Vince Schleitwiler

“In high school,” says Isaiah Scheel ’19, “success was numerically measured in everything.” Grades, sports, extracurriculars — he excelled in all these areas at DeSales Catholic High in Walla Walla, WA, where he was a member of the football and track-and-field teams, and graduated as salutatorian.

At PLU, however, he discovered additional measures of success.

“I have found that I value my experiences, especially outdoor ones, the most,” says the recent trip leader and director for PLU Outdoor Recreation.

Not that he’s done poorly by more traditional measures. A computer science major minoring in mathematics and physics, Scheel graduated magna cum laude.

“I am proud that I was able to excel in both school and sports,” he says. “But the success that I am most proud of is my growth as a leader.” He’s been a trip leader and director with Outdoor Recreation, part of the admissions team, a sprinter on the men’s track and field team, and a resident assistant at two different residence halls, among other things.

“I now see myself as someone who can teach others, be a role model, and be confident,” he says of his leadership experience. “It has given me courage and has made me be able to connect to people in a way that brings joy into my life.”

“Sports taught me how to deal with failure,” says Mandy Flores-Handley ’00, “how to get back up, learn from it and move forward. And that is part of success as well.”

A 2015 inductee into the PLU Hall of Fame, Flores-Handley starred on conference championship teams in volleyball and softball, collecting school records and accolades along the way. She was a NAIA second-team All-American in 1998, and PLU’s 2000 Athlete of the Year.

Of all her accomplishments, Flores-Handley is proudest of graduating in four years, as a two-sport athlete. “I’m not very good about talking about myself,” she admits, but she’s eager to credit her coaches — Kevin Aoki and Tim Templin for volleyball, and Rick and Leanne Noren and Phil Scott for softball. “They taught me discipline, accountability, how to be a good teammate, to expect my best from myself and to push myself even when I didn’t think I could,” she says.

“Once upon a time, I thought success was about checking the boxes,” says Alicia Lawver ’98. “Get good grades. Go to a good college. Get a good job and work hard. Get married around 30. Buy a house. Have kids before 40. The sum will be success.”

“Then life happened,” she explains. “I got married at 22 to the funny fellow I met at the PLU involvement fair my freshman year, we had three kids before turning 30, I realized that newspaper night-desk work wasn’t very kid-friendly, and I threw the cards in the air.”

At PLU, she’d been inspired by her professors in the communications department, including Cliff Rowe and Diane Harney, as well as Joanne Lisosky — whose first classroom presentation she remembers to this day. After graduation, she worked as a journalist and writer, until the time came for her to seek a new path.

She took a job with the City of Tacoma, part of an effort to expand community gardens. Her current work with Tacoma Public Schools involves connecting policies to action, including implementing the district’s commitment to investing bond dollars inclusively in the community.

“The fact that we are now seeing measurable progress and palpable successes has me head-over-heels in love with this path I never thought I’d be on,” she says.

What connects all these endeavors, she says, is a lifelong “penchant for questioning things.” “I am probably proudest of raising kids who challenge the way I think and challenge my definition of success,” she says. “They amaze me every day.”

Any advice for today’s Lutes? “Without the willingness to try new things, and potentially fail and learn from the failure, our ‘success’ is limited or shallow,” she says.

The “funny fellow” Alicia Lawver met in her first year, Nathe Lawver ’98, shares his wife’s respect for failure’s lessons.

“For the longest time, I thought that success was a destination, a place at which you eventually arrived after hard work, determination and a few setbacks,” he says. “I was wrong. The journey is just as much a part of success as the completed product. Each failure, each setback, each stumbling block is a key component to learning and achieving that success. And if you don’t succeed, as long as you’ve learned something that makes you a better human in the process, you’ve succeeded.”

Upon arriving at PLU, he embraced an open-minded approach to life’s possibilities — perhaps to an extreme. “In the first semester, and Alicia can back this up, I changed my major (in my head at least) 10, maybe 15 times,” he laughs. “The world was full of amazing opportunities and I wanted to learn it all.”

Then, on a class trip to Seattle, he had a transformative conversation with Beth Kraig, history department chair, who would become his mentor.

“Well, Nathe,” she told him, “you should consider being a history major. You get to write, you get to think critically and you have some opportunities to make an impact.”

She convinced him, and he went on to use those skills in his career as a labor leader and on nonprofit boards. “Success is not an individualistic pursuit. Everyone relies on a team,” he says, “whether it’s having a conversation with a mentor, or helping someone else to be better.”

“All successes started with some sort of failure and getting back up when you’re knocked down,” he’s come to see. “Then, if you’ve gotten up enough, you can help other people get up. That, too, is success.”

To the Rev. Rebecca Shjerven ‘84 of Tacoma’s St. Mark’s Lutheran Church By the Narrows, “success” might be too narrow a concept. Instead, she asks, “What is a well-lived life?”

“In my line of work,” she explains, “maybe that looks like where your daily life reflects what God has created you to be.”

And how do you figure that out? “By figuring out who you weren’t created to be,” she says.

As a young girl, Shjerven jokes, she wanted to be Mary Tyler Moore. Maybe that wasn’t it. But growing up in a parsonage, she knew she wanted to live a life of service.

It’s hard to imagine a life more deeply tied to PLU than that of Jim Van Beek ‘59, ‘69, a Hall of Famer on the legendary basketball teams of the late 1950s. During his sports career, the Lutes won 37 straight games against Evergreen Conference rivals and represented District I at the NAIA national tournament four straight years. Van Beek averaged a career-best 16.8 points per game as a senior and in the 1959 championship game against Tennessee State, Van Beek led the Lutes with a team-high 24 points.

Van Beek also worked at the university for 50 years, serving as dean of admissions and financial aid, and ending his career in development. “I still feel like I’m working for PLU,” he says. “It’s part of who I am.”

His connection took root early. At elementary school in Parkland, and as a member of the first graduating class of Franklin Pierce High School, he was surrounded by friends whose parents worked at PLU. His teachers were alumni, as was his coach, Del Shafer. He had other offers, but becoming a Lute was “a natural thing for me,” he says.

Ingrid Van Beek ’70, Jim’s wife, has deep PLU roots as well. Her father, Victor Knutzen, was on the Board of Regents, and Chris Knutzen Hall is named for a great-uncle. Her mentors encouraged her to go to graduate school, and she came back to PLU to teach math, working part time for 13 years while raising kids.

A daughter of the segregated South who became a world traveler. A young cadet nurse who thrived in a changing profession for four decades, earning multiple degrees and membership in the Washington State Nurses’ Association Hall of Fame.

A military wife and mother of three, who found time for her own career while maintaining a 70-year marriage. A pillar of the Washington legislature for 20 years, serving twice as President Pro Tempore of the Senate.

If you want to ask Rosa Franklin ’74 the secret to a successful life, you might have to figure out which of her many lives you are talking about.

“Sometimes people say to me, ‘When do you sleep?’ ” she says. “I say, you have to keep your eyes open to see what’s going on, and you have to be in the room where the decisions are being made.”

So, maybe she doesn’t? “You can’t be sleeping, because while you are sleeping, other people are making the decisions,” she adds.

Of all her accomplishments, she’s proudest of her family. Her three grandchildren, she says, want to carry on her values — “to really follow in my footsteps of doing things to make the world a bit better.”