God winks.
That's what St. Ambrose junior Meghan Curran calls those unexpected "everything happens for a reason" nudges that lead us down paths we hadn't previously considered or had purposefully chosen not to take.
A chance meeting with a grandfatherly sort while waiting on a church camp bus, for instance, was a "God wink" that Meghan said led her to reconsider not following her father Kevin '88, brother Brady '15 and sister Kelly '18 to St. Ambrose.
"I didn't want to go to a small school," she said. "I was always the baby Curran, and I wanted break out on my own and not be Kelly's and Brady's younger sister. I had been asking for prayers because I really didn't know where I wanted to go to college."
The older gentleman's advice to visit SAU didn't seem like the answer she wanted at the time, but his words played back in Meghan's mind a few weeks later, and she paid heed. She even found a subsequent "God wink" as she and her parents fell behind would-be classmates on an SAU campus tour while her father visited with faculty and staff he'd known as a student.
"I was mortified," Meghan conceded of what felt in that moment like a Dad joke. "But looking back, that's what made me fall in love with this school. After all those years, they still remembered him."
Meghan's most recent "God wink" led her to the Mottet Leadership Institute, a training program for Quad Cities community members interested in following the "two feet" approach to social justice advocated by the late Msgr. Marvin Mottet '52, '82 (Hon).
When Msgr. Mottet died in 2016, SAU professor and Mottet mentee Dan Ebener,'95 MBA, '99 MSW, '07 DBA, teamed with the Diocese of Davenport, Quad Cities Interfaith, the Gamaliel Foundation and St. Ambrose to honor the monsignor's social justice legacy in creating the Institute.
Meghan is the youngest member of the current cohort-which otherwise consists of working adults who are community activists. She is participating through a grant from the Rev. Joseph E. Kokjohn Endowment for Catholic Peace and Social Justice at St. Ambrose. An education major, Meghan first applied for Kokjohn funding to build a neighborhood library kiosk in front of Davenport's Madison Elementary School. The "little library" will allow students access to books to either borrow or keep.
"I always loved reading growing up," she said. "This is a good way to give kids whose school libraries don't have a lot of resources opportunities to read."
Her project is still on track for completion in the fall, but Meghan also was encouraged by SAU faculty who were impressed by her passion for service to seek a Kokjohn Scholarship to the Mottet Institute. There, she could learn how to lead bigger change going forward.
Yes. That's a God wink. And it's one that gives Meghan complete confidence that whatever path she takes will be the right one toward a future built around working with and for children.
"I'm definitely dreaming bigger now," she said.
–Craig DeVrieze '16 MOL
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