doesn’t mean you are going to do it but I will teach you how.” I said, well there is no downside to this, I loved it, I didn’t think that I would but I really loved it. I went from the University of San Francisco back to Marquette to be a Associate Provost for Faculty. When I was done with that I had several offers to apply for Presidency so I did and they chose me here at Regis.

When were you first called to the Priesthood?

I find that question wonderful, so tender and I am grateful. I always wanted to be married and have children. My father was a physician and my mother was an artist. I thought I would like to be a physician; I was in a Christian life community. In the 70’s we called the Sodalities. It was a prayer group and a surface group and there was a Jesuit and a Sister who ran it. They were very inspirational there were no questions that would not be answered, we talked about dating, man and women, talked about sex, talked about how do you love a person with great respect, what does that mean? We talked about academics, what are your plans and every meeting, we met once a week, we would end with mass. I thought, “it was sneaky”. It got to me without me kind of knowing about it and I remember waking up (this is the truth) I was studying for my advanced biology exam, it was in the middle of the year. I was doing well in it. I was up til like 2 in the morning, studying and reviewing, went to bed. I remember I was only asleep for like an hour and I just bolted right up and I just said, “Okay!” I was kind of mad, and I thought, “what did I just say okay to? And Why am I mad?” What is that about? I kind of just examined it, I remember rolling it over and thinking about it. It was 3 in the morning and I had an exam the next day! I just played with it and then I got to some peace. I said, “I do want to be a physician, but I want to be a physician of the soul I want to help people with their interior more than their physical reality”. I came to some peace with the idea and here I am today.

Who is the most influential person in your life?

I would there have been several, most profoundly foundationally, my father. I used to go with him to the hospital and he was a pathologist and a professor of medicine. I would go to the hospital with him and take notes as he did autopsies. I did not just learn anatomy I learned the reverence he had for a human body. The person that died there was an enormous reverence that he had for what it means to be human and what a corpse is and what it is not. I would say certainly your parents have a great deal of influence but I had not just love but I admired my father so that was a big thing.

I also would say a huge influence for me was Father Stephen Privett who was the President of The University of San Francisco. He was my mentor and he really did teach me how to be a University President. I will never forget that. There are certain people in your life that really have enormous influence. They are trying to have influence though, that is just who they are. He was remarkable. When I agreed to work for him he took me out to his assistant and he said, “Would you show John my calendar? Everything here you can go to, just show up. I want you to be quiet, I want you to be very respectful. But, I want you to learn. Don’t enter into the conversation unless I ask you”. For two years he never told me not to go to a meeting. Some of these meetings were really difficult, really hard meetings. Very very talented, very bright people who had issues or we really had a conundrum that we had to work through or there was a financial thing. There was a gift in the offering that we had to work through that. I just learned and he never told me not to go to one of those meetings. That was really how I learned.

What has been your proudest moment in your personal and or professional life?

I would say there are a lot of candidates for that. I loved being ordained a Catholic Priest, that happened in 1985. It is a very long training, a 12 year formation. I was ordained in ’85 and then I went to Doctoral Studies and did a PhD in English. My parents and most of my siblings, I have 9, came to my graduation. At the after party, my mother who is just a lovely (I think she is part Druid) she came up to me in this staged whisper and she just said, “Well John, you are 38, you have finished your PhD, you are ordained now, there is no shame on the family, you have a job before you are 40, its terrific!” It was just very funny, but it was her way of teasing me and saying, “we are very proud of you!”

I think something that I take great pride in that when I taught, I think I was a very good teacher. Now I don’t say that out of pride in a negative sense It was very important to me when I could see the light go off for someone when teaching literature. I was a part of something really important.

Who is your patron Saint? Why?

I really have three and I really love reading the lives of the Saints. The saints are more present than we think, people really are Saints. My favorite Saints are Saint John the Evangelist (I know you are shaking your head you’re shocked). Saint Patrick of Ireland, my middle name is Patrick and we are a very Irish Family. And Saint Francis Xavier who is a very early Jesuit who was enormously intelligent but left everything when Saint Ignatius sent him to what we call the far East to India and Japan and China. He was a remarkably brave man and did most of his work kind of all alone. So those are heroes to me. They lived holy lives without being in a plaster of Paris sense they were real human beings and I really like that. 

What is your favorite Jesuit Value? Why?

Can I do a riff? You know the term Cura Personalis? Well I think that is enormously important but I think the part that is kind of left off of that often is Cura Apostolica. The two go hand and hand and actually mean the same thing: Cura Personalis means care for the whole person well Cura Apostolica means care for the whole community. They have to go together. You can’t have Cura Personalis you can’t care for that whole person unless you take into account what the context is, where do they fit in and where do they not fit into the community and how can we make that better? So if you take care of the community it gets kind of granular. WE have a saying in Jesuit Higher Ed, no margin, no mission. We are a not for profit, so unless a not for profit is making money to invest in the community you won’t be a community very long, you won’t be in business. So it sounds kind crass, but it is not actually. Cura Apostolica a care for the institution, a care for the community, is crucial and is the condition for the possibility of Cura Apostolica, so they go together, you can’t really separate them, though you make the distinction. You have to do both at the same time. Cura Personalis is my favorite but you have to draw a dotted line to Cura Apostolica because that is just as important. One makes the other meaningful.

If there anything else you would like share with the Regis community?

I think with all my heart that we have a wonderful community. I think there are people that are really left out, there is racism in our community. Not because we are particularly different from other communities, it’s in our country, it’s in our world, it is every, it is in our state. How could our community not reflect some of that? We do. I think there is some anxiety and exclusions rather than inclusion. I think that we need to learn as a community, as individuals how to take care of each other better, how to listen to each other better. I think we are, I think there are ups and downs. There are more ups than downs and I am not a Pollyanna or in a silly way optimistic, I am a hopeful person not some much am optimistic person, a hopeful person. I think our community is learning and we will continue to learn. I am inspired by our students. This might sound funny but if the students, its true of any human being, if people really knew how much other people cared there would be a lot less hurt and a lot less anger, but the only way we human beings know how to learn this is the hard way. WE have to keep asking hard questions and keep engaging in hard issues and be patient with each other and I am proud of how we are doing that. I look at the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and I think, “I am really proud of that office, I think it’s a really marvelous way. It is a place and a symbol for what we can do to make these topics relevant and present.

Humans of Regis: Meg Thams

(Photo: Emily Schneider)

By: Samantha Jewell, Humans Editor

What brought you to Regis University?

Well I was teaching at the time, and I had just had my son, I was teaching as an adjunct. I was teaching a little bit at Metro and Community College of Denver just to see if I wanted to teach. I had left the industry because I was raising my son. What appealed to me about Regis was that I could teach to essential values. That I could question the profit motive and those kinds of things and I wouldn’t get harassed about it. Businesses are in business to make a profit, but my argument has always been you can’t be for a profit. That philosophy is harder at some schools to speak your mind on that and for students to explore that idea. That is not the Harvard model, so that appealed to me.

How did you get into the business world?

I started back when I was in my teens essentially. I left my home when I was 17 and I started working right away. I worked in a factory and got promoted, and after doing that for a couple of years of I decided that I better go back to school. So I went back to school, and I had this position at a company called Guardian Industries where they gave me a car and helped me with my tuition a little; I started with them and stayed with them for ten years, I got my BA, and then I just liked it. I got my undergrad in political science and I wanted to go to law school, but I never stopped working to pursue doing that. I was in the business world, and I was good at it and I knew the ins and outs of it, so I stuck with it. I did not think I could afford law school so I just continued on and I did pretty well so I finished my MBA and went to work with medical devices and I loved that! I had a line mammography equipment that I represented, and it was great because it was a women’s issue, it was not like pushing pencils, and I got to work with engineers, I got to work with quality control, inventory, etc. So I enjoyed that and then I had my son, so I stopped working full and started teaching part-time to see if I liked that. By the time my son was in Kindergarten, I had started d my Ph.D. and after I finished that I started teaching full time.

What are your interests outside of teaching?

Well, I love gardening, and I used to run but I bicycle a lot, and I do a lot of walking. We once as a family rode the Katy Trail in Missouri. I thought oh well Missouri is pretty flat it should not be that hard, oh no, no no! It is not like Denver is at all! I love that. It is a great way to travel, and you get to see stuff. The Katy Trail follows the Missouri River, so it has all these tiny towns that were bypassed when the railroads came in. It used to be the river was the primary transport for all the good and exports and people and when the railroads came in it took all of these towns, and some are ghost towns, and it is fascinating. I love that; I love to travel and to see new places.  

What has been your fondest memory at Regis?

My fondest memories are honestly being able to work with students, and that is honestly why I am here. That is my favorite part of my job. I think that is where I can be the most help and that is what gives me meaning in my position. I have stories of students who had the odds stacked against them, and they came around. I had students that came here from other countries, and they were just lost, and no doing so well and then by just working with them and they become an excellent and happy student.

What classes do you teach?

I teach most of the suite of marketing classes and then BA250. In the past, I have spearheaded the BA250 courses because I think that it is so important to get those fundamentals down and so that is my very favorite class to teach. I think part of it is that students come in and they have their mind made up already about business, about what they want to do and what they want to be. So I get a lot of new students.

What is your favorite Jesuit Value? Why?

‘How ought we to live.’ I think that if you keep that in mind, in general, you are going to make better decisions. What kind of world do we want to live in? It is particularly pertinent when it comes to business because business decisions do impact how we live. IT is a social entity, so if we live by standards that allow us to pollute or to mistreat people and put them in unsafe working environments then we are cheap and do we want to live in that kind of world? So that is the foundation for that I teach business.

Is there anything else you would like the Regis community to know?

In general, I would like the Regis community especially faculty and students to realize how business is integrated into how everything goes on in the university and that we can all begin to think about doing business by making business decisions. I think you need to understand that to be good consumers you have to be good citizens. Again it is going to touch everybody that is in the university. This is something that we are all involved in, and we should have ground rules that are both prosperity, we want to be prosperous, and the university wants to be profitable, we want to be sustainable over time. Also from a meaning point of view, if you understand business principles and business decisions it is not unlike making decisions in other areas, and you are more apt to include the process of moral thinking, ethical thinking, but I think it is appropriate for everyone.

Humans of Regis: Christopher Bourg

(Photo: Emily Schneider)

By: Samantha Jewell, Humans Editor

What brought you to Regis University?

Work. Fate. I was teaching part time at Metro State University and one of the other part time instructors told me that she was leaving and that there would be class or two available here and I grabbed it, it was work. It was fate; I grew up and went to a Catholic school until I was in the 6th grade and the circle closes.

How did you get involved with playing pool and into the position to start the pool club?

I played pool when I was a teenager and then I didn’t play again for 40 years. I came into Walker’s Pub one day and I looked at the equipment and it was in a very bad state and I thought, well I can take care of that, so I fixed it up. After I got it all fixed up and pretty, I thought hmm this used to be fun and I started playing again a little bit. Then, more students started playing and I discovered that it was really fun and that I actually learned quite a bit when I was younger and I was amazed that after so many years I could still play. I also started getting to know more and more students that I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to know and I really liked that. Now, I was a restaurant manager for 20 years and this whole thing (Walker’s Pub) feels pretty comfortable to me. And a lot of it became about hospitality too; I started seeing students who, for all the myriad of activities here and for all the fellowship and support I started noticing a lot of students who didn’t know anybody and didn’t have a place to hang out, so this became for many of them that. I made a point to make all of them feel welcome. It has become a community and for the guys that play here I insist upon that. When somebody new comes in that we don’t know they have to feel welcome.

What does the Spanish Table Involve?

The Spanish Conversation Table is a Tertulia, an informal meeting of Spanish speakers to talk about current affairs, arts, etc. We meet every Thursday in Walker's Pub from 11:30 to 2:00. The Spanish Table is open to all members of the Regis community who want to converse in Spanish. Beginners are welcome and there are special activities for them to practice speaking the language they are learning. Members of the Spanish department and Spanish speakers from other departments drop in to converse with students of all levels.

What has been your fondest memory at Regis?

I am having one of them right now with the basketball team. They had their best season they have had in 20 years! Four or five of them were my students at one time and I love basketball. It was a really exciting season and I haven’t missed any of the games. I am having a lot of fun with that.

There is also a teaching thing, I get an email out of nowhere from a former student who was in my class two or three years before and she had never been an especially great student she very inconsistent. She would work and then she wouldn’t and so on. I had never thought too much more about it and then she sent me an email from out of nowhere that said, “I am doing my student teaching now, I have graduated and when I can’t figure out what to do I ask myself what you would have done.” Things like that come out of nowhere and they can just make all the difference. Little things like that happen from time to time and they make all the difference.

What is your favorite Jesuit Value?

Even after all these years I am still learning about that.  Like I said I grew up Catholic but I am still old school mass in Latin, Heaven and Hell, Catholic. I don’t know if I can answer that exactly but I will answer the question I want to answer and I think it is pretty close.  I have been here for 17 years and the one thing that I know for sure about this place is that I see people trying really hard to do well by others. Apart from all the rhetoric and statements of philosophy and all that I have seen over the years that I have been here, and you can’t fake that, that this organization, this place, tries really hard to do well by others. They can’t always but you can sure tell the difference when somebody is trying. They don’t always get it right but I think that they try really hard and that the value that are guiding them are good ones.

Is there anything else you would like to leave with the Regis community?

Sometimes I tell my students that I am a visitor from another century trying to learn about this one. It makes me a little nervous and sad sometimes the course of progress when it means that we interact with each other; I am talking about faculty and students both here that we interact with each other by technology. We do that so much now and it saddens me and worries me. I do like you are doing right now, if I need something from somebody and I get a chance I usually try and go see them and most of the time it is well received. I know Regis is all about action on a huge scale, they want to change the world and such and I don’t think all of us are put together to act and think on that kind of scale. I think there will be always or at least I hope there will be always a place for us to interact on the personal level. I sit down with students in the cafeteria with students, I don’t sit down in the lounge. I love the cafeteria because I love to eat and they feed us really well so I just sit down with students and they are just in their phones. I like my phone too and  I can get wrapped up in it. But I make it a point to make conversation with the students and it is well received.

Humans of Regis: Nick Stofa

(Photo: Emily Schneider)

By: Samantha Jewell, Humans Editor

What brought you to Regis?

I am a Colorado native and I went to Regis Jesuit High School. When I was looking at colleges I wanted something that would be smaller and Jesuit. I did not know where that would be, I did not necessarily know that I wanted to stay in Colorado, but when I was looking at schools I had met an admissions counselor who was actually a friend of mine. I went to a very small Catholic middle school and had a friend from there who’s mom was actually an admissions counselor here and she had asked if I had considered Regis. At the time I was looking at Creighton, St. Louis University, all of these places that my friends were going to. All of those schools were great but I really felt this draw to stay in Denver. She told me to come down and look and take a tour. So I did and at first felt that it was very small and I didn’t know if it was right for me. I sat down with the current Student Body President back in 2014 Walkers Pub. He told me, “Hey this is a great school and there is a lot that you can be a part of and you are going to get a lot that you aren’t going to get at bigger schools. You can go for Student Government, you can go for all these clubs, you can go for classes where professors know your name. There is just a culture here that I think you will love”. So I sent in my package, they accepted me and here I am.

What sparked your interest in Student Government?

So this is very cliché but it is the truth. When I came in I knew I wanted to be in Student Government. I saw at Mile High when they do the giant orientation event I saw RUSGA come out in their cardigans. I saw the student body president come up and address all the families and all the perspective students. I remember they said that, “there are two types of students: students who come to Regis and go to class and go home and there are students who come to Regis, go to class and they go home sure but in between they are in clubs, they are in sports, they are in Student Government they are in all these different facets of the school.” I remember thinking to myself dang that it what I want to be doing. I want to be the student that is over-involved and thinking about all the stuff that they do. I really fell in love with the idea of serving the student body and being able to meet people that I wouldn’t have been able to meet otherwise if I had not been in the position that I am in.

What have you enacted for years to come?

This could not be a better time for this interview. We actually just passed the new Constitution and what that is going to do is change RUSGA’s structure. As it stands currently RUSGA was a President, Vice President, Treasurer, and a Chief Justice and then there were 9 to 10 director positions depending on the year and the RUSGA that wanted to have those directorships, so there were roughly 13 people involved. We noticed this year that we were having difficulty getting people to run and difficulty with spending money. We realized we were spending way too much money without enough output. RUSGA is primarily funded by student dollars so all of us spend $175 dollars a month if you are in 12 credits or more. So we said, “okay most of that money is being spent well but we could save 1,000 of dollars if we cut down the size of RUSGA and we made it more a faculty and staff/ administration facing position just as much as it is a student facing positon. What we did was cut it down to about 5, what it will be is a president and 5 Vice Presidents. We are modeling it off of Creighton Universities structure. What they told us when we met at NJSLC this summer is that there structure is a lot better because there Vice Presidents get a little more respect with title whereas we have had some directors that would email some administration and faculty and they would get responses that they did not know what their position is or does and that is no fault of there’s it is just that there are 10 people they are working with so it is kind of hard to know who does what. We just changed it to be that structure where there is a president at the top and then 4 vice presidents. There will be a Vice President of Clubs and Organizations, Vice President of Involvement, Vice President of Programming, Vice President of Social Justice and Diversity.

What advice would you give to someone that is interested in running?

The best advice I would give is, get through campaign week. Campaign week for me was honestly the hardest part. When I was running campaign week was during Midterms. You are going through midterms, you are going through all of your classes and then you are going through all this stuff on top of it. You have Coffee with the Candidates in the library, you have to make a video, you have to make posters and flyers and hang them up, you have to go meet people, meet with faculty and it is just this crazy rush of hours and hours of work. You are sitting there on election day and you are just waiting and waiting and then you find out. My best advice is to just get through Campaign Week.

Now when you are actually in the position, early on get close with your PRO staff because they are your best resource. If you need anything the Professional Staff in Student Activities is awesome, they can point you in any direction that you need and they can tell you the limits of your job. Each one of these new positions will have a lot of power and my position and John’s position and Claire’s positon have a lot of power as well. All year long we were trying to figure out the extent of ours and I have recently learned that it goes well beyond what is said in the constitution.

Recently I called a meeting with the Provost and she invited the President of the University and a lot of upper-level administration and we were talking about how we can improve advising at Regis. We had a round table discussion with a panel of 10 students with various backgrounds/ classes/ majors and it was awesome. We had a room of people listening to us and our ideas. That was one of the times that I really felt like wow, this is a position with a ton of power and people do listen to us. Aside from that you go to the Board of Trustees meetings and meet with the people who literally are the stake holders in Regis. People who have been alumni, have supported Regis for years and years, who have roots back to when we opened in the 1800’s. It is a really really great group of people who don’t think in year increments like we do, they think in decades, 5, 10, 15 years what is Regis going to look like? And they want to hear your voice and hear your ideas, you are a voice for this community. All of these things are what you will do in this position. I guess to make it real advice, get started on it early because I didn’t realize this until the later end of last semester and going into this semester.

What is next for you?

Oh wow! For me, I am going to be graduating in May and I will be going on to Law School, I am not sure where yet. I have gotten a few yeses from schools. I am probably going to keep it in the Jesuit Family for sure. My top choices right now are probably St. Louis University or Creighton University. So definitely going to keep it Jesuit. After that who knows, I may practice Law or maybe run for a public office.

Is there anything you would like to leave with the Regis Community?

The thing I would like to leave with the Regis Community is, I have loved Regis but it is not a perfect school. I think the student body as a whole is very optimistic as a whole but I do not think enough people get involved and hold enough of a stake in their school as much as I thought they would. I think that we have so much potential as a school and as a student body but I just don’t think enough people realize and know that they have the tools that they need to make a change. I hope when Regis continues on that a sense of school spirit and school pride is cultivated that I think exists now but is in low doses. I think that Regis is a great school but I don’t know, not that they don’t think the same way but they just seem to want to come get their degree leave. Not that that is a bad thing but that a pride in the institution is found and that people realize that this is a great school and it is a great place to be. Not that it doesn’t have faults, every school has them but you have the power to change them.