CCO Campus Ministry

Derek Melleby: preparing high school students for the realities of college life

Derek Melleby works with the CCO in partnership with the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, where he is the director of CPYU’s College Transition Initiative (CTI). This initiative helps college-bound high school students and their parents successfully make the transition from high school to college. Here, Derek talks about why he is committed to helping high school seniors transition well into college, and why it is so important for freshmen to connect to campus ministry opportunities early on.

Why is it important to connect students to a ministry on campus right away?
It’s impossible to be a Christian without community. This is certainly true in college. Students need to be surrounded by people who “seek first the Kingdom.” But it can be tough to get connected: schedules get busy quickly and the majority of students aren’t intentionally seeking Christian community. And with the desire to “fit-in,” it’s easy for church and fellowship to be pushed to the side. In order to transition smoothly and make the most of the college experience, it is vital that students connect with Christian community.

What is the College Transition Initiative?
CTI is a “wing” of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding that gives attention to the issues students and parents face as they transition from high school to college. This is accomplished through research, writing and speaking. The main part of CTI is a 3-hour seminar that I give that helps students and parents ask important questions before heading off to college: (1) Why are you going to college? (2) What do you believe? (3) Who are you? (4) With whom will you surround yourself?

The main goal of the seminar is to start a conversation and to paint a realistic picture of contemporary college life in America.

The seminar has been presented in churches, Christian high schools, seminaries and camps in different parts of the country, including Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, Louisiana, Indiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Georgia, and the Bahamas. We have also received inquiries about delivering a seminar for missionary schools in Germany and Ukraine.

What made you decide to transition from fulltime ministry with students at Elizabethtown College to the CTI work you’re doing now?
When CTI first started I was trying to do both, working with college students and developing and presenting the seminar. As CTI grew, I knew I had to make a choice, because I couldn’t do both “full-time.” I was beginning to develop interests in other areas of ministry (teaching, writing, speaking), and CPYU provided a place to connect that with college life. I also was motivated by the desire to give students some information that could really help them before they entered college. My seminar is basically what I wish students in my college ministry would have known before they met me. It’s a primer on how to approach college from a Christian perspective.

What do you do day-to-day? What is your role with CTI?
If I’m not on the road speaking, I’m usually in the office fine-tuning the seminar, doing research on trends in higher education and youth culture, writing articles for CPYU and other publications, editing a blog devoted to books, and doing other things for CPYU: radio shows, editing articles, making coffee.

I’m also working on another book with the working title Why Are You Going to College? And Other Questions for the College Bound, to be published by Baker Books. [Derek’s first book, co-authored with CCO alumnus Donald Opitz, is entitled The Outrageous Idea of Academic Discipleship: A Guide for Students, and is available from Brazos Press.]

Also, I have responsibilities with the CCO’s conferences and events department: helping to plan the annual Jubilee conference and the Ocean City Beach Project.

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