Homecoming

Bruce Boyer was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1944. Bruce graduated with his BA in behavioral sciences from Andrews University in 1968. For the past 45 years, he has served as a teacher, researcher, healthcare administrator, president/CEO and chairman of healthcare companies, often service multiple companies simultaneously. In addition, he has served on many boards, committees and commissions at the local, county and state level as well as on boards and committees from the local Adventist church level to the Union Conference level.

Some of his most notable positions have been as the president of the State Healthcare Association, serving on the Board of the American Health Care Association, working as a Hospital Board chairman and serving as a Conference health ministries director. Notably, he has been a member of the Washington Adventist University Board of Trustees for 43 years.

Boyer currently works as the CEO of Sloan HealthCare Management, Inc.

In addition to spending a large amount of his time in the healthcare business, Boyer has also done his fair share of traveling. He has traveled to numerous locations within Europe, South Africa, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Canada and Asia Minor.

Boyer is married to his wife Gail who is a church administrator and serves on the Conference Executive Committee, the Highland View Academy Board and the NAD Executive Committee. He and his wife have three children who all have MBAs and work for his companies.

In reflection of how his time at Andrews shaped him into who he is today, Boyer says, “All that I am I owe to my Church, my Christian education of which Andrews was the capstone, and God’s grace for which I’m eternally grateful.”

Bruce Closser first discovered he wanted to be a teacher when, during his junior year at Forest Lake Academy in Florida, his history teacher asked him to teach a history class during the school’s annual role-reversal day. Bruce read the assigned pages, constructed a lecture outline, and prepared a quiz. On the day of the lecture, Bruce enjoyed the experience so much that he barely remembered being frightened. Years later, at an academy reunion, his history teacher admitted that he, too, predicted Bruce would be a teacher. “I still have your outline and notes in my files,” he said with a grin.

It was not history that Bruce ended up teaching but English, and this was thanks to the fact that both he and his favorite academy English teacher graduated in 1970 and went to what was then Southern Missionary College; Bruce to begin a BA in English and Sue Baker to teach in the English department. The two years Bruce spent grading papers for Baker reinforced his desire to be an English teacher. After completing his undergraduate degree in 1974, Bruce accepted his first official teaching position at Louisville Junior Academy where he taught seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth-grade English as well as eighth-grade math, typing and photography. He also sponsored the school’s newspaper.

After two years at Louisville Junior Academy, Bruce moved to Andrews University to begin a master’s degree. During the two years he was studying he taught freshman composition as a graduate teaching assistant. Bruce fully expected to return to academy teaching after he finished his MA in 1978, but when a position unexpectedly opened in the English department, Bruce gladly accepted the offer of full-time university teaching. Bruce continued teaching freshman English as well as various other writing courses and the occasional Arthurian literature course. In 1980, Bruce began doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and over the next eight summers he completed classwork, comprehensives, dissertation and defense, graduating in 1988 with a degree in the teaching of writing. In the mid-90s, Bruce became director of the Writing Center, a lab where peer tutors offer students help with their writing. Today, after 42 years, 40 of them as a full-time teacher, Bruce continues to enjoy helping students improve their writing skills.

One of Bruce’s favorite teaching memories occurred during his second year in Louisville when Bruce worked with his ninth-graders to write a temperance play. As a direct result of the play, at least one student became a professional actress, one became a public relations officer, and others ventured out in careers which gave them opportunities to build on the communication skills they developed in their ninth-grade year.

Since then Bruce has been active in campus drama. While working on his master’s degree he played the Chorus in Jean Anouilh’s “Antigone,” a play critical of Nazi-occupied France, assisted with “The Crucible,” and played a small role in the “Andersonville Trial.” During his time at Andrews University, Bruce has assisted in one way or another with productions of “St. Joan,” “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail,” “Crossing Delancey,” “84 Charing Cross Road,” “Steel Magnolias,” “Twelve Angry Men,” “Our Town,” “Little Women” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” During the last three years, Bruce sponsored the Andrews University Theatre Wing, a student drama club, and supervised student-directed productions of “The Importance of Being Earnest,” “Pygmalion” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Bruce is committed not only to the academic and artistic education of college students, but to the spiritual development of the children of the church. Bruce’s interest in children’s ministry emerged during his doctoral studies when he took a literature class for children and young adults. One of the projects of this course required students to tell stories to children. Bruce arranged to be a storyteller in the children’s tent at the Pennsylvania Seventh-day Adventist camp meeting. Several years later, when the first of his two boys was a student in the pre-kindergarten Sabbath School class at Pioneer Memorial Church, Bruce became a co-leader. Today, 25 years later, Bruce is still a co-leader of 4-year-old children every Sabbath morning. He regularly encounters students in his University classes who remind him that he was once their Sabbath school teacher. “Do you remember me?” one of his freshman writers recently asked. “I was the little girl whose hair caught fire from the candles on the birthday cake and you put it out with your hands.”

When not in his office, Bruce enjoys a variety of hobbies. He constructed a consort of crumhorns for the members of the early music ensemble in which he played. He has created chain mail shirts and sewn medieval costumes, both for adults and for a series of medieval-themed dolls. He has spent the last six years teaching himself to read and write Korean. Most recently he has renewed his interest in piano and has begun learning Chopin’s 24 preludes.

Bruce is married to Linda Morton Closser and they have two adult sons, both of whom have pursued artistic careers. Evan is a musician in New York City and Dylan is a photographer at Whirlpool in Benton Harbor.

When Kevin McDonald arrived on the Andrews University campus in the 1990s as an undergraduate student, the last thing he expected was to find a campus whose diverse community would help prepare him for his future position as the first-ever chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer of the University of Missouri System.

“What I didn’t anticipate was a compositionally diverse student body, who was engaged, welcoming and inclusive,” says McDonald. “I hadn’t been exposed to the breadth and depth of diversity that I encountered at AU, but it was so refreshing and reflective of the global context AU was preparing its students for.”

At Andrews, McDonald expresses that he found a community of students, faculty and staff who maintained a genuine concern for his wellbeing and future success. Reminiscing, he recalls administrators and mentors like Newton Hoilette and David Knight. He fondly remembers having men of color on staff who served as wonderful role models. Additionally, McDonald took classes from faculty like Duane McBride and former faculty member, Lynn Caldwell, who got him excited to learn about the contributions he could make in the world.

Following his Andrews experience, McDonald went on to receive a Juris Doctor from the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in 1996 and a Doctor of Education from the University of Rochester in 2014. After earning his law degree, McDonald worked as the Disability Rights Investigator for the U.S. Department of Justice, Disability Rights Section in Washington D.C. from 1996 to 1997. There he examined, mediated and resolved over 500 disability-based discrimination claims. He continued to do this type of work for the Internet’s first domain name registrar, Network Solutions, Inc., where he served as the Dispute Administrator from 1997 to 1999.

Since then, McDonald has been making transformational contributions towards organizational equity, diversity and inclusion goals in various executive academic leadership positions throughout the country. Some of his roles have included teaching and leading the diversity efforts at Rochester Institute of Technology and working as the vice president for equity and inclusion at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University.

While at these institutions, he learned a great deal about the importance of understanding organizational climate and culture in performing this kind of work and the importance of developing and maintaining strong relationships with campus and local community members.

“Degrees and professional pedigree may help get you in the door,” says McDonald, “but your ability to forge and maintain strong interpersonal relationships is what helps keep you there and allows you to advance in your career.”

While he worked in a similar capacity at his previous jobs, his current position at the University of Missouri is different in that it is charting the strategic diversity and inclusion efforts for an entire university system of approximately 75,000 students, 6,000 faculty and 17,000 staff. The University of Missouri System is comprised of four institutions each with their own mission, vision and campus culture, and that presents a unique opportunity in the diversity and inclusion arena.

The challenges at University of Missouri-Columbia are those of countless campuses across the country. With the accessibility of various forms of media, especially social media, these realities on university campuses become increasingly exposed. McDonald believes that inherent in the changing demographics and increased diversity on campuses across our nation are opportunities for conflict.

He asserts that institutions have a responsibility to society and believes if colleges and universities are truly committed to inclusive excellence, they have to hold themselves accountable for making diversity and inclusion efforts an integral part of their everyday practices.

For McDonald, faith plays a significant role in both his personal and professional life. He sees Jesus’ example as one that teaches us how we should treat, engage and uplift others. “I remain extremely grateful for the firm foundation that Andrews helped me establish in this regard,” says McDonald. “Every opportunity that I’ve been afforded is a blessing that I’ve never taken for granted and I remain humbled by every blessing bestowed upon me.”

McDonald has been married for 21 years to Kimberlyn and has three children: Rodney Osborne Jr., Kayla and Kesslyn. He enjoys singing and developed a love for it while singing in male groups on and off campus while as an undergraduate at Andrews. He fondly remembers being a member of the Black Student Christian Forum, and the many opportunities for music ministry it provided him. He is a vegan who enjoys exercising regularly and watching his daughters play volleyball, describing them as “fanatics” about the sport.

Esther Harriott Ottley was the first person of color and the first woman of color to have graduated with a BA in mathematics from Andrews University, class of 1954. She was born in Panama, where her Jamaican parents were serving as missionaries and her father helped to build the Panama Canal. When Esther was 3, the Harriott family returned to their home on the island of Jamaica to attend to her paternal grandmother. From then until her early teenage years, Esther was homeschooled by her mother, Euphemia, before going off to Ferncourt High School near their home in Claremont, St. Ann, Jamaica.

Esther placed second on the island when she passed the Cambridge Overseas Examination at the high school, which qualified her for scholarships and opportunities. The decision was made for her to travel to Mandeville, Jamaica, to pursue teacher education at West Indian Training College (WITC, now Northern Caribbean University-NCU), where in 1926 both of her parents had received college degrees.

Following her graduation from WITC with an associate’s degree in math (class of 1948), she taught math at the college for several years before migrating to the U.S. to attend Emmanuel Missionary College (EMC, now Andrews University). At EMC she recalls being assigned a work/study placement with then math professor William Specht, for whom she worked the rest of her time at EMC. She had great admiration for Specht and continues to credit him with inspiring her to pursue a career in math and physics. She graduated from EMC in 1954, in a ceremony held at Johnson Gym, and continued on to Columbia University in New York to pursue a master’s degree in education.

In 1955, Esther married her Trinidadian college sweetheart, Dr. Neville Ottley (BA ’49, BA ’53). They moved to Washington, D.C., to be together while he finished his last two years of medical school at Howard University (class of 1957) and completed his residency in general surgery. During these early years of their marriage, they started a family, and Esther joined the math department at Howard University while completing her doctorate in math/physics education at American University, graduating in 1965.

Esther was promoted and received tenure while teaching courses such as calculus and college algebra in the math department at Howard University until 1975, when she was called to be the founding associate dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the university. She later served several years as the interim dean of the Graduate School at Howard but did not want to be considered for the permanent position (though asked) due to potential Sabbath conflicts. Her dedication to God’s will remained steadfast. Just after her retirement in 1994, Howard University honored her with an endowed graduate scholarship which bears her name: the “Esther Ottley Graduate Scholarship.”

Having learned the benefits of education early in life, Esther has spent a great part of her almost 90 years being a champion of Christian education. She has anonymously funded the college education of several worthy students at NCU in Jamaica. Many of these students have gone on to higher education. She has served on the boards of Andrews University, Loma Linda University and local Washington, D.C., area Adventist schools. In 2000, she funded the renovation of the men’s chapel at NCU. The resulting lecture theater was named the Solomon Harriott Lecture Theater in honor of her father. As recently as 2017, Esther helped fund the Esther Harriott Ottley Reading Bank at West Indies College Preparatory School in Jamaica. In addition, a scholarship fund was begun at the school that helps cover tuition, fees and books for students in need. This year, she plans to endow the scholarship fund. She will continue to influence many through her contributions and example of Christian leadership.

The Ottley family boasts a strong Andrews University legacy demonstrating their belief in Christian education. Their daughter, Dawn Ottley Nelson, graduated from Andrews in 1983. Dawn’s husband, LeRoy Barnes, also attended Andrews during the early 80s. Their daughter, Maya Nelson, is a current student, and their son, Avery Barnes, attended in the 2000s. Beyond these, Esther’s Christian education commitment can be seen in her son, Dr. Mark Ottley, who attended La Sierra University, and her grandson, Jeremy Ottley, who attended Southern Adventist University.

Throughout her career, Esther has been sought out as a graduation speaker, university administrator, church leader, Women’s Day speaker, counselor, organizer, math tutor and supporter. More importantly, she has been a fabulous mother, wife, grandmother, family member and friend. Esther and Neville were respected members of the Washington, D.C. professional and Adventist communities for several decades until Neville’s passing in 1994 and Esther’s relocation in 2010 to Mount Pleasant, Michigan, to live with her daughter, Dawn Ottley-Nelson-Barnes, a professor at Central Michigan University.

Esther celebrated her 90th birthday with her family on August 24, 2018. She spends her days contemplating God’s love for us as well as His promises. She encourages everyone with whom she comes in contact to remember what is important and to be ready when Jesus comes.