Larisa Fava ’21, S’26

Remarks from Moravian University Societies Dinner on October 26, 2023:

Hello, everyone. My name is Larisa Fava, a member of the Moravian College class of 2021, currently enrolled in Moravian Theological Seminary master of divinity student, and the assistant director for spirituality and inclusion at Moravian University. I have the honor and privilege tonight to speak about how the Lighting the Way campaign is lighting the way for the future of Moravian students. I plan to briefly share my Moravian experience thus far and how it prepared me for the future I am now living. 

I want to start back in high school, if you don’t mind. When I think back to my senior year of high school thinking I wanted to be a small fish in a large pond in college, Moravian was the last school on my list. To be completely honest with you all, it was not at all even on my list. That all changed when I came to hang out with a friend of mine, a fellow Greyhound, who was a few years older than I am. She did not know it then, but the night I spent with her and her friends changed my college search. I went home and applied to Moravian College and was accepted later that year.

The thing that pulled me in was the community feeling that was instantly felt when on campus. It felt like my friend knew everyone, because she was always smiling and waving. I came to find out she did not know most of the people and instead told me, “That is just what Greyhounds do.” I knew that I wanted to join this Greyhound community. 

Moving forward to the fall of 2017, I was officially a Greyhound, and I could not have been more excited. At the time, I was enrolled in the neuroscience program with plans to get my degree, leave the Lehigh Valley, and never come back. What did I know, right? All I knew truly was that I had the best group of friends, amazing professors, and mountains of homework. Yet, still, I found time to join the Moravian Activities Council, known as MAC. We were a group of undergraduate students who would host tons of events free to students on and off campus to give them fun memories of their time, as well as safe events where all would be welcome. Some of my personal favorites were the semester-ly Broadway trips, South Campus ghost tours, and Wingo (yes, you heard me—wingo—that would be all-you-can-eat chicken wings while playing bingo; truly a Moravian classic.) 

Flash forward to the fall of 2019, my junior year and all of its shenanigans. It all started in the fall with a small campus outbreak of mumps which, looking back, we thought was going to be the biggest problem we encountered in the 2019-2020 school year. Boy, were we wrong. During the fall semester, I made the decision to change my major from neuroscience to computer science. This was a decision I made in partnership with my academic advisor that I should pursue my minor as a full-time major, instead of my major. At the time I was a Moravian information technology (IT) work student student, a position I held through all of my undergraduate studies. I felt that was the calling I was meant to follow beyond school. While starting courses in my new major, we were hit with the COVID-19 pandemic and sent home. This was not at all the curveball any of us were expecting, but it allowed me to think about my future and what I saw myself doing long-term. 

The pandemic was the first time I thought about spirituality as an option for my life. However, I did not see it as a role I would be in in just a few years after the start of the pandemic. I thought I would just get more involved with church life while working in IT as that was my degree. But following graduation, my first job was not one that I felt called to so I re-examined my call to spirituality. At that time, I applied to MTS with hopes of getting my master's and then becoming a college/university chaplain.

I am now in my second year at MTS and I could not be happier. The things we are learning and discussing in the classroom have filled me with a passion I did not know I had. Every class excites me to continue this journey and become a college minister. I was given the amazing opportunity of accepting a role here at Moravian as the assistant director for spirituality and inclusion. I work directly with our campus chaplain, Jennika Borger, to bolster a community of faith, inclusion, and welcome for all of our students at Moravian. I am honored and blessed to be in this role, and it truly feels like a step toward the rest of my life.  

I know that was a lot, I am sorry—that was, as my mother always says, the reader’s digest of my last seven years. There is so much more I could talk about, but I was given a time limit that I definitely went over. I am so happy to be a Greyhound and could not imagine being anything else. None of that would be possible without the amazing donors helping to contribute to lighting the way for my future.