The UNH Chaplain and Spiritual Life Association is a spiritual community of associated chaplains, representing many of the world’s religious, spiritual, and faith traditions, who share a collective commitment to serving the spiritual needs of the students, faculty, and staff of The University of New Hampshire.
This Association helps the UNH community stay connected with their faith tradition, as well as coordinate on-campus worship opportunities, and help students find off campus congregations and organizations.
UNH Chaplain and Spiritual Life Association
chaplain.association@ngskmc-eis.net
(603)862-2054
Meet us outside HOCO on Thursdays!
Goals
- Create structures of inclusion for the diversity of faith traditions present on campus.
- Create and support a rich diversity of caring communities in which students, faculty, and staff can explore and nurture their deepest convictions, and engage in honest and respectful conversation around questions of ultimate meaning, purpose, and value.
- Cultivate and embody our respective traditions within the larger campus community through practices, celebrations, observances, and opportunities for reflection.
- Offer programs and events across the University that promote religious, spiritual, and moral life;
- Foster an intellectual life at the University that articulates thoughtful, diverse religious and spiritual voices that encourages spiritual literacy and interfaith understanding.
- Model for the wider community how people who may come from profoundly different religious and spiritual perspectives can live cooperatively in community and appreciate and learn from each other’s differences.
- Collaborate with other professionals within the University to encourage healthy practices, relationships, and ways of living that promote the overall intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being of the community and its members.
- Provide pastoral support and guidance to members of the University, both in times of crisis and of celebration.
- Create awareness throughout the campus community so that students, staff, faculty, and others will recognize the Chaplain’s office as a place to turn in times of need and crisis.
the UNH Chaplain and Spiritual Life Association Protocols
Contact the UNH Chaplain and Spiritual Life Association
Association Members
The Rev. Nathan Bourne, Lead Chaplain
Nathan Bourne is the Rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Durham, where he serves a small but vibrant congregation. He comes to Durham after four years in Portsmouth, where he built community partnerships to help the Episcopal Church address issues of racial justice, environmental stewardship, and food equity on the Seacoast. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Yale Divinity School. Nathan grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, and has always found a spiritual home in the natural world. Since moving to New Hampshire, he’s grown to love the ruggedness of the White Mountains and learned to embrace winter. For him, spiritual health and a connection to the land are inseparable. Nathan lives in Durham with his wife, Nicole, and young son. Beyond his ministry to St. George’s and family life, Nathan is an avid trail runner and spends a couple of hours a week volunteering in the Hodgdon Herbarium reconnecting with his love of botany.
Derick Alexandere, Associate Chaplain
Derick Alexandere serves the Catholic community at the University of New Hampshire in his role as the Campus Minister at St. Thomas More Parish in Durham. A native of Sanford, Maine, Derick has spent much of his life in New England and the last twelve years in Manchester, NH. A Classical linguist by trade, Derick has degrees in Classics from Saint Anselm College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2004, he received an MAR in Biblical Hebrew from the Yale Divinity School. Dividing his time between education and ministry, Derick taught Latin and Religion at the University and secondary levels for fifteen years and continues to coordinate Adult Faith Formation for Saint Catherine of Parish in Manchester, NH. In addition to these pastoral and professional pursuits, Derick enjoys spending time with his wife Anna and three daughters, Alice, Evelyn, and Isabelle, playing piano, coaching tennis, and curling up with the occasional mystery or true crime book.
Pastor Lillian Jane Buckley, Associate Chaplin
Lillian Buckley currently serves as the interim pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Portsmouth, NH. She is a native New Englander born and raised in Kittery, Maine and an avid sports enthusiast. She received her first call to the ministry as a sophomore at Bates College where she was involved with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Ten years later she answered the call to ministry and matriculated at Harvard Divinity School where she received an MDiv. In 2010 she received her DMin degree from Gordon Conwell. Lillian worked as a Postmaster for the US Postal Service while attending graduate school. She is currently a caregiver for her 99 year old mother, writes and performs gospel music, and recently illustrated a children’s book about Dr King’s 1952 visit to a church in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Steve Goodwin, Associate Chaplin
Steve Goodwin serves as NH Team Lead for Sojourn Collegiate Ministry, a New England-based campus ministry focusing on justice, community, and faith. His background in spiritual leadership is marked by these values, including pushing for healthy meal options for the underprivileged as homeless ministry coordinator, and partnering with his seminary to elevate diverse voices in the community. Steve holds a Master of Divinity degree from Emmanuel Christian Seminary, a nondenominational, ecumenical seminary in East Tennessee, and believes that our first experience of God is in beauty and joy. Steve and his wife, Katie-Starr, are new to New England and love the Seacoast region; they enjoy traveling, hiking, visiting Maine beaches, and learning new recipes. Steve also enjoys dabbling in various art forms, including dry media, wood carving, and woodblock printing, as well as drawing with his fountain pens.
Minister Tim Hafner, Associate Chaplain
Tim Hafner is a campus staff minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He is a native New Englander, having grown up in Massachusetts and then attending the University of New Hampshire, graduating in 1982 with a degree in forestry. After graduation he joined the U.S. Air Force where he flew F-16s on active duty and later transitioned to commercial flying for a major U.S. airline. While on active duty he earned a Master of Aviation Science degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. After 20 years of flying, God called Tim to fulltime ministry, first as a middle-school teacher, then a high school teacher, and now as a college minister where he focuses on the athlete and ROTC communities. In addition to his campus activities, he is also an elder and preacher at Durham Evangelical Church. Tim and his wife Laura (39 years and counting!) have been living in Durham for more than two decades. He has 2 grown children and 1 son-in-law, and when he isn’t working on campus, he spends his summers as co-owner and chief instructor of Fishtail Riding School, a motorcycle riding school based in New Hampshire.
Richard Haynes, Jr, Associate Chaplain
Richard is currently the Associate Director of Admissions for Diversity at the University of New Hampshire.
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Richard Haynes was a first-generation student who was strongly encouraged by his middle school teacher to continue his education. After serving in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, he earned a BFA from Lehman College and an MFA from Pratt Institute. Richard is the recipient of the President's Excellence through Diversity Staff Award, the Social Justice Award, and the Presidential Staff Award of Excellence at the University of New Hampshire; the NEACAC IDEAL Award; the Baha'i Faith Vision of Race Unity Award; New Hampshire Magazine Best of New Hampshire Renaissance Man (with a citation from New Hampshire Governor Craig R. Benson); and the 2003 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, State of New Hampshire and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was also a nominee for the Educator of the Year Award at McIntosh College. Richard is a renowned artist, nationally recognized for his paintings and photographs. His work is in the permanent collections of the Currier Museum of Art, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Historic New England, the University of New Hampshire, and many other public and private collections. He has been an artist-in-residence in New Hampshire public schools, Historic New England, the University of New Hampshire, and the Currier Museum of Art.
Rabbi Berel Slavaticki, Associate Chaplain
Rabbi Berel Slavaticki, leads The UNH & Seacoast Jewish Center. Rabbi Berel was born in Antwerp Belgium, studied in Rabbinical Colleges in Belgium, Israel, Maryland, Michigan, and New York. He received his Rabbinical Bachelors Degree in 2015, and then moved on to a successful two years of teaching in Baltimore and Detroit. While completing his rabbinical and postgraduate studies, he spent four years leading services, educational seminars, and community outreach programs in numerous cities across the globe, such as Lithuania, Ukraine, Israel, California, Florida, Oklahoma and many more. He has also taught and lectured on an array of subjects such as Talmud, Halacha, and Chassidic philosophy in New York, Michigan and Antwerp. He moved with his wife Rochy and 2 children to Durham in 2018.
Rabbi Robin Nafshi, Associate Chaplain
Rabbi Robin Nafshi (also known as Rabbi Robin) was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2005. She joined Temple Beth Jacob in July of 2010. Before that, she served as the Assistant Rabbi at Temple Emeth in Teaneck, NJ and the Associate Rabbi of Temple Beth-El in Hillsborough, NJ. Rabbi Robin is a graduate of both New York University and Cornell Law School. She worked in the San Francisco Bay Area as an attorney, legal editor, and legal author before attending rabbinical school. Rabbi Robin embraces the definition of rabbi as “teacher” – in the classroom, while leading worship, during meetings, and in personal conversations and interactions. Rabbi Robin cares deeply about people and listens with an open and non-judgmental heart; pastoral counseling is another core part of her rabbinate.
Rabbi Robin shares her life with her partner, Cantor Shira Nafshi, who serves as TBJ’s part-time cantor. They are the delighted parents of Liba, who joined their family in January of 2014.
