Rachel Budavich is a bright young woman with keen taste and a love for cooking. (Her
prize possession is her brand new KitchenAid mixer.) Dig deeper still and you will
find a highly intellectual individual with a special passion for bioethics-which,
defined in her own words, is “the marriage of biology and ethics”.
A 2004 graduate of ORU, Budavich majored in biology with a minor in philosophy. She
went on from ORU to grad school and then back to ORR, this time as a teacher. She
says that there are advantages to being a younger teacher, such as being able to relate
more strongly to students who are sitting where she herself sat not too long ago.
One of Budavich’s favorite hobbies outside the classroom (besides cooking) is going
abroad. In between graduating from ORU and returning to work there, she spent an entire
year in France doing conservation work with a Christian organization called A Rocha.
During her time there, she was able to enjoy not only her work, which involved helping
birds and turtles, but the cross-cultural experience. “If you have the slightest opportunity
during your school years, travel abroad!” She urges to current and prospective students
to take advantage of the opportunity. “You don’t even have to know the language.
Even with that barrier, the light of God will always shine through.”
Budavich has found family at ORU. “A bunch of people who were students here when I
was have come back to Tulsa, like me, for whatever reason,” she says. “It’s wonderful
to be near so many friends and to share this sense of camaraderie. We’ll often get
together and play Scrabble, eat or whatever.”
When asked about her walk with God, Budavich answers, “Everything I go through contributes
to who I am. How I picture God relating to me is that He is out for my spiritual life.”
She further explains that minoring in philosophy played a huge role in her spiritual
life. In her philosophy classes, which often had students reading from authors like
C. S. Lewis, she says that she was required to think and was given ethical dilemmas
to solve. Her undergrad years at ORU proved influential in shaping her for the rest
of her life.
