Senior Profile: Building A Community That Matters

“STOOKEY!” yells a student to senior Caleb Stookey as he walks through the long hallway of the SUB. The echo of his last name, turned nickname, resounds off walls.

I’m sure at some point of your time at Union, you’ve heard this exact exchange between a fellow student and the well-known senior accounting major. I know I witness it often, being a friend of Stookey. No matter where you are on campus, someone is always calling out to him or vice versa.

Stookey has many connections all over campus, spanning both students and faculty, which is greatly attributed to his involvement with many different organizations on campus and in the Jackson area.

Stookey is the president of Alpha Tau Omega’s Beta Tau chapter, a student coordinator for welcome week and new student orientation, a member of the student life committee, a student worker for the office of student life, an EDGE mentor, a member of his church’s college lead team, a “huddle” small group leader and a member of the finance club.

I sat down to talk to him about all that he does on campus. I had him make a list of the organizations he was involved with so that we could talk about each of them.

As he listed off all the things he was involved with, Stookey sat astonished.

“Dang! That’s crazy, you know, this is the first time I’ve ever written all that out,” said Stookey.

If you’ve never heard his story, Stookey transferred to Union before his sophomore year of college. He attended a public university his freshman year, but never seemed to find the sense of community he desired. Union wasn’t at the top of his list at the time he graduated high school because his entire immediate family attended Union, and he wanted to do something different. After his freshman year, he decided to start looking at other schools. In the end, after being encouraged to apply by his sister, Stookey found his way to Jackson and settled in on Union’s campus.

He now is heavily involved in many things on campus, holding leadership positions in many of these organizations.

The question I was pondering, and I’m sure many of you are as well, was why he wanted to be so involved and how this was balanced with school as well as just everyday life.

“I wanted to seek out as many people as I could and be there for as many people as I could,” said Stookey of his motivation to be involved on campus. “If you know anything about the enneagram, I’m a type 7. I want to be involved with everything. I want to know everybody. I don’t want to not know someone on campus.”

With this long list of commitments, each thing must be compartmentalized in his mind and with his time. I asked him how he managed to be so intentional within each of these things.

“I really make an effort to be present in whatever I’m doing,” said Stookey. “That’s how I’m intentional with each thing. I really try to focus on whatever I’m doing in each moment. When I’m with my EDGE student, I’m focused on hanging out with him. When I’m leading meeting with my fraternity brothers, I’m focused on my fraternity brothers. When you are fully devoted to one thing at a time, you will get the most out of it.”

As I listened to him talk about each thing he was involved with, I couldn’t help but wonder what the common thread between all of these seemingly very different things and what their draw was to him. Even though we are close friends, I had never considered this thought before, nor did I know the full list of his involvements. My train of thought was interrupted by one of our mutual friends approaching the table we were sitting at in Barefoots Joe. He gave Caleb a “bro hug” and asked how he was doing.

In that moment, the connection was made in my mind. The common thread between each of these things was evident: they all involved working with people. I spoke to our mutual friend and then began to press him further about his future.

When I asked him why he decided to finish undergrad, but not enter the accounting field, he smiled big and began telling me how he realized he wanted to go in to higher education.

“I’m an accounting major, but this summer, my mindset really started to shift,” said Stookey. “I just have a passion for people and want to see them smile, feel welcomed, and at home. This made me now realize I want to go into higher education work. I want to be there for incoming college students and show families that their child will be cared for.”

Beaming with excitement, Stookey continued to elaborate of this realization and how God just gave him a moment of clarity.

“It was really cool because I had been really thinking about whether or not accounting was for me,” said Stookey. “I started praying about it and God just opened up the door and made it abundantly clear that I needed to look into doing high ed.”

A moment of clarity came for me as well as I watched Caleb’s whole demeanor shift when he began elaborating on his interest in higher education. Being a friend of his, I guess it took me stepping back and looking at the things I already knew about him from a different perspective to realize just how fiercely he cares about the well-being and joy of others.

He is motivated by the community around him that has been so joyous and welcoming to him to replicate that same feeling for everyone else he meets. The heart behind each thing he is involved with is the relationships he builds within each organization.

In the end, as followers of Christ, the most important thing should be the people around us and how you push each other to walk in a manner that glorifies Christ. The way we all do that looks different because we all have been gifted in unique ways, but for Caleb Stookey, that is seeking to build a community around him that uplifts and encourages everyone he meets. If you’ve had a chance to be part of any of these organizations with him, I have no doubt you will agree.