The Ministry She Made

Rachel Haines Cowart did not set out to work in housing and residence life. She set out to help people hate each other less.

A mission driven by equal parts theological conviction and practical compassion is a defining character trait for Cowart. After spending time in Virginia and Atlanta, Cowart ultimately decided to come back to Indiana. While studying history at Emory & Henry University, hoping to one day become a history teacher, she pivoted hard–after realizing that teaching was not her calling–to major in religious studies and community service and public policy. This pivot would define everything that followed.

Raised in Indiana, her family was defined by her faith and their United Methodist Church. Her parents met at the congregation she grew up attending, and pretty soon her faith was woven into ordinary life before she understood what to do with it. It was not until her sophomore year of college in early 2016, a year she described as “a big political shift that we’re still in,” that her sense of purpose in life sharpened.

“The more I learned from others about their upbringings, their conflicts, their issues, their hopes, their goals,” she said, “the more I was like, oh, I could help people come to an understanding about one another through their faith in a way that exemplifies curiosity.” She then went on to complete a three-year graduate program at seminary, while realizing that her ministry was better suited to higher education than to a traditional church setting. DePauw, a school affiliated with the United Methodist Church in her home state, offered the convergence of roles that she was best-suited for: a student-first role that combined the skills of a chaplain with the responsibilities of an administrator.

“It's all the good parts of what I love to do,” she said.

Cowart estimates that in any given week, she spends 70 percent of her job in some form of student support. Whether that be checking in with resident assistants, connecting residents to campus mental health and medical resources, or navigating facility and community concerns. The other 30 percent is largely documentation and the thankless mechanics of housing operations. Something she takes very seriously though and keeps returning to, is the human work. Whenever students call in after hours for mental health crises, she takes those calls with a particular weight, something rooted in her own experiences.

“I never did that, and I should have, a few times,” she said.

In college, Cowart was diagnosed with depression by a school counselor named Zetta Bolls. According to her, the appointment was “eye-opening,” an encounter that gave her language for a weight she’d been carrying without a name to assign to it.

“You can think for a while, hey, my depressed point of view is actually a normal point of view, before someone points it out,” she said.

It is that experience that shapes how she shows up for students who call after hours in crisis. “It's such a genuine and human experience to sit with you all as you are experiencing and processing difficult feelings,” she said. “It's such a privilege.”

With all of the different hats that she puts on daily, her roles require a kind of ongoing negotiation with herself. Her pastoral training pulls her toward conversations with depth, her job description pulls her back toward professional boundaries.

“I have to catch myself,” Cowart said. “What is the job I currently have?”

She navigates this by being transparent with her supervisor, by knowing when to tag in campus colleagues in spiritual life and the other various departments and resources available at DePauw, and by even simply stepping out of her office when a conversation shifts from administrative to something more personal.

“Whoever we're working with is probably trying to do the best that they can,” she said. “And so we should meet them in that same effort.”

When asked what she wants students to feel when they interact with her, Cowart paused before answering. “Seen,” was her answer.

She acknowledged that the recent illness of her mother has stretched her capacity to lead with that intention in the past several months. But seen is the word she keeps returning to–the conviction that a student's concern, whatever it is, is real and rational and deserves to be heard.