Rodney Adam (BA ’76) Trinity College Alumnus of the Year 2003
God leads a Trinity alumnus from a one-room school-house to a career that combines scientific achievement and commitment to Christ.
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Director of Alumni Relations Ilene Foote presents Rod his award. |
From the Farm to the Classroom
A single conversation brought young Rod Adam from a one-room schoolhouse in rural Nebraska to Trinity College. “I didn’t intend to go to a Christian school,” says Dr. Rod Adam, now an award-winning professor and research scientist at the University of Arizona. “God led me to Trinity.” The summer before his first year of college, Rod spent time at an Evangelical Free Church camp in Polk, Nebraska. There he met a pastor who influenced him to give up a scholarship at a secular university and attend Trinity instead.
Rod came to Trinity in 1972 with long hair and a flair for fixing cars and taking photos. During his junior year Rod met his wife, Mary Saufferer (BA ’78), now a medical doctor and researcher in the field of adolescent decision-making. She says, “I thought he was one of those grease monkey motor-heads.” But she was soon impressed by Rod’s intelligence—he graduated magna cum laude with a triple major in mathematics, chemistry, and biology. “He could sleep through class and still do better than I did,” she laughs.
In college, Rod says, “my faith was definitely developed. Most of the kids there and the faculty were truly interested in serving God, and it was obvious. When I came to Trinity, serving God was not at the top of my priority list. I was a Christian, and I knew it, but God moved me much more in the direction of serving Him. The whole environment affected me.”
 Rod in the 1976 yearbook |
God Prepares a Scientist for Service
With his interest in science expanding and his relationship with God deepening, Rod began medical school at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, where he was a James Scholar and graduated with honors. His mentor, Dr. Larry Edwards, the head of Infectious Disease, was also a Christian. “He had an important influence on my interest in medicine and infectious disease and also on making Christianity and Christian commitment part of what I did.” Rod completed his specialty training in internal medicine and infectious disease, first at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, then at the National Institutes of Health.
Soon Rod began to oversee his own laboratory, publishing hundreds of journal articles, book chapters, abstracts, and coediting a book in the field of infectious disease. One of his articles has been cited more than two hundred times in the works of others. Rod is a member of the Arizona Bioterrorism and Epidemic Advisory Committee and a Fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America. He is a medical doctor with such knowledge that he mentors PhD students from around the world.
Like his mentor, Rod never divorces his love for Christ from his endeavors in science. Instead, God uses him to help others. Physicians call on Rod’s expertise in the care of people with compromised immune systems, such as bone marrow transplant patients and those infected with HIV. Missionaries who become ill overseas and short-term mission groups seek his specialized understanding of parasites. Through his Traveler’s Clinic, Rod advises tourists on immunizations.
Rod also benefits the public on a larger scale through his research on parasites: “If we understand the organism better, if we understand the biochemical pathway, we better understand the strategies to fight it, to immunize for it.” Rod’s work has mainly focused on Giardia lamblia, a parasite found worldwide. In the United States, it commonly affects children in day-care facilities or campers who drink tainted stream water.
But perhaps most significantly, Rod offers a credible defense of the Christian faith in an environment often hostile to Christianity. “You need to have a very sophisticated knowledge and be established in the field,” Mary explains, “or what you say doesn’t have any weight. With Rod, it does.” One winter, two days before Christmas, Rod and Mary invited a Chinese postdoctoral student and his wife to spend the holiday in their home as part of the family. Later, through an international Bible study Rod led on campus, the couple came to know and follow Christ.
The Next Generation
Just as one pastor convinced Rod to attend Trinity and an older scientist modeled for him a profession dedicated to Christ, Dr. Rod Adam is exerting his own influence on the next generation. Last fall, Rod’s story came full circle when 18-year-old Ross O’Hair enrolled at Trinity, in part because of Rod’s encouragement. “He told me Trinity was a great school and that I would be stretched here,” Ross says. “Dr. Adam is always looking for an opportunity to learn or serve—I really respect him.”
The TIU Alumni Association salutes Dr. Rod Adam’s life of service to the Lord and enthusiastically and gratefully extends to him the Trinity College Alumnus of the Year Award for 2003.
