Four Fantastic Females at GFU You Should Know
Reported by Linnea Coffey and Alyssa Derania
Photography by George Fox University
March is Women’s History Month. To embrace this celebration, we interviewed four women on campus who impact the lives of students every day. While many students are not on campus at this time, those who are should take the opportunity to introduce themselves to these women in George Fox University GFU’s time of remote teaching.
Dr. Ekaterina Lomperis is an assistant professor of Theology at GFU and Portland Seminary. Lomperis grew up in Moldova and Russia, and got her masters of divinity degree at Harvard.
Her advice to international students, from personal experience is, “Seek to socialize with domestic students. Ask them to go watch a baseball game together! You would need local friends to make sense of this world’s weirdest sports. Just saying.”
As a woman in the workplace, Lomperis shared that, “I experienced multiple instances of gender discrimination when I lived in Eastern Europe… male teachers frequently earned higher salaries than their female colleagues. Male teachers were in greater demand, since some students preferred them, due to men supposedly being more intelligent.”
“Speaking about my current role, there will be a number of Christians who would not think that, as a woman, I should be a professor of theology at a seminary. Some of this would stem from the sin of sexism, while others would sincerely believe that this is what the Bible teaches. We need to have a commitment to a comprehensive conversation in the Christian Church about women’s roles in teaching the Gospel,” Lomperis said.
Dr. Nicole Enzinger is an assistant professor of Education, teaching both mathematics and education classes at GFU. Enzinger shared, “I never would have planned this…it’s definitely where God wants me to be at. I am a first-generation college graduate. I knew that I wanted to be a math teacher, so I was a high school math teacher for five years,” when asked what drove her to become a college professor.
She said, “I always knew that I wanted to teach math…to me, whether it’s high school, or it’s college students, or it’s kindergarteners, it doesn’t matter. Teaching math is teaching math. My only hope is to empower people to feel like they can do challenging things and do hard things and find joy in it…as long as I’m doing that, I know I am doing my work.”
When asked about her specific work with elementary education majors, Enzinger stated “I want to work with prospective elementary school teachers because they are on the front lines with our future mathematicians, our future astronauts…”
Dr. Jenny Elsey’s official titles are associate dean of Intercultural Life, Title IX deputy coordinator, and member of the Student Life leadership team, but her impact extends beyond these responsibilities.
“We humans, by design, create and recreate things based upon what we know,” Elsy said, when asked about being a woman of color in the workplace. “None of us are capable of actually knowing all the different things, and all the different experiences, and all the different ways that are out there. It's just not possible. That’s the definition of God: all knowing and all powerful. If we understand that we are not God, then I think the reality is that we recognize that there are all these points that we are limited by what we know.”
“At least for me, I am driven by what can be,” said Elsey. “I am driven by the hope that...we work towards things that are worth working towards. The end outcome is what we all want, which is the betterment of our students, and the thriving of our students, and the thriving of our people, so we all fight for that. It’s worth fighting for that. It’s a good fight. It’s good work to be done...You just use that hope to press forward.”
Dr. Courtney Anderegg is an assistant professor of Communication. She began teaching at GFU just in 2017. When asked how she ended up at GFU, Anderegg shared that,
“This is my first 'big girl job’ after graduate school! My family and I wanted to be close to extended family when moving from the Midwest. George Fox was a great opportunity to be close to family, teach, and be in a beautiful place!”
She says that her favorite part about teaching is “seeing the ‘light bulbs turn on’ when students really get something that we're talking about in class. I love talking about life with students and weaving in both faith and academic components into those conversations. I love trying out jokes during lecture so that my back-up plan of a stand-up career can stay fine-tuned.”
You can find her in Minthorn during her office hours, or teaching Comm Research Methods (her favorite!), or showing anyone and everyone adorable pictures of her son. Say hi!