by Matt Cabeen '07
An architecturally-minded Californian gets an education in education, becomes a teacher, attends both Harvard and Hard Knocks, and discovers hope.
Duane Grobman grew up in a family-centered home in Tustin, California, at a time when Orange County really deserved its name. “There were 10 acres of oranges to our west, and 25 to our north,” he recalls. “It was very rural.” The youngest of three, Duane remembers his childhood home as a hub of activity for his and his sisters’ friends. “It was the place to hang out.” His parents also frequently hosted guests from faraway lands, as his father worked in international finance for the aerospace firm McDonnell Douglas and would invite colleagues’ families to stay with them. This gave Duane a sense of how big the world was, how “it’s all part of God’s creation, all the different ethnicities and cultures, and it’s a joy to engage with and learn from that”. It also influenced Duane’s view of home, as a welcoming place to minister to people and experience deep relational connections. “The great gift of my parents was modeling the joy and fruit of hospitality,” he says.
His parents were both Presbyterians, and they attended an evangelical Presbyterian church in the nearby city of Santa Ana, called Trinity United Presbyterian. It was unusual in that it was a so-called “50-50 church”—the goal being that half of all income had to be spent off-campus, on missions or outreach. “We all came to a deeper faith there,” Duane remembers. At 12, he made a commitment to Christ, but recommitted himself at age 16 after experiencing God as he performed in a musical called “Celebrate Life”. One scene of the play featured the hemorrhaging woman who touched Jesus’ cloak, and the woman had to reach past Duane to reach Jesus. As they performed this scene day after day, Duane felt that he was actually living the role, not just playing it. He heard Jesus say in his heart, “You like hanging around me, but you’re not reaching for me like that”. From then on, he followed Christ with renewed vigor, and even today he is deeply impacted by that Gospel passage. This experience also showed him the ability of art to prompt people to think differently even about something seemingly familiar.
Duane enrolled at Westmont College, in Santa Barbara, CA after finishing high school. During high school he had excelled in American Institute of Architects competitions, and wanted to be an architect. After his freshman year at Westmont, he transferred to architecture school. By the end of his sophomore year, he was spending 100 hours each week at his drafting board. “I found the daily work of architecture to be very isolating, just you and the board,” he recalls. He felt increasingly called to a profession that would be more relationship-intense, and had always placed a strong value in learning. “There is joy in learning, and it is inherently hopeful,” he says. “Any good teacher is a good learner.” This calling to the field of education prompted him to leave architecture school. When he announced that he was leaving, a professor took him aside and told him that he couldn’t leave, because he was ranked first in his class. Nonetheless, Duane left this promising path and returned to Westmont to finish a degree in economics and business, as there is no undergraduate degree in education in California. God redeemed this decision—Duane is still interested in architecture and is often called upon by friends to design home remodeling and landscaping projects.
After graduating Westmont, he initially was a recruiter for a mission agency that sent people to teach conversational English in Japan during summers, as he himself had done before his senior year of college. He then worked for his home church of 1,200 members, Trinity United, initially as a youth pastor as he completed his teaching credential so he could teach public school. After a six-month break to make a 23-country sojourn to Europe with a friend, he returned to California and was planning to teach public school, but Trinity United offered him a job as Minister of Education and Missions. Duane accepted this opportunity “to educate in a way that engages a worldview, to show that Christianity isn’t just about personal salvation, but about serving others and being salt and light in the world”. During his time, he managed eight staff members, oversaw 1,000 Sunday school students and grew the missions program from 6 to 89 short-time missionaries in three years. This growth led him to focus primarily on education, recruiting a former classmate from Westmont to run the missions program and coordinate their efforts. “Our theme was ‘We are saved to serve’,” Duane says.
During his time at Trinity United, Duane’s life was profoundly changed by a diagnosis of advanced-stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma. His prognosis was not good, and he was profoundly affected by the love and support of his church and friends. An initial misdiagnosis combined with his desire to learn about treatment options planted in him a hunger to do research and find things out himself. “I have a physician cousin who was helpful in giving me perspective on the medical field. My cousin remarked, ‘When doctors say they’re practicing medicine, they’re not kidding!’ This empowered me to ask lots of questions and to research multiple options.” Miraculously, five surgeries and sixteen months of chemotherapy later, Duane’s cancer went into remission. He is his oncologist’s longest living patient for such an advanced disease stage, and his oncologist says that he can’t take credit. Knowing that Duane was a man of faith, he acknowledged that there were powers beyond him at work. During his fight with cancer, a dear friend named Barbara was a constant source of encouragement, as she was a cancer survivor herself. As his treatment was ending, Duane was planning to marry her, but their plans were cut short by a fatal reoccurrence of her cancer. “Conducting Barbara’s memorial service was one of my most difficult moments in my life,” he recalls. This experience propelled him to delve more deeply into God’s character and the mysteries of His ways. Why would God save him but not her?
Next, Duane moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico to get a master’s degree at St. John’s College, to fill in some educational gaps by reading and discussing the Great Books. “It was also a way to see if my mind was intact after all the cancer therapy,” he says. “Had God preserved my mind to use for His glory?” Clearly, his mind was as sharp as ever, as he completed his degree even as he taught first and second grade full-time.
After a few years of teaching children in New Mexico, Duane was admitted to the Harvard Ed. D. program, where he worked with such outstanding professors as Howard Gardner, Eleanor Duckworth, Robert Coles, Robert Kegan, and Ted Sizer. Duane seemingly had a hand in everything—he taught a staggering 14 courses as a teaching fellow, supervised student teachers, and worked summers at the Kennedy School of Government as a Senior Advisor for program evaluation and new-faculty coaching. He was even appointed a lecturer at Harvard during his last year in Cambridge. He became a Harvey Fellow during his third year, having heard about the program from his church in California as well as from a friend of the Bakkes that he met in Washington, DC. He became a founding member of the Harvey Fellows Advisory Board, where he gained a reputation for being outspoken and led to his being asked to lead the Harvey Fellows program as well as the other scholarship programs that were then run by the Mustard Seed Foundation.
Duane initially took the position in 2001 but only committed for 18 months. His plan was to teach education at a top tier university. With a tenure-track position lined up, Duane was asked to step into the position of Executive Director for the Mustard Seed Foundation in 2003. He felt called by God to remain with the Foundation and served for several more years, overseeing the global operations of the Foundation, along with overseeing the Harvey Fellows program. When he moved back to Tustin in 2007 to care for his aging parents, he retained oversight of the Harvey Fellows program for two additional years. Finally, in 2009, Duane felt called to leave MSF to focus on research and writing and to study spiritual formation. His time is now occupied with caring for his parents, researching and writing a book on hope, growing a Spiritual Direction practice, and Chairing the Board of Directors of the Au Sable Institute for Environmental Studies. He continues to be approached by universities and organizations. Will he take one of these jobs? “I want to finish at least one book first and continue to build my Spiritual Direction ministry,” he says.
What advice does Duane have for today’s Harvey Fellows? “Be intentional and attentive to cultivating deeper intimacy with God and a deepening experience of faith that will enable you to do the work you’re called to do—which will also make your life a more vibrant testimony to Christ. If you’re not attentive to your faith, there’s little to integrate with your life. Conversely, if you cultivate a vibrant faith, the integration happens naturally.” Reflecting the high value Duane places on listening [to God and people], he was noted for starting every class he taught at Harvard with this quote, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “The first service one owes to others is learning to listen to them.”
Duane lives and works in his hometown of Tustin, CA.
