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Alyse Portnoff

portnoff_a.jpg“Jubilee was the first time I was really challenged to live my faith out in all aspects of life, and at the same time I was overwhelmed with how much I still had to learn about my faith,” says Alyse Portnoff. She attended Jubilee throughout her four years as a Carnegie Mellon University student, and she has continued to return to the conference with her husband, Sam, and the students in whom he invests as a CCO staff worker.

“I was doing well in my studies and enjoying them, but I didn’t know what that meant for the rest of my life. At Jubilee, I was forced to evaluate the gift my education really was and that if I did enjoy engineering, perhaps God was calling me to use the gifts He had blessed me with for His purposes. At that point, I started considering how I could serve God in engineering and was led towards pursuing a graduate degree in biomedical engineering, which would allow me to guide my own research and be more influential in the industry of pharmaceutics.”

Today, Alyse is pursuing her PhD in biomedical engineering at Cornell University, and she continues to be grateful for the vision she gained through the CCO’s ministry about how to use her abilities to God’s glory.

“My involvement in the CCO’s ministry shaped my experience as a college student as it gave me a home, a place to feel comfortable and safe amidst the very busy days of school,” Alyse says. “The relationships I formed through Bible studies are the same ones I maintain today, even though we all live in different cities. The ministry helped me put Christ in the center and develop a relationship with Him rather than always focusing on academics. It set a foundation that I can’t imagine living without today.”

Alyse and Sam are new to the Ithaca, but Alyse has gotten involved in a graduate Christian fellowship and in the biomedical engineering society’s outreach group. “We are currently working to develop relationships with nearby elementary, middle and high schools to be able to aid teachers in sparking the kids’ interest in science,” she says. “It’s an exciting opportunity to learn to present what we do as engineers to kids who may not understand how science can be applied outside the classroom.”

The Portnoffs are contemplating what could look like to remain involved in the university as faculty or staff, and how through those roles, they might continue in college ministry. “I definitely feel like I am still working out how my faith can influence every aspect of my life. As an engineer I’m trained to work in a somewhat ‘sterile’ environment of equations and experiments, but it’s still an environment with other people. As a biomedical engineer, I have to consider the larger impact of my research. If I had not been involved with the CCO’s ministry during my undergrad years, I am convinced that my faith would be separate and apart from my work.”