After a successful career in military defense engineering, Kerry Patterson thought he’d arrive at age 65 and start sitting “on the porch in a rocking chair somewhere.”
But now that he’s reached retirement age, Patterson says he’ll keep teaching classes and going on engineering missions trips as long as he can.
Patterson, who started teaching engineering at Lipscomb nearly 10 years ago, said he entered education as an escape from the “commercial rat race.”
According to Patterson, his old friend from the University of Tennessee Fred Gillam, former head of Lipscomb’s Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering, called one day to encourage Patterson to join the teaching staff at Lipscomb.
“When I interviewed with the provost for the position,” Patterson said, “Dr. Bledsoe said, ‘I don’t really think I have much choice because I promised your friend that a condition of his taking the job was that he had to be able to hire you.’”
After a three-year stint in the U.S. Army missile command, Patterson spent 25 years doing work related to military ballistic missile defense systems. But Patterson said education had been a possibility in the back of his mind for years.
“I always thought that sometime down the road I’d like to teach and I’d like to teach in a Christian university,” he said. “But since there weren’t very many Church of Christ schools that had engineering, I thought I would probably have to settle for math or physics. When this college of engineering thing came along, it was an even better situation than I had anticipated.”
Patterson said he knew when he came to Lipscomb that he would be fulfilling an “engineering educator role” in “a nice Christian environment,” but he didn’t fully expect what was to come.
“I didn’t realize the impact on my own spiritual life that this choice would entail,” he said. “It’s been a great journey for me. I was 55 when I came here. I said, ‘In 10 years I’ll be 65, and I’ll go sit on the porch in a rocking chair somewhere.’ But I really love it here, and I don’t plan on leaving. I just want to keep doing it until God tells me it’s time to quit. It’s been a great experience for me spiritually.”
Since he began at Lipscomb, Patterson has been a part of seven engineering mission trips to Guatemala. He has visited two areas of the country, one of which is the Ulpan Valley where Lipscomb maintains long-term investment through Project Ulpan. During the trips, Patterson said the groups have built three bridges, put in three water systems, installed solar powered cell phone charging stations and constructed facilities in the Ulpan Valley.
According to Patterson, the trips give students an opportunity to put their education into action.
“The biggest thing for me was getting to see and experience our students giving themselves to Kingdom work, using their professional skills and being captured themselves by God’s plan for serving other people,” he said. “It’s just that whole thing of being an engineer, having skills and being able to use those in Kingdom related endeavors that kind of brings their whole Lipscomb experience together into something really concrete.”
Patterson said he hopes to stay involved with the trips for a long time, even if he can’t be as physically active in the construction.
“Just getting to go and be a part of facilitating this experience for the students is really rewarding for me,” he said. “I see myself having a role in this for years to come, in making it happen for them.”
More than seeing his students learn from the experience, Patterson said the trips also provide a “synergy” for his own life.
“I’m an elder at the Otter Creek Church, and there’s such a common mission and perspective between the orientation of the Otter Creek family toward Kingdom work and Lipscomb University toward Kingdom work,” he explained. “Getting to participate in both of those is a great synergy that drives my life.”
Patterson, who has been married 43 years and has two sons and five grandchildren, said developing relationships with students is what he loves about his job.
“My favorite thing about teaching is getting to be intimately involved with the students,” he said. “I think it’s an advantage that we have as a small college and with relatively small classes that I get to know the students very well. That helps in their technical education, but it also helps in their spiritual growth and maturity in other ways as well. And to be part of that, that’s very rewarding and fulfilling for me.”
Patterson said, despite the tendency for professors to over emphasize academics, it’s important for students to have a balanced life during their time at Lipscomb.
“When you’re in a professional studies discipline like engineering, there’s a really strong drive for a faculty member to believe that engineering education is far and away the most important thing for students,” he said. “But then you look at the entire experience at a place like Lipscomb, and you would be greatly short-changed if you only looked at your academics.
“My advice is that students work hard, but they should work hard to keep all of that balanced. There’s just a comprehensive experience for them here at Lipscomb, and they need to sample all of it. They don’t need to let any of it get to be the dominant aspect of the experience or they’ll miss out on the total experience.”
Patterson said teaching at Lipscomb has given him the opportunity to learn something he didn’t understand for a long time.
“I think the most significant thing in my life has occurred since I’ve been at Lipscomb,” he said. “It’s the understanding that we’re not just placed here on earth to find a personal peace and security, but there’s a higher calling to serve the good of the world and the community that’s driven by God’s desire to make the world different. Being able to understand everything you do in terms of that outward perspective to serve others energizes your professional life, your personal life and your relationships. God has something in mind for the world that you get to participate in.”