Walking by Faith: Christian Ola
Q. When did you first come to Waynesburg and what led you here?
A. I was in the mortgage bank industry, and had my own firm. In my selfish desire to get more kids to work for us, I started teaching at a community college and I was teaching Finance there. That went on for about four years. One day I came home and my wife noticed that I had a good day at school, not at the mortgage bank. She finally told me, “You should just get out of business and start teaching, that’s what God is telling you to do.” So, from 2007 until January of 2008, I sold the company to my partner. I was unemployed for three days before I applied for Waynesburg in May. I did not hear anything back from them until July 3rd. Dr. McClung called and told me to come down for an interview, and a couple of days later I came down and the rest is history.
Q. In what ways do you demonstrate your faith in your position at Waynesburg?
A. I think there are different ways to demonstrate your faith. I am not necessarily a “wear your heart on your sleeve and shout to the Lord” kind of guy and I am not necessarily very “in your face” about things, but I think students pick up on things. So if you are nice to your students, if you say good things about your wife – and all of these things have to be genuine – then I think students start to pick up on that and they admire you for it. I am always telling them “oh, my wife said this, or that,” but ultimately I think my students know that I respect my wife.In my finance class, we had a speaker on Wednesday and we were talking about the question “can you maximize your wealth and still be a good Christian?” That is a tough question to struggle with, and several students have asked him point blank, “what do you think?” He said “absolutely” and then said that he viewed his business as a calling from God. I think that to have someone in class that has had 30 years of experience, that is more powerful than a book.
Q. Have any moments with students or faculty members touched you spiritually?
A. I have been very blessed; I work with Brian Carr. Every semester I mentor a student that is struggling with classes. In my second semester of teaching, I started meeting with this student, and he just kept missing meetings and missing meetings, but he finally showed up to my office one day. I kept asking him, “what is wrong, what is your problem?” He looked at me, and he said, “Ola, with all due respect, I don’t care about any of this. My mom’s got cancer and I have bigger things to worry about.” And at that point in time, though I am a grown man, I just hugged him and started to cry. I would love to tell you it was selfless, but I was upset with myself because I can’t believe that for seven weeks I was bugging this kid about things that were so minuscule.
I still choke up when I talk about him because we still keep in touch.
From that moment on, it really helped me here to not be so quick to judge what’s going on in someone else’s life or day.
I realized I need to change my approach, not just with the students, but with the people at Miller, the people at Stover, Aladdin, with Bocchini, and even the lady at Starbucks who takes your order, because you might be the only nice thing that happens in their day.
I cannot thank that young man enough, because we grew together.
I learn more from my students than they do from me every single day, and I think that you will hear the same thing about everyone else who works here.
Q. Do you feel that you are where God wants you to be?
A. I am definitely where God wants me to be. Professionally, this is the perfect place to be. Personally, you don’t work with better people.
I work with six great people that I call friends as well as coworkers.
I think what’s also neat is to work across departments. It is great to work with people who professionally and personally have the same aspirations, which is to make sure that you guys get out of here not just with a degree, but also with a really strong foundation in what you believe and what your worldview is, because I think all we want is for students to be consistent in their worldview.
If you feel a certain way about one thing, that should predicate how you feel about a whole series of events.