Careers in Campus Chaplaincy

By Jennifer Jacobson

There are days when the Rev. Laura Walters Baskett, an ordained Presbyterian minister, feels like she makes a difference in the lives of college students. But on other days she's not so sure -- like when she presided at the funeral of a student she had counseled at the University of Tulsa who had committed suicide.

"I didn't know whether I was going to make it through her memorial service," says Ms. Baskett, a former associate chaplain at Tulsa who is now chaplain at Stetson University. But "as soon as I walked into the sanctuary and felt myself in the presence of those other people, I knew that God was there and that we were going to be able to support each other."

Tragedy comes with the territory when you're a campus chaplain. And although chaplains say the profession drains them at times, most stick with it because the work feels like more than just a job. "You feel called to do it," says Sharon M.K. Kugler, chaplain at the Johns Hopkins University. "If you don't, you get out fairly soon because it does exhaust you. If it's not feeding your soul, you're going to know it pretty quickly."

A variety of jobs are available in campus ministry, depending on whether you want to work at a private or public institution. Private institutions that have, or once had, religious affiliations of some kind often employ a campus chaplain, who coordinates other religious groups on campus and counsels students, professors, and administrators.

Public institutions, however, usually do not hire a campus chaplain. Instead, members of the clergy from a variety of religious affiliations work on the campus doing virtually the same work as a campus chaplain, but they are paid by their own religious denominations and are not college employees. Many private institutions -- with and without their own chaplains -- also offer space on campus for these clergy members to work.

When Colleges Hire Chaplains

No one career path leads to a chaplaincy. Some campus chaplains are former parish priests, ordained ministers of congregations, Ph.D.'s, and even lay people. And while their religious and educational backgrounds run the gamut, they seem to share a love for college students and academe.

In some cases, the campus chaplains answer to a vice president for student affairs, or report directly to the president. Their job titles vary, and so do their salaries. According to the 2001-2 administrative salary survey for the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, the median salary for directors of campus ministries at doctoral institutions was $60,960; at comprehensive colleges, $43,709; and at four-year colleges, $47,160.

Although campus chaplains do change jobs, turnover in their ranks is far less frequent than in other administrative offices. As a rule, few chaplains focus on moving up the academic food chain to increasingly prestigious campuses. "People either stay a very short time and cycle somewhere else or stay a long time" in a campus chaplaincy, says the Rev. William M. Finnin, who for 23 years has served as the chaplain at Southern Methodist University. "I don't know anyone who has served more than two chaplaincies."

Ms. Baskett, however, is an exception to the rule. She will have had two campus chaplaincies under her belt by the end of this academic year, when Stetson will reduce her chaplaincy to a quarter-time position thanks to budget constraints, leaving her to look for a new job.

While she plans to try to land another campus chaplaincy, she will also explore other options. "I'm 48," she says. "This is a perfect time to say, 'What do I really want to be doing?'" And "given the economy right now and the small numbers of actual positions in higher-educational ministry, I certainly feel I'd be putting all of my eggs in one basket. That's not wise right now."

Ms. Baskett says that while she hasn't heard of other institutions reducing or eliminating campus chaplaincies, these "positions are frequently seen as soft when the institution is in a money crunch."

Despite her uncertain future, Ms. Baskett has enjoyed her work as a campus chaplain. She got her start at the University of Tulsa nearly 10 years ago and moved to her second position at Stetson, where she has been chaplain for four years. She left her job as an associate chaplain at Tulsa to restart a chaplaincy program at Stetson.

The president of the National Association of College and University Chaplains, she started her career as an associate pastor of a church, then taught English in China, and English for speakers of other languages in Arkansas. Her work in hospital ministry made her appreciate an ecumenical environment and prompted her to become a campus chaplain -- "a minister to the overall campus community," as she describes the job.

Campus Ministers Not Paid by the College

Besides helping students form their own religious groups, Ms. Baskett, who earns around $50,000 a year, also counsels them, leads prayer services, and works with campus ministers from different religions and denominations who, though accountable to her office, are not paid by the university but typically have free office space there.

A variety of religious organizations have offices at public and private colleges and universities, including the Catholic Campus Ministry Association, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and Hillel, the Jewish student organization.

Many of these clergy downplay the idea that a hierarchy of jobs exists in their religious organizations. However, the prestige of an institution, as well as its size and the support of its local denomination, does often translate into better pay and benefits for campus ministers.

The national Hillel office employs close to 70 rabbis at public and private institutions across the country and has 15 to 20 college campus positions open each year, says Jill Goldwater, its director of human resources. You don't have to be a rabbi to fill these positions, which are assistant director, associate director, or director of a Hillel chapter, and which pay $50,000 to $100,000 a year.

While people do move from campus to campus to land bigger jobs with better pay, if you want to get a campus job with Hillel in Boston, New York, or Los Angeles, Mr. Goldwater says you can probably forget about it. "We rarely have jobs open there," she says. That's because the cities have longstanding Jewish communities that offer Jewish services -- for example Jewish day schools -- that are not typically found in a smaller city or town.

As for the Catholic Campus Ministry Association, approximately 1,700 campus ministers -- a combination of lay and ordained people -- work for the organization, says Edmund L. Franchi, its executive director. About 20 percent of them work at, and are paid by, Roman Catholic colleges and universities, while the rest work at public and private non-Catholic institutions and are paid by the local diocese.

Average salaries for entry-level jobs as a campus minister typically range from about $28,000 to $30,000, while average salaries for directors of campus ministry range from about $35,000 to $43,000, according to the association. The organization has 100 openings a year at various institutions, and has difficulty keeping lay people in campus positions, Mr. Franchi says; their average tenure in a job is two to three years. "We're talking about lay people who came out of school, took a campus ministry position, and started to have a family," he says. "The pay is just not big enough to sustain them. They'll either move on to another campus ministry setting ... or a lot of times they'll leave the field altogether."

Among priests, however, there isn't as much turnover. "Most campus ministers are pretty local, within a diocese," says the Rev. Vincent E. Krische, chaplain and director of the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas. "If there are any moves, they're usually lateral."

After more than 20 years at the university, Father Krische hasn't wanted to move at all. When he first started in 1977 he worked with an annual budget of $32,000 and a part-time secretary. Today, his center's budget runs to $1.5-million and he oversees a staff of 19 full-time employees. His own salary is just $25,000 a year, but the local diocese pays for his room and board off campus.

Campus ministry jobs within the Lutheran church pay somewhat better. About 140 lay people or ordained pastors work for the organization at public and private institutions across the country. The church pays campus ministers who are just starting out about $30,000 a year while longtime ministers can earn as much as $70,000 a year, says Sue Rothmeyer, the group's director for campus ministry. In addition, the organization has 28 campus affiliates, such as Roanoke College, which pay the salaries of their Lutheran ministers directly.

Up to 15 campus ministry jobs open every year with the organization. And while there is "some movement within the system, we're not seeing as much of this because people -- once they get into a community and have a spouse and children -- don't want to move," Ms. Rothmeyer says. Among the group's campus ministers, she says, there isn't a strong career ladder. Many of them get into the field, not to move up the ranks necessarily, but because "they may have been part of campus ministry when they were a student," had a positive experience, and want to give back.

Why They Stay

Like many chaplains, Ms. Kugler at Johns Hopkins plans to stay put. As a math major and a Roman Catholic at Santa Clara University, where she earned her undergraduate degree in 1981, she never envisioned herself as a campus chaplain. But in 1993, while she was doing a freelance study of chaplains in Maryland for the United Methodist Church, Johns Hopkins asked her to serve as interim chaplain. She agreed, and a year later, the university offered her the job permanently.

In her job, Ms. Kugler, who holds a master's degree in religious studies from Georgetown University and declines to reveal her salary, says she advocates for the religious needs of students, professors, and staff members. In the last 10 years, Johns Hopkins has gone from having eight religious groups to 30. In the mid-1990s she wrote a proposal for the university to convert a former United Methodist Church that was adjacent to the campus into the institution's interfaith center, which was opened in 1999.

While working with college students keeps her young, it can also wear on her emotions. Sometimes, she says, "you feel there's nothing that can at all ease the horror you feel when a young person has died and you have to work with the campus through a tragedy like that. At the same time, it gives you the opportunity to give to people and be there in an hour of need."

Being an ordained minister, priest, or rabbi may give you an advantage in landing a chaplaincy, but it doesn't mean you can do the job well, says the Rev. Guy R. Brewer, the chaplain of Sweet Briar College. "I've known fine pastors who are lousy at working with young adults," he says. "They want people to be more predictable, to be calmer, more stable. The lives of college students are none of those things. They're moving targets, but I enjoy their energy and their informality."

That's why after 15 years as a parish minister in Florida, Mr. Brewer spent six years as the director of the University Methodist Campus Ministry at the University of Miami before coming to Sweet Briar two years ago. He left Miami because the United Methodist Church reassigned him to a parish in Jacksonville, Fla., where the church thought he was more needed, Mr. Brewer says. But after two years, he wanted to get back to a campus chaplaincy and applied for Sweet Briar's opening. He earned a master's degree in divinity from Emory University and a doctorate of ministry from Asbury Theological Seminary.

At Sweet Briar he counsels about 20 students a week, guides a group of peer counselors known as "sweet spirits," teaches three Bible-study classes a week, and on a recent afternoon in January was organizing a gospel fest the college held in February in honor of Black History Month. His salary is $38,000 a year, and he and his wife live in a college-owned house on campus. He reports directly to the college's president and has one staff member in his office doing administrative work for him.

Mr. Brewer lives on campus, he says, partly because his job is to be on call 24 hours a day. He estimates that he receives about five emergency nighttime phone calls a semester -- for example, when a student has been hurt in a car accident and taken to the hospital.

Whenever the job of listening to other people's troubles wears on him and he gets to feeling discouraged, Mr. Brewer pulls out his "attaboy file" in which he keeps thank-you cards from students he has helped over the years. The notes, he says, "provide me a real tangible sense of the differences I have made in people's lives."