Daniel Mouw, Carter Hall’s new Resident Director, was born in Panama, and later moved to Okinawa, Japan when he was four years old. When he was eleven, his parents moved him and his younger sister and three older brothers near Chattanooga so that their eldest could attend Tennessee Temple. Mouw also attended Tennessee Temple for both his undergraduate and seminary degrees.
Mouw, now 27, has stayed in the greater Chattanooga working odd jobs and serving in youth and college ministry since he was 21. Before coming to Covenant, he was Brainerd Baptist Church’s college pastor for over two years.
Mouw, excluding these last few months, has never experienced residence life, except as an outsider looking in. When he was attending Tennessee Temple, he commuted. He never lived on a hall, had an RA or was an RA, or had an RD. Over the years, he has had many interactions with the Covenant community through opportunities like working as a valet for Chattanooga events, driving a shuttle van for preview weekends, living on Lookout Mountain, and working out at Ashe Gym.
Through all of these interactions, he got to know Covenant faculty, staff, and students, and he began to think that Covenant would be a great place to work. He checked Covenant’s website to see if there were any job openings and there were: one in accounting and the other as a Resident Director.
Quickly disregarding the position in accounting, Mouw read the description of the RD position (having no idea what an RD is) and was immediately interested. He talked to friends and family about it and they all confirmed that he would do well in the position, so he applied and was hired. Though he has had no experience working in residence life, Mouw believes that he is where he needs to be and that God has gifted him for this position.
Mouw can often be found at Starbucks on the mountain—doing the crossword puzzle from the local paper—or outside of Carter playing Spikeball. But wherever he is, he stops whatever he's doing to talk to students.
His favorite part about his job so far has been investing in Carter’s RAs by walking alongside them, mentoring them, and pointing them to Christ. He loves Carter, “the hub” and “heartbeat of campus,” because of the students he says are friendly and full of life. Mouw’s greatest desire for these students is that they would grow, be strengthened in their faith, and truly know God through relying on Him daily.
Mouw strives to live by one of his favorite quotes by Sydney J. Harris: “The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, ‘I was wrong.’”
His bucket list includes backpacking through Europe, bungee jumping, and riding a bull. He can solve a rubix cube under a minute. And he loves this joke: “Don’t you hate it when a sentence doesn’t end the way you think it octopus.”