Chaplain Frances Igboeli remembers that the day was warm more than 20 years ago when she walked across USC’s campus to find the Department of English. It was summer in 2003, and she had both her sons in tow as she walked into an office and asked for the director.

Professor Nina Levine, at that time the head of the English program, heard the request and brought Igboeli and her little boys right into her office. “How can I help?” she asked.

“I remember my desperation. I remember that I just needed answers,” Igboeli says.

Now a Major with the U.S. Army, those many years ago, Igboeli was a young mother, a military spouse and an aspiring teacher.

Igboeli had moved to the U.S. after growing up in Nigeria and traveling widely. With her husband’s posting in Columbia, SC, she finally had the time to get her teaching degree. On that day, she showed Levine a copy of her bachelor’s degree transcripts from the University of Nigeria Nsukka.

“She took her pencil and my transcript and looked at all the courses that I had taken, and she told me, ‘Just from looking at this, I know you have to take these classes in order to get a bachelor’s degree from USC,'” Igboeli says.

Levine outlined a plan for Igboeli to complete a bachelor’s in English in two years, after which she could earn a Master of Teaching in the College of Education.

“I felt relieved when she sat me down. I felt heard. Dr. Levine answered my questions and then provided a map, and she took it further by becoming my advisor that first year when I enrolled,” Igboeli says.

“Sometimes we underestimate the difference someone can make in one’s life, but that’s how I remember Dr. Levine that day. In that instance, it meant the world to me.”

Thanks to Dr. Levine’s guidance – and the mentorship of many other USC professors, some of whom have remained lifelong friends – Igboeli completed her bachelor’s degree and then her Master in Teaching in a total of three academic years.

A flexible career for a persistent call

In 2007, Igboeli was ready to begin her career as a high school English teacher when the Army moved her family to Washington State. With the move, Igboeli started substitute teaching while she worked on updating her teaching credentials to work in the new state.

Igboeli says that was when she began to feel a tugging at her heart in a different, but familiar direction. For the previous ten years, she had sometimes wondered if she should go into some kind of Christian ministry.

“The Lord and I, we kept having this conversation,” she says. “We’ve had this dance, that’s what I call it, since 1997 when I first felt that I was called.”

At first, Igboeli wanted to pursue a master’s degree in counseling, thinking she could use it in volunteer work at the church. But many of her classmates were chaplains or studying to become Army chaplains, and they nudged her toward that path.

"In addition to the advice of a trusted chaplain mentor in my life, all these strangers were telling me, ‘We think you should be a chaplain, too,’” she says.

Through that coincidence and many prayers, Igbeoli says she decided to switch to the seminary’s Master of Divinity program. In 2009, she became a Second Lieutenant in the Army and a Chaplain Candidate with the Army National Guard in Washington State.

Now, she is an Army Major serving as the Chaplain Resource Manager and the Deputy Garrison Chaplain for Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia.

As a chaplain, she tends to the spiritual needs of soldiers, service members, Department of Defense civilians, retirees and family members of any faith.

She says she uses the skills she developed at USC every day: “Think about it: public speaking, teaching. I’m preaching this Sunday. I write and prepare sermons and documents. Everything I’ve done in the classroom as an English major and as a teacher comes into what I do now as a chaplain and as an Army officer.”

But one of her biggest takeaways from her time at USC was the importance of the human connection and investing in people, whether serving as an educator or in the ministry.

“I think stories matter, and a lot of our stories are spiritual in nature,” she says. “So, engaging in stories – hearing the human stories and connecting them in sprit – is really a big part of my job in the Chaplain Corps.”

When she remembers her first day on USC’s campus, that’s exactly the lesson she learned when she was welcomed through the doorway by Nina Levine.

“I would have found my way, you know, but Dr. Levine made it a human experience,” she says. “I’ll never forget it, and I hope to do the same for others.”