SEATTLE, WA (January 27, 2011) – Ruth Hill was one of three Seattle Pacific University alumni to receive a Medallion Award last week as part of the university’s 2011 Homecoming and Family Weekend.

Hill serves as executive minister of the Department of Women Ministries of the Evangelical Covenant Church with offices in Chicago.

Recipients are leaders within their chosen professions who reflect the values and ideals of Seattle Pacific, reflected in the university’s mission statement “to engage the culture in order to change the world.”

Following graduation from Seattle Pacific in 1972, Hill spent 19 years as a Covenant missionary to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa, where she taught Congolese high school students and constructed a curriculum to teach writing to newly literate adults.

She served 11 years leading Women Ministries, launching the “Advocacy for Victim Abuse” initiative to educate the local church on victims of domestic violence and childhood sexual assault, as well as the “Break the Chains” project to fight human trafficking. That project raised nearly half a million dollars to support partners fighting trafficking. A school for girls was named in her honor.

Hill was introduced to the luncheon gathering of 300 people by emcee Greg Asimakoupoulos, senior pastor of Mercer Island Covenant Church in suburban Seattle. Asimakoupoulos, a 1974 alumnus of Seattle Pacific University, is a member of the SPU Alumni Board and was a classmate of both Ruth and her husband, Brad. The couple met while students at the school.

“SPU is dedicated to equipping people to engage the culture and change the world,” Hill said. “That’s not why I chose it. I chose it for one reason: I was a babe in Christ and feared the tiny flame of my faith would be snuffed out in a secular university. I knew I needed a strong Christian environment – SPU was that and far more. Here my faith was nurtured, fanned into a bright flame. Here I was equipped to engage the culture and change the world.”