SCP Staff Update

 

SCP's core office staff pictured on the next page are all recent UC Berkeley students who entered Cal, one of the nation's highest rated universities, directly (versus the easier option of transferring). Three of them just recently graduated and have elected to stay on staff for a while, including Josh Ong (a double major), the SCP office manager, Marilyn Mai (a double major), and Evan Rosa, our most recent graduate who majored in philosophy and linguistics. This makes Steven the lone UC Berkeley intern at the moment, though others want to climb aboard.

 

Our newest staff member, pictured with the others, is Jirat Jirasetpatana, who was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand till she was seven and then moved to the States. Her mother has been a devout Shinto Buddhist and is now a Theravadin Buddhist. Jirat was following her mother's footsteps ("I had built up my foundation on Buddhism and was highly devoted to the belief, meditating daily") till a few years ago, when, as a Berkeley student, Jirat converted from Buddhism to the Christian faith.

 

Our core staff have each been leaders in UC Berkeley's Christian campus community. This past year the student leadership of Campus Crusade went from Josh Ong to Steven . Marilyn Mai (who also converted from Buddhism) continues to help lead the campus consortium of believing denominational groups, including the music during the huge inter-praise meetings, which is often moderated by Josh Ong. Josh, with Evan Rosa, continues as a church intern. Josh is also the former chairman of the Christian Union, in which representatives from the UC Berkeley Christian body meet for unity and vision in reaching the UC Berkeley student community. Josh's SCP Journal article, The Suicide Option: When Life Has Lost Meaning (Journal 28:4-29:1 in 2005), is must reading. Josh was delivered from one of the worst pitfalls to hit the youth culture, especially in the present era.

 

Meanwhile, you can walk by People's Park off Telegraph Avenue on any given day and see any one of them helping with the feeding of the homeless or sitting at a cafe discussing their faith with fellow students.

 

SCP has had many bright lights over the years during Tal Brooke's reign as President (over seven at SCP have "flatlined" SATs, GREs and other aptitude tests with perfect scores), yet as a focused and coherent team, the present staff is the best staff SCP has ever had--talented, productive, idealistic and dedicated. Assembled by Josh Ong, it includes Natalie Korochev (not pictured), who, like the rest, has also been with us for over three years but has been absent this semester in order to finish her honors thesis before heading overseas. The present team is not without the same excellence as some of their gifted predecessors. Marilyn Mai just scored 800s on her math GREs, just like her earlier 800s on math SATs when she started at UC Berkeley as a math major. Meanwhile, Josh Ong just pulled a high LSAT score only a stone's throw from the perfect LSAT score that SCP's former operations officer John Moore got before being accepted into Berkeley's prestigious doctoral law program at Boalt Hall.

 

We want to give credit where credit is due by mentioning SCP's "honor roll" of especially gifted student interns in years past who worked at SCP while attending Berkeley. To mention a few, Peter and Rebecca Jones' son Julian (Peter Jones' articles appear in our publications frequently) got into UC Berkeley at 15, able to speak seven languages fluently and earning a 4.0 average across the board, including math and physics. He volunteered to do the lower level "storage room detail," cheerfully disappearing "like a mole." Julian bought his first sports car under Tal's watch, soon showing it proudly to Tal, who recalls, "It was something that looked like a nuclear weapon shaped like a cigar with all sorts of power enhancing contraptions and levers--a perfect example of Murphy's Law, considering all the things that could potentially go wrong with this complexcontraption, a modified sports car. It lasted maybe four weeks and finally blew up, igniting and burning on the 880 freeway--a complete horror show." Julian was crushed as the gutted car was hauled off to some automotive graveyard. There was never a dull moment. Tal was sad to lose Julian, a gifted multitasker, who, after graduating, moved on and is now married and teaching languages at a military college on the East Coast. Julian, for the record, holds the highest score ever made at the prestigious Monterey Language Institute.

Then there was Charlie Eads, who began as a freshman at Cal, barely sixteen, starting his freshman year by testing out of three years of computer engineering courses. As a freshman, Charlie began with senior courses, then soon devoured graduate level courses (the rumor is that Charlie was one of those prodigies who hacked into Norad at age 14). Before starting at Berkeley, Charlie had just won a national computer contest at fifteen. Charlie did invaluable work for the SCP computer system and database and was another one with a great spirit. He visited Tal several years ago, seeking ideas for computer games he was designing.

Also on SCP's honor roll is SCP's for mer office manager, Ed Schneider, then in the UC Berkeley honors philosophy program. Ed put in long hours as a hard working and dedicated ally of Tal's, passionate to defend the faith with a cheerful willingness to multitask. Ed could anticipate needs, then preemptively problem solve with a humble servant's heart. The same rare ability is true of Josh Ong, a natural problem solver, also blessed with that rare combination of high aptitude, passionate vision, deep faith and a humble temperament.

These rare souls, and quite a few others not mentioned due to space limitations, have been a real blessing to SCP, using their prodigious natural gifts while growing in the faith.

SCP's legacy has been to draw an inordinate number of student interns and staff who go from very bright to gifted. (Ten years ago a visitor from among Tal's circle of gifted friends was stopping by and gave Tal a wry smile while looking at the team at work and quietly muttered, "It feels like we're back at a Mensa meeting." Several of these friends are in organizations as high above Mensa as Mensa is above the normal IQ, including Four Sigma and Prometheus Societies. Indeed, one is a member of the Mega Society. "They're not really into small talk," Tal once volunteered.)

 

Bringing us back to the present, Josh Ong and Marilyn Mai--who together wrote about their trip to Mainland China entitled, China's Spiritual Battleground: an SCP Staff Report (SCP Newsletter 28:4, Summer Issue 2004), are considering going to graduate school while continuing on at SCP part-time. This would only be possible if they remained in the area and attended either Berkeley or Stanford.

Their future vision is to act as liaisons in establishing an SCP Asian branch office, dividing their time between consulting professions and SCP. Considering China's explosive growth on the world scene, an SCP presence as a resource for the expanding church could be strategic (there is probably no other organization of our modest size that has won over 9 EPA awards, 4 in first place). Josh and Marilyn have also applied for the Harvey Fellows Program for graduate school. They will wait and see how things develop as they try to sense God's direction--not passively, but by staying in motion. We deeply value their presence here at SCP and need people like them.

SCP is grateful for all those who have gone before the present staff, who made their mark here and kept SCP running. We have some of the most faithful alumni of any organization. Most stay in touch, often helping to support the ministry. They have repeatedly acknowledged that SCP has had an important, if not crucial, impact on their lives.

Our alumni loyalty reveals another aspect about SCP, discipleship. SCP's life changing influence is the by-product of gifted staffers working in an open atmosphere of high intelligence, faithfulness, camaraderie, passion for the truth and the desire to reach the culture while never compromising on the truth. But the bottom line is that without God's grace, none of SCPs accomplishments would have been possible. Our hope is that this wave of grace continues. Most of us feel our greatest work is still ahead.