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March 2012
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July 30, 2010
August 27, 2007
September 2006
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Thomas Goetz
Hokusei Gakuen University
School of Social Welfare
Oyachinishi 2-3-1, Atsubetsu-ku
Sapporo 004-8631 Japan
Email: Thomas Goetz
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Tom Goetz is a long-term volunteer currently serving as professor of English in the Faculty of Social Welfare at Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo, Japan. He is also English language coordinator at Hokkaido Christian Center. Hokusei Gakuen University is a four-year liberal arts school founded more than 100 years ago by Presbyterian missionary Sarah Smith.
When Tom came under appointment as a mission associate of the PC(USA) in 1989, he was not a stranger to the East. From 1984 to 1986 he had worked for the Board of Education of the city of Sapporo as a teacher of English. After a year back in the United States working for a summer as the director of a Christian ministry in the U.S. National Parks and as a field education assistant at West Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, Tom returned to Asia. For a short time he taught English at the Faculty of Theology at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He then returned to the United States for a brief term as field education assistant for the Japanese Christian Church in Philadelphia.
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Tom holds a B.A. in psychology from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He received his Master of Divinity with a specialization in missions and ecumenics from Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. Tom was ordained to the ministry of the Word and Sacrament in 1989 and is a minister member of the Presbytery of Milwaukee.
Tom and his wife, Hideko, have a son, Asher Hiro, and a daughter, Heidi Ann.
Birthdays:
Tom - March 21
Hideko - October 23
Asher Hiro - March 23, 1990
Heidi Ann - December 26, 1992