Larry Burnley Seeks to Leave Messiah College Uncomfortable

Messiah College owes much of its expanded multicultural awareness in the past four years to the work of Dr. Larry Burnley, the Special Advisor to the Provost on Multicultural Affairs. As Burnley prepares to leave Messiah College, he reflects on his memories and legacy of the school and the challenges that face it in upcoming years. Burnley is a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and has a Ph.D. of History of American Education.

He came to Messiah College in July 2005 after working as a chaplain and multicultural advisor at the University of Pennsylvania. Upon being hired at Messiah College, Burnley had completed all his graduate level requirements except for his dissertation.

Burnley finished his doctoral program during his first year at Messiah College. Four and a half years after being hired, Burnley is now leaving Messiah College to take an administrative and teaching position at Whitworth University in Spokane, WA.

Originally serving as Chair of the Office of Multicultural Programs (OMP), Burnley says he worked to transform the office. He sought to change it from a group seen primarily as a "club for students of color" to a co-curricular resource for the whole school.

In Burnley's time at Messiah College, the OMP grew to influence all aspects of life at Messiah College. "The OMP has created a space for important conversations," says Burnley.

Burnley says over the years he gradually came to work with Provost Randy Basinger to change the academic curriculum to include multicultural perspectives. The primary product of their partnership is the Diversity Strategic Plan: a wide-ranging initiative focused on wide-angle realignments of the curriculum and student activities to embrace greater gender, racial, cultural, class, and theological diversity. "We need to embrace inclusiveness to achieve excellence," says Burnley.

Burnley says his most triumphant moment at Messiah College came when he and Dr. Kate Quimby, Director of Supplemental Instruction, finally got the South Africa cross-cultural to come to fruition. Burnley says he had to make five trips back and forth to South Africa and navigate a legal and bureaucratic minefield to get the program added to the EpiCenter's roster. "The State Department was shivering with the prospect of taking a group of students to Johannesburg," says Burnley.

As he prepares to depart from Messiah College, Burnley says that the school will face two overarching challenges regarding multicultural issues as it marches into the next decade. First, he says the college will have to overcome its shyness of the difficult conversations which often arise when an organization commits itself to intellectual, cultural, and class inclusiveness.

"There's something about Messiah's cultural ethos that causes it to avoid these conversations," says Burnley. "We need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable."

Second, Burnley says the school should aggressively expand its recruitment of students from urban areas. He says that the school's future hinges on its ability to reach out to this demographic.

Burnley leaves Messiah College with appreciation for the opportunity and honor of serving it. "I've grown a lot here," he says. "I've stumbled, but I've grown from it."

He leaves the college with this challenge. "Messiah needs to show willingness to go to Calvary. It's only through Calvary that the resurrection is possible.