Winter 1996

Helping cultivate lives

Rodney Dick has become a farmhand. You won’t see him planting seeds or driving a tractor, but he does help cultivate lives in Doddridge County, W.Va.

The 1988 chemical engineering graduate serves as executive director of Nazareth Farm in Centerpoint, W.Va. Nazareth Farm is a Catholic-supported organization devoted to home rehabilitation for the less fortunate in that part of West Virginia.

"We do home rehabilitation and renovation for the less fortunate and elderly," Dick explained.

"We help a lot of elderly who can’t do things for themselves any more. We’re basically enabling them to continue to live in their homes."

The area Nazareth Farm serves is a rural county located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The county population stands at 7,000. Its biggest city has 600 people.

Nazareth Farm helps about 30 families a year with new roofs, painting, dry walling, plumbing, floor repair, door replacement, and window replacement. It does not construct new housing.

Dick oversees a staff of eight to 10 full-time volunteers. As a team they oversee the majority of the work carried out by 600 volunteers who visit throughout the year. They come in youth groups and college-age groups for a week at a time to help Nazareth Farm.

"Being part of that formation of young people is one of the great rewards of the work," Dick said. "It encourages them to be involved in their own communities, and they learn they don’t have to go 100 miles to be of service."

The other major reward Dick receives is found in the people he gets to work with. "They are extremely appreciative of what we do."

Dick gave up a job with Pfizer to work at Nazareth Farm. He took a major-league salary cut to work at Nazareth, but he does receive a stipend. He points out that Rose-Hulman "won’t want to use me as a data point" when it comes to calculating average salaries of its graduates.

"Serving at a place like Nazareth Farm is something I’ve always felt strongly about," Dick said. "I always had everything I needed, and I never went without. I felt it was a good time to step back and give back what I’ve been given."

While he no longer devotes his time to the finer points of process engineering, he believes his engineering and project coordination skills acquired in industry are an asset to his current position.

Dick juggles project assignments and scheduling of the volunteer groups that come through the farm. One of the bigger projects on his docket this past year was the construction of a new dormitory for the visiting volunteers. He helped plan it and oversee its construction.

Although drawn to his work in the Appalachian foothills, Dick will leave next year. Nazareth Farm rotates its staff. Although not sure of his future, Dick is pondering a return to engineering or teaching science in secondary schools. Whatever path he takes, it surely will be one that helps cultivate lives.