Alumni Profile: Matt Scogin ’02

Looking to the past, Matt Scogin views his time at Hope as a time of great growth.

“The Hope community places a lot of emphasis on growing spiritually as well as academically, and I really appreciated the opportunities for Christian fellowship and faith development,” says Matt.

He advises students to use their time at Hope to develop their career choice, whatever it is, with a sense of vocation and as a spiritual calling, just as he did. “As a student, these opportunities for Christian development helped me to think about my time in college as much bigger than just preparing for a career and instead preparing my mind, heart and spirit to be used by God in the world,” he says.

Beyond the opportunity to think deeply about his choices, Matt appreciated the way that the college offered him different methods of learning by mixing classes with beyond-the-books learning. “Hope is great because it balances rigorous academics with many enriching outof- classroom learning experiences,” says Matt.

Matt certainly took advantage of those out-of-classroom experiences. During his four years at Hope, he participated in Student Congress, Hope Republicans, Fellowship of Christian Students, and Nykerk, in addition to serving as a teaching assistant in the department of political science and several internships with the Ottawa County Republican Party.

“You will meet people who will be friends for life,” he says to students. “So take advantage of as much as you can during your four years at Hope and squeeze as many extracurricular activities into your free time as you can.”

In addition to all of his extracurricular activities, Matt worked hard to earn his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics. After graduating from Hope, Matt pursued a challenging future. He attended graduate school at Harvard and now serves as the senior advisor for domestic finance at the United States Treasury Department. Matt says that Hope prepared him very well.

“Hope’s excellent professors and academic rigor prepared me for graduate school at Harvard,” he says. “Other experiences, such as the Washington Honors Semester, helped me develop skills to excel in the professional world.”

As he pursues his post-Hope career, Matt appreciates both the skills and the sense of purpose that his undergraduate years have helped provide.

“Today in the working world, I view my career as a spiritual calling from God. One doesn’t necessarily have to be a missionary to be in missions, and I see my secular work as having a spiritual purpose.”

This profile was written by Danielle K. Johnson, a 2008 Hope College graduate from Kalamazoo, Mich., for the 2008-09 Hope College Catalog.

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