BANNER - Bellevue 2008
The Journal of Dr. Richard L. Sleight
 March 2017
 
 

Our 36th Anniversary

Nancy wanted a family dinner at Susan's to celebrate our anniversary.  All the kids could make it.  I guess the new Bosch SHEM63W55N dishwasher I bought her counts as my gift to her.  She's allowed me to buy more colors of paracord and doodads for that hobby.  The dishwasher has still not arrived in Bellevue to be picked up, but then, Nancy hasn't had time to uninstall the Maytag.
  
The next night, we got our very rare date/dinner out, combined with my idea of fun, a shopping trip to Wal-Mart in Factoria.  The tasty dinner at Richardo's Family Mexican Restaurant came to $26 with tax and tip. But the fun/odd part of the trip was at Wal-Mart.  I saw that they actually had Federal .22 LR ammo in stock.  When I tried to buy four boxes of 50 rounds each, the pleasant 69 year-old Hispanic salesman said he could only sell me three boxes due to company policy.  But then he showed me that they had 500-round  "bricks" of the same ammo.  Each brick had ten 50-round boxes in it.  I could buy 3 x 50 or 3 x 500, but not 4 x 50!  I got one brick of the ten 50 round boxes.  Wayne Polmer and I have planned for a trip to the West Coast Armory range to shoot our pistols after Bible study on April 1. [Indeed, we started April off with a bang!!!]  I've been drinking a lot of Wal-Mart's no calorie energy drink.  It's what I use since I don't drink coffee.  When I see Dr. Kelley in late April or early May, we'll see if my modified habits produce better blood and kidney numbers.
 

My Fitbit Zip

It's an expensive pedometer, but the lowest priced Fitbit. It's easy to misplace around the house, but my new Fitbit Zip now sits at the bottom of my right pants pocket every day.  It does not force me to walk more, but its gentle nagging is appreciated.  That same nagging from a person would be onerous.  It shows the time, daily steps, miles walked, and calories burned, and it syncs with my computer to record this data and much more if I want to bother to type it in.  I appreciate it's encouragement to drink lots of water. It has already shown me that I walk over five miles at each Track meet I photograph. 

Bellevue Christian had three meets in March and I was at each again with my camera.  Here is the season schedule.

This Month with Paracord

One of these months, I'll take an inventory of the many 100' lengths of 550 paracord I've acquired and the many clips, marbles, rings, fids, and other items I use with this hobby.  So far I have spent a little over $100 on it.

My lack of skill means not every design I've tried has come out well. And some designs are still beyond my ability.  From the start, I have purchased about 2500' of paracord. There will be hours of practice to get this right.

I have promised one big item to Nathanael, a 34' belt.  And I've made a number of bracelets for guys in the Saturday Bible study, always in the school colors of their universities.
    

Bits and Pieces 

♦  A few weeks into March, I saw that I had 26 students on the wait list for my BUS 1700 class.  It's 8:00-9:30 AM Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays beginning March 27.  Then I was surprised to see that "my" computer classroom, McKenna Hall 113, was unscheduled during the following 9:30-10:50 AM class block.  So I volunteered to add a second section.  I began with 40 students at 8:00 AM.  On April 1st I have 35 at 8:00 AM and 21 at 9:30 AM.  Also this month, I had an unexpected meeting with my Dean and the undergraduate Associate Dean.  We finally were meeting to discuss my compensation for my teaching.  The end result was that I will be paid per course instead of just for proctoring exams.  This basically means I negotiated about a $4,000 annual raise.

♦  My temporary crown fell out twice, and then my "permanent" crown fell out!  But Dr. To glued it back in and it's holding so far. I am not chewing on my front right side if I can help it. 

♦    The bedroom remains completely cluttered, and I'm still sleeping in the basement. 

♦  We almost finished Acts 15 on Saturday, April 1. 

My Quote from March

Praise Ye the Lord, the Almighty
 
Praise ye the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul, praise Him, for He is thy health and salvation!
All ye who hear, now to His temple draw near;
Praise Him in glad adoration.
 
Praise ye the Lord, who o'er all things so wondrously reigneth,
Shelters thee under His wings, yea, so gently sustaineth!
Hast thou not seen how thy desires ever have been
Granted in what He ordaineth?
 
Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy work and defend thee;
Surely His goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.
Ponder anew what the Almighty can do,
If with His love He befriend thee.
 
Praise to the Lord, O let all that is in me adore Him!
All that hath life and breath, come now with praises before Him.
Let the Amen sound from His people again,
Gladly for aye we adore Him.

Lyrics:  Joachim Neander (1650-1680); Translated by Catherine Winkworth
Music:  From Praxis Pietatis Melica (1668)

Many couples can look back to their courting days and point to one song they consider "our song." 
For Nancy and I, this version of this hymn is "our song."

 

 
   A Simple Email Gets Rave Reviews

A parent of a prospective student I had sent a brief hand-written note to at the request of our Undergraduate Admissions office, asked me for more information about the SPU business school.  I sent my reply, then our dean's Administrative Assistant asked me to also send it to the dean and another administrator.  The email then got sent around campus, and responses like this one have been coming my way.  I figure I'm just doing my job.

 

Dick-thank you so much for this email response. I am going to share this with my team as well. We share many of these points already but the way you have articulated them is worth forwarding on to interested students (and their parents).

 

This is a great example of what it means to work together as a team to enroll our class. When this kind of statement comes from someone in a department, it carries so much weight.

 

THANK YOU MANY TIMES OVER!!!

 

Ineliz Soto-Fuller, MPA
Director, Undergraduate Admissions

Tom –
 
You’ve asked for “a quick “why Seattle Pacific?” note concerning your business school.”  Certainly there is little opportunity to share even the most important reasons to consider SPU in a hand written note.  So here’s my “top five” reasons why I think prospective students should consider the b-school at SPU.  The folks in Undergraduate Admissions might have their own take on this, but after 28 years here (following 12 years teaching three miles up the Lake Washington Ship Canal in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington), these stand out to me.  Plus, beware that I am biased.  My bride of 36 years graduated from SPU and hired on with IBM.  My three children graduated from SPU and all attest to the high quality of their college experience.
__________________________
 
5.  Accreditation:  One might see the SPU School of Business, Government, and Economics (SBGE) on the small side compared with more well-known institutions.  However, we were the first member school of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities to achieve the premier level of secondary accreditation for business programs.  We became AACSB accredited in 2000.  This speaks to our program quality and its continuous improvement.  With 30 faculty in our school, we are actually much larger than our peer institutions which send faculty to the Christian Business Faculty Association meetings I’ve attended.  Nearly all of our faculty are doctorally qualified and most have very high student ratings. (I wish my own at 4.0 on a 5 point scale were closer to their high average.)
SPU has a very strong regional reputation.
 
4.  Location:  Seattle and the Puget Sound region of the Pacific Northwest is globally connected and a world leader in technology and industry, and students have more opportunities for internships, networking, and other experiences which augment their classroom experience.  We are a lot more than Amazon, Boeing, and Microsoft. But I am completely biased on this, being a Seattle native.  Surrounded by mountains (the Olympics to the west, Mt. Rainier to the south, and the Cascades to the east and north), and water (Puget Sound on one side and Lake Washington on the other), we are indeed our own little Switzerland at sea level.  (We tell folks it rains so that the tourists won’t discover our treasures.  But we are only 44th on the list of wettest U.S. cities by rainfall.)
 
3.  Co-curricular opportunities:  My three degrees are from the University of Washington, by far the biggest university in the Pacific Northwest.  The UW has quality faculty and an academically competitive student population.  But it’s primary focus is as much on research as it is on education.  Here at Seattle Pacific University, we are significantly more student focused.  We offer programs, clubs, and special events that bring the world of commerce to our students, just as we send them out to explore as well.  Examples include the Mentor Program, Social Venture Plan Competition, Innovation Lab, Distinguished Speaker Series, Beta Alpha Psi, SPU Student Investment Fund, Center for Career and Calling, and much more.      
 
2.  “High Touch:”  Each student has an assigned academic counselor and a faculty advisor.  A maximum class size of 40 in the business school (and 30 in upper division “concentration” courses) sets us apart.  You can meet regularly with a faculty member outside of class. None of our courses are taught by teaching assistants. We offer a wide variety of majors and many concentrations within those majors. The newest, the PPE major, looks especially interesting to me, and is modeled after a similar program at Oxford.  The goals, interests, and strengths of each student are the starting place when considering a field of study.  Choosing a college and a major are huge decisions but, in the end, are more flexible than folks imagine. The average college student changes major three times. (I did myself from Engineering to Economics). And many transfer to other schools as interests mature.  
 
1.  Christian world view.  Certainly not all of our students choose SPU because it is a Christian university.  But we are bold to understand our world as perfectly conceived, desperately fallen, yet  which is being redeemed by the active efforts of God working through His faithful people.  The life, death, resurrection, and ongoing reign of Jesus Christ has remained our foundation since our founding in 1891.  Denominationally, our faculty and staff are spiritually diverse across the entire Christian family. 
 
At the UW, I was taught that all economic decisions are based on self-interest.  I’ve come to discover that love can color those decisions and that at least one economic system, the family, can find us acting in the best interest of others.  The “profit motive” is not foreign to our teaching. Indeed, profit is vital to staying in business, but it is not the reason for work.  Profit, like blood in the body, is essential to life, but it is not the reason for living.
 
It’s a good thing that you wrote during Spring Break. I had some time to reply.  I happen to be the one faculty member who, being the technology manager, doesn’t stray far from the campus during breaks.  There’s so much more I could say (like why we like quarters instead of semesters), but the thoughts and links above should give you some valuable food for thought. 
 
Instructor, Manager of Information Systems
Seattle Pacific University
School of Business, Government, and Economics
 
 
Our SBGE Mission
Deeply grounded in Christian faith and values,
we develop leaders who advance human flourishing
through service in business, government, and civil society.
 
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