It is the summer before my freshman year at Union, and the reality of goodbyes has finally hit me. Suddenly, all the excitement I had for the next season of college at Union begins to fade in the midst of change. I begin to doubt and fear. But, as I sit on my mentor, Lisa’s, front porch and tears begin to form in my eyes, she comforts me with all the ways the Lord has confirmed that Union is the place I am supposed to be. Lisa has mentored me since junior year of high school and listened with intentionality and walked through multiple hard circumstances with me. The Lord has used her to guide me in decisions and to move toward healthier relationships.
Mentors have been essential to a flourishing life for me, and each one has looked a little different through the years. As I arrived at Union, I saw the intentional and devoted faculty as my mentors in this college season. And Union is filled with stories similar to mine about a community who walks through life and invests in each other. Dr. Keith Bates, professor of history for fourteen years at Union, is one of those professors who would be the first to come to students’ minds as a mentor to each student who attends his classes.
Bates studied history and religion as an undergraduate student at Union, and when he arrived as a freshman, he thought he knew absolutely everything. However, as the first person in his family to attend college, he soon discovered that he knew nothing. He took a religious history class with Dr. Lindley and began to know the man who would eventually become his colleague. Lindley and Bates would talk about his plans after school, what graduate school he should attend and advice for how to be a good husband to his wife as a senior in college.
“Learning begins when we realize what we don’t know,” said Dr. Bates as he thought back to his college years at Union.
The professors at Union challenged Bates to ask the difficult questions and to not always have the answer. Universities are spaces of community learning, meaning that students learn from professors, students learn from students, and professors learn from students. Fostering thoughts within his students helps Bates to build this community of learning within his classroom. In this year-long pandemic, the importance of community has been made more obvious for Bates. It has been the lack of community that makes it that much more important.
“Learning certainly can and should happen in the classroom, but it often can, and should, happen when you’re having a conversation over coffee or over lunch, or in some settings, maybe even outside of the traditional 9-5 kind of day when we are getting together in apartments and homes,” said Bates. “Asking questions is what learning is about and indeed this is an expression of true Christian intellectual tradition. We shouldn’t be afraid of difficult questions, for God is not afraid of difficult questions.”
The professors modeled this idea for Bates as a student, and now, he models this for his students. Teaching not only involves living by example, but truly knowing the students. After all, you cannot teach to people you do not know. And the same idea applies to mentorship. Bates has learned to read his students and know what they need, and in return, they begin to feel comfortable to ask questions and respond in class.
This is the process of mentorship: knowing and being known.
Intentionality is at the core of what mentorship is and can even be done in a large classroom setting like World Civilization, which is the class I took from Dr. Bates. As a freshman in his class, I saw the way he gave me feedback which allowed me to ask more questions and to give even more thought to what I was saying in the papers I wrote or tests I took. Even the way Bates grades is intentional.
Bates learned much of what he knows from his beloved mentor and professor Bob Linder. This man was one of his professors in graduate school at Kansas State University. Bates explains that he went to study at Kansas State because of a person, not the program. Linder recently passed away and to honor his life and legacy, Bates wore one of his favorite baseball team hats for the entire day. Even years after graduate school, Bates is still telling the stories of this man and his impact on his life.
Men like Bob Linder, Stephen Carls, David Thomas and Terry Lindley have taught Dr. Bates what mentorship looks like and have shaped him into the incredible professor and historian he is today.
“It was gratifying to see an outstanding student excel in the History profession,” said Dr. Lindley, professor of history. “And then have him become a valued and close colleague is even more rewarding.”
There are students who Bates had in his first year as a professor at Union who he is still in contact with today. One woman in particular stood out in Bates’ mind as he told the story of attending this student’s wedding. Bates and his wife talk to this student frequently about difficult issues of contempory faith, and he has been deeply impacted from his relationship with her.
“She matters to me, she matters to my wife, and we matter to her,” said Bates as he began to get emotional thinking about this student. “And she probably doesn’t realize the impact she has had in my life. What matters to me is that she and others I have had the privilege of teaching know that to even have a small part of their lives is, to me, the fulfillment of what calling is. They live exemplary lives and do incredible things. And it really is one of the absolute joys of my life.”
Bates could have taught at any university or in any city he wanted to, but he chose to come back to Union University. Union needs alumni like Bates because of their deep and personal investment in this place. A lot physically has changed, and that is good, but at the heart of who Union is, is a community of learning and growth.
“We feel like we owe something to the people of this institution and indeed to this place,” said Bates as we sit by the fountain and he points to the many buildings that did not exist when he was a student.
Bates explains that he cannot live in the nostalgia because things do change, but he feels a commitment to model mentorship to his students. His three colleagues in the history department were once his professors, but they now treat him as an equal, and that is true mentorship.
Oftentimes, a mentor is someone who is ahead of you in life, but they must be someone who walks alongside you, while not walking for you. They are there to support you, and this, indeed, is who Bates, and many others at Union, are to their students.
“I enjoy being around my students and learning from them. Teaching is exciting and there’s energy in it. In some ways, Union is a bit like home. It’s not just familiarity, but it is the connection to the community that is often quite right.”
