Dr. Joe Modica and Dr. Chris Hall attended graduate school at Drew University together before Dr. Hall took a position at Eastern College in 1991. Dr. Modica had been the Hall family’s resident director while at Drew. In 1993, Chris called Joe directly to ask if he’d consider applying for the position of college chaplain at Eastern and if he had ever considered the prospect of being in this kind of role. He responded, “No. I don’t even know how to spell the word ‘chaplain.’” Joe began his career as Eastern’s chaplain in the summer of ‘93.
Now, over three decades later, Dr. Modica is a pillar of the Eastern University community. You have likely been greeted by him somewhere between McInnis and Walton or at Wednesday’s chapel. Dr. Modica has seen the community transition from a college to a university, containing multiple schools, including Palmer Theological Seminary. He describes the University as having moved from a predominantly evangelical or Protestant identity to a more ecumenical one, now including a significant number of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox students.
Dr. Modica sees God’s abiding faithfulness to Eastern University and Palmer Seminary in this shift. He says that he witnessed that thread of God’s faithfulness through four different university presidents, each of whom led differently and faced different challenges. “I can see how decisions President Hestenes made early on complimented those made by Dr. Black, which complimented Dr. Duffet, which now compliment Dr. Matthews.”
Over the next five, ten, and a hundred years, Dr. Modica hopes to see Eastern further live into its mission of being a diverse, Christ-centered community preparing graduates to impact the world through faith, reason, and justice. “Programs will come and go,” he says, “but that mission remains constant.”
Above all, Joe wants to encourage the communities of Eastern University to help instill two key values: belonging and belovedness. In a culture that increasingly isolates individuals, he longs for us to be an incubator of spaces of belonging where staff, faculty, and students feel known. And he prays that we continue to be a community that instills the reality of our belovedness, that each and every one of us knows that we are created in God’s image and beloved by God.
Please join Dr. Modica and the rest of the Eastern and Palmer community on March 15 to kick off our centennial celebration! You can register here.