Christina Sturgeon and the Power of Service Through Listening

 

When Christina Sturgeon '14 was in fourth grade, she started coming to Special Olympics basketball games as a volunteer. Attending the games gave her more time with her older sister, a player on the team, but she soon built friendships with the other players, too. She found the experience so gratifying and fulfilling that she stayed with Special Olympics through high school.

 

"I still hold up that ideal in my head when I think of what a welcoming, loving community should look like," Sturgeon said recently.

 

Today, Sturgeon is newly graduated from Furman University, where she spent much of her time helping others realize their ambitions through that sort of community.

 

As a freshman, she started an "Adopt-a-Grandparent" program at a nearby retirement home, partly spurred on by the fact that her last grandparent had died when she was a senior at NCS. Sturgeon figured other Furman students were feeling the same void that she was feeling. So she paired her classmates with senior citizens for visits and special events, like dances. While running that program for 2½ years, she became close to her own adopted grandmother, "Miss Ginny," who is now 97.

 

During her sophomore year, Sturgeon started a Furman chapter of Best Buddies, a program that fosters relationships between students and people with developmental disabilities. And during her senior year, the philosophy major joined a university program called "Exploration of Vocation and Ministry," for students who have an interest in faith-based careers. Sturgeon served as a social work intern at Triune Mercy Center, a Greenville, S.C., church whose parishioners face many challenges, including homelessness and substance addiction.

 

Furman recognized her selfless dedication by awarding her the Furman Fellow Award, given to only five seniors who "make a difference in the school and in the lives of others."

 

On Sundays in Greenville, Sturgeon would attend three churches. One had music that filled her soul, another had thought-provoking sermons that occupied her intellect, and at Triune, the art room would open in the afternoon for those who wished to paint, sew, color, and do needlepoint. Sturgeon did not see herself as an intern during these visits, she said, because she did not want to differentiate herself from parishioners. The way she sees it, too much of service work is framed within a troubling power dynamic—a privileged helper and a needy helpee. Besides, she said, the people she talks to are teaching her something: how to listen.

 

"When it comes down to it, what they need is for someone else to listen to them and see their humanity," she said.

 

Sturgeon's academic advisor, J. Aaron Simmons, is a philosophy professor who has known her since her first year at Furman. He said he is awed by Sturgeon—by her humility, her passion, and by a maturity rare in someone so young.

 

"Her very identity, I think, is grounded in a commitment to opening space for others to find their own identities," Simmons said. "She invites the world to be better and is willing to lay in traffic to make it happen."

 

Sturgeon said her years at NCS inspired her at an important stage to give her all to the things she cares about. The "extreme dedication to academics" at NCS meant that she was surrounded by other driven women. "It is so incredibly inspiring to be around other individuals who are so committed to doing the best that they can," she said.

 

Sturgeon doesn't yet know the career she'll pursue now that she's graduated. She's accepted a year-long fellowship to serve at a D.C.-area church through a program called the Fellows Initiative, a training program for rising Christian leaders. She is passionate about social justice issues, and she could see pursuing an interest in humanitarian law or following her interest in the Middle East into a career in international diplomacy.

 

But her path will likely continue to center around fostering community. Sturgeon recalled a conversation she witnessed at Triune, between two women struggling to overcome addiction. "Seeing the hope that they still had and the encouragement that they were bringing to each other—it didn't matter that the social workers were there," she said. They were the experts in their own struggle.

 

It reinforced for Sturgeon, once again, the "incredible value of having a place where people could come and share with each other."