The Living Legacy of Dr. Judith Scoville

“We’ve got to get you a Presidential scholarship,” Dr. Mary Farrell Bednarowski urged the prospective student in an interview. “Does this mean I’ve been admitted?” the interviewee asked.

This is how Dr. Judith Scoville (’90) received a gift that would shape her life and, through her reciprocated generosity, reverberate decades later in the lives of new generations of United students. It was, in her words, “the biggest academic honor I’d ever received.” 

Judith came to United after several years in an Education for Ministry program facilitated by an Episcopal seminary. The Education for Ministry program was predicated on asking, “What are we called to do? What is our ministry?” At the time, Judith was working for “not a very ethical company,” she quipped, but this experience sparked her interest in and passion for ethics. “I was in St. Luke’s Episcopal Church,” Judith recalls, “and for four years… it was a small group of us [that] met every week,” studying Scripture, theology, and church history. Nearing the end of the program, the associate minister remarked, “maybe I should go to United.” For Judith, “Coming to United was part of pursuing that question of ‘what is my ministry?’”

After graduating from United in 1990, Judith began pursuing her PhD in ethics at the Graduate Theological Union. While there, she taught Christian ethics at United as an adjunct professor. A student, friend, and mentee of Dr. James B. Nelson, Professor Emeritus of Christian Ethics (1963–1995), Judith discovered her ministry as an educator. “My students were so special,” she remarks. “I found at United that… if you ran a class so that you were providing students with an opportunity, …they will become a part of shaping the class and making it what it is.” She avers, “You don’t just pour information [into] United students.”

Judith later became an associate professor and the Hulings Distinguished Chair in the Humanities for Northland College. She gave United’s first-ever Picard Lecture on Environmental Theology and Ethics, and her participation in the life of the seminary spans decades. From alum to professor to donor, her contributions to the United community are hard to overstate.

Now in her mid-80s, Judith—as quick-witted and incisive as ever—is crafting a living legacy. Since the death of her husband, Dr. James (Jim) Scoville, Judith has committed to using her resources for good. Ever conscious of ethics, it became, in her mind, “a moral obligation” to give back. And so, Judith brought her scholarship experience full circle by recently making a significant gift to United’s endowed scholarship fund, securing access to the transformative power of theological education for future students. She is quick to note, “To me, it does not feel like generosity.… It’s what I want to do.” She feels “an ethical obligation” to use her money to build a better society, “richer in all the things that count.”

“I don’t want the ability to go to United to be limited by the ability to pay,” she asserts. “I want everybody who… wants to be part of this community to be able to do that no matter what their finances are.” She knows it will “enrich United to have as broad a variety of students as possible,” and that if “we’re all white middle-class people, then it’s a very impoverished community.”

Judith and Jim are also celebrated members of the Barnabas Society, which honors individuals who include United in their estate plans or make other qualifying gift arrangements. Asked why others should consider making a gift, she thoughtfully reflects, “It’s a very satisfying thing to give to United. It makes me feel like I’m doing something positive and constructive.” She continues, “I’m proud of the results that I see at United.… It makes me happy.” We give abundant thanks for the vibrant, living legacy of Judith Scoville.