Rapid City Youth Minister awarded full-ride scholarship

By Jacques Daniel
Director of Communications,
Assistant Director of Faith Formation

In 2018, Laura Hawk pulled into Rapid City fresh out of college, starting a new job as the full-time youth minister at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. This was her first opportunity to work at a church as a director of outreach to middle school and high school youth. Reflecting on her experience as a college student and not having much experience with the church, she laughed, saying, “I didn’t know you could find a full-time job serving the church without being a priest!” 

She remembers encountering Jesus in the community and activities found at the Newman Center on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Kearney during her college years. During her time there, she was invited into many opportunities to serve others, first as a Bible study leader and later as a core team member for a local middle school and high school youth ministry program. It was through these experiences that the Lord put a desire in her heart to work for the church instead of her initial plan of getting a master’s in college affairs.

Coming into her role at a parish with no formal religious education, she was invited to invest her time at the diocesan Veritatis Splendor Institute (VSI). Over the three years of her VSI experience, she was inspired to explore religious life visiting a number of communities that have served the diocese at Totus Tuus Summer camp for girls. Eventually, she saw that she was being called to married life, but this desire to continue to work for the church just grew. She started looking at various master’s degree programs around the country, but for a number of reasons, the Augustine Institute out of Denver, Colo., stood out to her. “At the time I was looking at master’s programs, we were teaching kids at the LifeTeen high school program about a variety of spiritualities in the tradition of the Catholic Church. When I took the quiz the youth were taking, my preferred spirituality came out as Augustinian! It was such an encouragement because as I looked at the Augustine Institute, I fell in love with their approach to learning with both the heart and the mind. The Augustinian spirituality of a deeper conversion of heart was a great match for me!”

Although the Augustine Institute has an online program allowing professionals to learn while continuing their work for the church, home life, business, etc. Laura was intimidated by the idea of trying to do both well. Attending a LifeTeen camp last summer, she encountered numerous people who either graduated or were working on their masters through Augustine. Encouraged by others who had participated in the program, she applied using one of her final VSI papers as a writing sample for the application process. During the time she was filling out the application, she was stuck at home with Covid and remembers how the questions on the application really led her to see the way that the Lord was calling her deeper during her work as a youth minister, time at the VSI, and experiences throughout the diocese. Laura ended up applying for the St. John Paul II scholarship, which is an opportunity to not only get her schooling paid for, but to work on campus with mentors honing leadership skills in addition to the theological training of the degree program.

This February, she was notified she was one of the finalists and flew out to Denver with nine other candidates to be part of an intense interview process on the campus. Current students in the program picked them up from the airport for a full day of activity that began with a holy hour in the beautiful chapel on campus. The candidates were able to sit in on a class, receive a presentation from Dr. Tim Grey, the president of the university, and had a series of short interviews with various professors. She remembers, “It was such a sense of being a family and learning together. You could tell the professors knew and cared for their cohort groups. These are people who go to Mass together, pray together each morning, and have a beautiful community where students are imbued with the mission of the university.” That night all the faculty and students were invited to a social night where they could get to know each other more. Four days after returning home, she was contacted by the university and offered a scholarship. 

This summer, Laura got married and moved to Colorado in preparation for the beginning of the program. “The Lord continues to take me another step closer to him and to serve the church. This is just a new step in the adventure that awaits. I don’t know what it all will bring, but I have dreams that the Lord keeps placing in my heart! I don’t want to limit what he wants to do in my life. I could have stayed in Nebraska, I could have stayed at the cathedral, but He keeps calling me deeper!”