Joy Schroeder is a veteran campus minister, serving for over twenty-five years at Montana State University along with her husband Dick who directs the ministry. Through deliberate, thoughtful mentoring, they develop students and campus ministry interns with proven character and ministry skills. Tools for Mentoring is a product of their experience and God’s profound grace.

Joy was raised in a Chicago suburb with dreams of someday seeing the mountains of the West. She graduated from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma with a degree in elementary education. She taught in the Tulsa Public Schools for almost three years.

More dreams came true than simply going west when she joined a Youth with a Mission team doing evangelistic outreach in Yellowstone Park in 1977. She met Dick Schroeder, who was the team leader, and they were married the next summer. Joy joined Dick in Chi Alpha campus ministry at Montana State University in Bozeman, and they have served there ever since.

Joy was in a tragic car accident in 1987. She sustained a broken neck and is now paralyzed from the chest down; the paralysis includes her hands. At the time of the accident, their children David and Mandy were four years old and one. [For more, see the short story of the accident.]

The accident did not change Joy’s life mission to empower people to run life’s race unencumbered. She continued active involvement in the campus ministry through mentoring and public speaking. She homeschooled David and Mandy through 10th grade and 6th grade respectively.

She spent four years developing Tools for Mentoring to help her, and others, mentor better. Every word was typed with a pencil strapped to each hand and with a passion to see people building people more effectively.