An inside look on this year’s Mary Hill Award winner
Mary Hill was an educator, missionary and university pioneer. For over 33 years, Hill ministered as a missionary in Chicago, California and China. As Azusa Pacific’s founding president, Hill’s legacy lives on through the school’s God First mission statement, which has not changed for over 100 years.
Current APU President, Jon Wallace, DBA, said that Hill modeled servant leadership in “The story of Azusa Pacific University’s founding President, Mary Hill” by Ken Otto and Gail Wallace.
“[Hill] modeled a servant leadership embedded with deep faith, a fervent commitment to her call, and a strong belief that we are all called to be part of God’s redemptive plan,” Wallace said. “President Hill set this university on a unalterable God First course.”
Shino Simmons, Ph.D., associate dean of students, presented the award during the first Mary Hill award luncheon ceremony last year.
“The purpose of the Mary Hill award exists to honor an individual annually in our community who exemplifies various characteristics Mary Hill embodied, such as a strong commitment to her faith, lives out her walk with Christ, a lifelong cultural learner and also an educator, values building up stable foundations to ensure a lasting transformational effect on this campus, demonstrates a level of grit and has a heart for women and a tremendous love for all God’s people,” Simmons said in her speech.
Kim B.W. Denu, Ph.D., won the first ever Mary Hill award during the luncheon one year ago.
This year, Karen A. Longman, Ph.D., the Ph.D. Program Director and Professor in the Department of Higher Education received the 2018 Mary Hill award. Since 1998, Longman has served as a Senior Fellow with the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) by integrating Leadership Development Institutes for developing leaders.
Longman has worked closely with the Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust and the National Endowment for the Humanities by creating numerous grant proposals amounting to over $2.5 million. Additionally, Longman was also an editorial council member and reviewer for Research on Christian Higher Education.
“My life’s work really has been trying to change the face of leadership in Christian higher-ed to make us lead the way, in terms of identifying people’s gifts, burdens and passions and position them and empower them to make the biggest impact with their lives,” Longman said.
Jolyn Dahlvig, a Higher Education and Student Affairs Faculty and Researcher, co-authored a theory development with Longman entitled, “Contributors to Women’s Leadership Development in Christian Higher Education: A Model and Emerging Theory, Journal of Research on Christian Education (2014).” The purpose of the research was to identify and analyze the leading factors that motivate women to step into leadership roles in Christian higher education settings, and how “women develop a sense of leader identity.”
“Karen cares deeply about women advancing into leadership positions, especially within Christian higher education,” Dahlvig said. “She intentionally ‘taps’ women with leadership potential to imagine themselves as leaders and provides developmental experiences for leaders to gain self-efficacy and skills necessary for sustained success. I have been the recipient of Karen’s mentoring and sponsorship––I am deeply grateful for her faithful dedication.”
In the last three to five years, Longman thinks APU has been heading in the right direction for improving leadership positions.
“When I look at APU, I think it’s really remarkable … how much is changing, I would say for the better, in terms of all the work that’s being done to support and empower and position those who are either people of color or white allies to make our campus a model for diversity around kingdom values, and also to raise the visibility of all the talented women here,” Longman said.
Longman is also currently co-editing a seven-volume book series focused on Women and Leadership for the International Leadership Association. She was the lead editor on the first volume in the series, titled Women and Leadership in Higher Education. In the second volume, Longman explained the book examines the different motivations between men and women in leadership positions.
“Women tend to be motivated about purpose and caring about the environment that they work in, and wanting to create environments where people can use their gifts and find satisfaction in their work and more collaborative environments,” Longman said. “They’re not motivated by the same reward structure of a lot of money, status or a big title.”
In the last 20 years, Longman has extensively studied the glass ceiling phenomenon and gender bias in the workplace.
“I went into this because my background is in Christian higher-ed thinking this is a Christian higher-ed problem, and I realized that there are very many people from very kinds of institutions and very different backgrounds who all see this as a big problem,” Longman said. “Because you overlay Christian conservatism theologically with perceptions in more fundamentalist schools about appropriate gender roles and women in leadership; the problems become more complicated.”
Longman believes it’s harmful to box people in based on their sex or gender perceptions.
“We should be affirming and positioning people based on how their gifted to make a contribution, like in Ephesians [chapter] two [verses] nine and 10,” she said. “Organizations make better decisions when there’s diversity at the top.”