Via Michelle Smith Westlund ’83, S’21, senior content material specialist
June 13, 2022 | 11 a.m.
Melissa (Haunty) Shackelford ’11 is director of program curation and group have an effect on for Higher Space, a middle for Christian amassing and studying on the College of Wisconsin-Madison.
Melissa (Haunty) Shackelford ’11 selected Bethel so she might be taken with all kinds of studies and actions. And he or she took complete good thing about the wealth Bethel had to provide. A communique arts and literature training main, Shackelford reveled in her involvement within the Humanities Program, with school who had been supportive and out there. She discovered a way of group in the course of the Bethel Choir, exploring her management items by way of serving as its trade supervisor and prayer chaplain. And he or she had a life-transforming find out about out of the country revel in. “Via all my school studies, I felt like I used to be creating a lens in which to peer the arena,” she says. 
As of late she’s bringing that holistic lens to her function as director of program curation and group have an effect on for Higher Space, a middle for Christian amassing and studying situated at the campus of the College of Wisconsin-Madison. Higher Space gives a spot for Christian religion exploration and training—serving undergraduate and graduate scholars, school/workforce, clergy, ministry leaders, market pros, artists, and the Madison group. “We search to combine religion, concepts, and communities with teachers, {the marketplace}, and the church,” explains Shackelford. “We focal point at the integration of Christian religion with other fields of analysis, questions in tradition, and people’ callings on the earth—serving to them see the connections that deepen their sense of id and objective and build up their working out of the way the dominion of God is at paintings of their professions and day by day lives.” 
A regular day for Shackelford is a mesh of creativity, program building, group of workers control, and group outreach. She may supervise and mobilize a staff, plan an tournament and draft a program description, chat with a speaker, spouse with every other group, or lead a strategic making plans assembly. In Higher Space’s dynamic programming atmosphere, she describes her function as “reworking ingenious power into sensible subsequent steps,” and says it balances her love of each creativity and construction, permitting her to make use of the breadth of her talents and talents. “I’ve a zeal for mining a speaker’s experience and crafting a program revel in that showcases the most productive of what God is doing in and thru their paintings,” she explains. “Different occasions, I discern a group want that conjures up a specific program concept. For instance, closing spring I co-curated a month-long artwork show off referred to as UNVEILED, that includes the paintings of native artists, designed as a prayer stroll for group contributors to steadily get reacquainted with coming to our area after a 12 months of the pandemic. It’s an honor so as to serve the church extensively within the town of Madison and to champion the dominion of God at paintings in all spheres of tradition.” 
It doesn’t in point of fact come as a wonder that Shackelford may be taken with more than one different spaces of group provider and inventive initiative. Previous to becoming a member of Higher Space as simply its 3rd workforce member in 2015, she controlled her brother’s artwork trade, Inspiring Artwork by way of Alex, and in conjunction with her circle of relatives based the nonprofit Alex Haunty’s Theater and Arts Fund, Inc., to create get right of entry to to the humanities for folks with disabilities. She lately serves at the group’s board, in addition to at the board of Inspiring Hope Ministries. “The humanities have at all times been a significant street of enlargement and pleasure for me—together with my time in Bethel Choir,” she says. “There’s not anything like developing one thing in group—like choral tune—that you’ll be able to’t accomplish by yourself. And I believe it’s necessary to make that chance to be had for others who haven’t had an opportunity to discover their ingenious items.”
Shackelford may be hooked in to connections. She sees the myriad connections God used to be making all over her Bethel revel in that ready her for a long term she couldn’t have imagined. “Whilst you get started school, it’s simple to suppose and hope that the trail ahead might be linear,” she says. “However that’s generally no longer the case. It’s additionally simple to really feel careworn to provide and carry out, however I believe God delights in our procedure a lot more than the product. I’ve observed God attach again to my Bethel studies in humanities, choir, and find out about out of the country and weave them into my existence these days. God doesn’t waste the rest. Agree with God that what you’re making an investment in now’s price it although you’ll be able to’t see the place it’s main. You don’t should be the person who makes all of it attach. You’ll be shocked at how God makes the ones connections for you at simply the suitable time.” 
 
Your Bethel training prepares you to excel for your selected profession trail—and so a lot more. Tune, find out about out of the country, and management building are simply one of the vital many alternatives that look ahead to you. And with a Christian standpoint built-in into each revel in, you’ll be told what it method to possess your religion and reside for one thing extra, anyplace your adventure leads.
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