Meet the Tutors

Richard Booster

Dick and Kristie Booster met at Seattle Pacific University and married in 1978. They have two boys, now young men. Their older son is out on his own; Dick and Kristie homeschool their younger son.

Dick enjoys simple hobbies: walks with the family dog, Eli, and visiting friends and family. With one exception (lima beans) Dick is not picky about food; “Quantity is good,” he says.

Dick decided late in high school that God existed and that maybe he should take Him seriously. At the time, that meant “Ask not what God can do for me, but what I can do for God.” Somewhere along the line, Dick says, he figured out that God, in the gospel, was not enlisting his services but offering him mercy—mercy that his choices and attitudes daily remind him he needs, mercy for which he is grateful to God to have.

Dick has been a tutor at Gutenberg since it opened in 1994. He is at Gutenberg because of the people, because of other faculty with whom he says he has “grown up, both as a man and as a believer,” and because of the students who come to Gutenberg to get help to do the same. “The opportunity that Gutenberg provides me to learn and to help others to learn about God’s world and our place in it seems, to me, to be fairly unique,” says Dick.

Nigel Cottier

Nigel Cottier, born in Europe of an English father and a German mother, has been bi-lingual in English and German since the age of four. Following his immigration to the United States in 1960, Nigel graduated from New York University with a B.A. in German. After spending a number of years "trying to find himself"—during which time he hitchhiked around the United States, worked on a kibbutz in Israel, was a derrick-hand on an oil rig in Eastern Montana, and lived in a peace commune in Missoula, Montana—he married and became the father of two children, Derek and Jordana (named after the Jordan river).

Nigel has spent the last eight years working on a Ph.D. in German at the University of Oregon, and he is currently in the process of completing his dissertation, titled "Totality, Alterity, and the Sublime in Peter Weiss' The Aesthetics of Resistance."

David Crabtree

David Crabtree was born and raised in Oregon. He received his B.A. in Russian Languages and Literature in 1975 from the University of Washington. After finishing college, David attended Scribe School at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California. Over the next few years, he made several extended trips to Europe, spending about three years in three different counties. Twice he went to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) to study Russian at Leningrad State University. He spent nine months in Paris working as an au pair and a year in Rome working with missionary organizations helping Soviet Jews emigrate to the United States. In 1982, he began working for McKenzie Study Center.

David met his wife, Susan, at MSC; and they married in 1981. The Crabtrees currently live on a small farm just outside Eugene. There, David and Susan have raised and homeschooled their four children. In addition to raising and teaching the children, Susan grows flowers on the farm and has a landscape-design business.

After teaching in MSC’s Biblical Exegesis program for seven years, David began graduate studies at the University of Oregon, where he earned an M.A. in Classical Greek and a Ph.D. in History. He is one of the founders of Gutenberg College and has been a tutor there since the college opened its doors in 1994. He is also the co-author of The Language of God: A Commonsense Approach to Understanding and Applying the Bible.

Jack Crabtree

J. A. “Jack” Crabtree and his wife, Jody, married in 1972 and have four grown children and a granddaughter.

Jack, who has been at McKenzie Study Center since 1981 and is its director, concentrates on the New Testament. He is particularly interested in disentangling the Christianity of the apostles and Jesus from the Christianity of modern Christian culture. He is a co-author of The Language of God: A Commonsense Approach to Understanding and Applying the Bible and the author of The Most Real Being: A Biblical and Philosophical Defense of Divine Determinism.

Jack graduated with honors and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa when he earned his A.B. degree in philosophy from Stanford University in 1971. He has studied and taught the Bible since the early 1970s, first at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California, and then at McKenzie Study Center. In the 1980s, Jack returned to graduate school, earning his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Oregon in 1992. Jack has been a tutor at Gutenberg since it opened in 1994.

Charley Dewberry

Charley Dewberry, academic dean and tutor at Gutenberg, is thankful for the opportunity the college provides to learn and explore the most important questions in life with others in a community of believers.

Charley also works as a research scientist, diving and counting salmon throughout the Pacific Northwest. Charley’s experiences working with streams and fish has made him think a lot about what it means to be a believer and to care about God’s creation. It also led him to write Gutenberg Press’s first release, Saving Science: A Critique of Science and Its Role in Salmon Recovery. Gutenberg Press released his second book, Intelligent Discourse: Exposing the fallacious standoff between Evolution and Intelligent Design, in 2006.

Charley has been married to Susie Dewberry since 1993, and they have two boys whom they homeschool. The Dewberry family lives in Florence, Oregon, where they keep a garden and have chickens, ducks, and a Chesapeake Bay retriever (who has been taught NOT to retrieve the resident poultry). When they get a chance, they enjoy hikes on the many trails along the coast.

R. Wesley Hurd

Wes and Carol Hurd were married in 1967, and they have three children and five grandchildren. Wes and Carol are both “chocolate freaks” and enjoy camping with the family.

Wes and Carol have been Christians since their college days. They founded McKenzie Study Center in 1979, after being youth workers for twelve years on both coasts of the United States and in London, England. Wes has been a tutor at Gutenberg College since it opened in 1994.

Wes studied art education in college and has graduate degrees in biblical studies, education, and fine art. Wes is also the founder and director of Art Project, an institute of Gutenberg College that fosters a very “arts active” environment at the college by providing arts education, conferences, and art shows and performances.

Ron Julian

Ron Julian met his wife, Robby, soon after he became a Christian in 1971, and they were married in 1978. They have two wonderful children, a son (a Gutenberg graduate who is married to another Gutenberg graduate) and a daughter (currently attending Gutenberg). The Julian family has a long-time interest in the arts, especially film and music, and they would be embarrassed to admit how much time they each spend working at computers.

Ron and Robby are deeply committed to the work done at Gutenberg and McKenzie Study Center; they are grateful that they have had the opportunity to play a part in it for so long. Ron started working at McKenzie Study Center in 1982 and has had a growing role as a tutor at Gutenberg since it opened in 1994. Robby is an editor for Gutenberg College and McKenzie Study Center; she has edited the monthly newsletter News & Views since 1993.

Ron earned his B.A. degree in linguistics from the University of Oregon and his M.A. in religion from Reformed Theological Seminary. He is the author of Righteous Sinners and co-author of The Language of God: A Commonsense Approach to Understanding and Applying the Bible.

Nancy Scott

Nancy’s first career was in biology, and for ten years she worked in various research positions in aquatic ecology and fishery management. In 1989, she was on her way to pursue community development work with Wycliffe Bible Translators overseas when she spent the summer in Eugene and met Wes and Carol Hurd. Intrigued by the work of McKenzie Study Center, she decided to interrupt her plans in order to study there for a year. A year after that, she joined the staff, and she has been active in student ministry ever since.

She has directed the Residence Program for Gutenberg College since its founding in 1994. In 1996, she returned to school to complete an M.A. in Marriage and Family Therapy. Currently, she serves Gutenberg as both a tutor and the director of Community Life and Services, and she works as a licensed marriage and family counselor in private practice. She enjoys writing, traveling, and listening to live acoustic music. She occasionally brings performances to the community, via Gutenberg’s Art Project.

Chris Swanson

Chris Swanson was one of the men who began planning Gutenberg College a few years before it opened in 1994. Prior to that he taught at the University of Oregon, Northwest Christian College, and Westmont College (his alma mater).

Chris believes that Gutenberg’s discussion-based approach helps students to retain far more of the material than do other teaching methods. He also values the Christian commitment shared by the faculty because it provides a forum for pursuing truth as students form their worldview. Chris primarily teaches mathematics and the sciences, but he also greatly enjoys tutoring in areas such as philosophy and literature.

Chris and his wife, Cynthia, are blessed with three children whom Chris helps homeschool. All the Swansons share an addiction to Chris’s excellent homemade pizza.

Cynthia Swanson

Cynthia Swanson has been happily married to Dr. Chris Swanson (the Gutenberg tutor) since 1986. The couple have three children whom they homeschool. Cindy became a believer while in high school, which led her to enroll at Westmont College. She earned a degree in English and an independent major called “Dramatic Studies” at Westmont. She then studied at the University of Oregon, earning a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Arts. She worked with theatre companies for several years prior to returning to teach at Westmont College as an adjunct professor of English. In 1994, Cindy joined the teaching staff at Gutenberg. That same year she started a children’s clothing business called “Garden Kids.” Cindy’s favorite hobby is raising her kids, but she also finds baking, reading, and traveling enjoyable.