John Millett-John Young
Mentor-Scholar Award
This award was established by Rev. Dr. John Young to honor his excellent mentor Dr.
John Millett. The Mentor-Scholar award is given each year to recognize an original
student paper and honor strong mentoring relationships between students and their
professors.
John Young was a student at Wichita University from 1961 - 1964 with a double major
in History and Political Science. Young lived at home to save money, worked as a janitor
in the Engineering Department, and took 19-22 class hours per semester in order to
finish in three years. His first advisor was Professor Emory Lindquist, who became
Wichita State University’s President. Professor John Millett then became Young’s advisor.
Professor Millett was an excellent teacher. He took a personal interest in many of
his students; consistently required papers with attention to the complexity of the
material covered, and challenged his students to apply what they were learning to
the world around them. Through Professor Millett, Young fell in love with comparative
politics, and decided to do a senior thesis on how the Conservative Party in the UK
was perverting the British welfare state through regressive tax policies, using the
Parliamentary budget debates for this research. Completing his senior thesis under
Millett helped Young to prepare for graduate school. Professor Millett was instrumental
in helping Young to explore graduate programs and to apply for graduate fellowships.
Young chose to attend Washington University in St. Louis with a National Defense Education
Act Fellowship. He completed his doctoral course work, remaining engaged in his social
activism. Young went on to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. He credits his
education at WSU as having helped him to succeed: in his career, as a person and activist.
Young has written on civic activism, nonviolence, Gandhi and Gandhians, the Psalms,
and global spirituality.