Issue: Spring 2017 | Posted: June 1, 2017
Josh Trent
Distinguished Achievement in Government/Public Service
Josh Trent serves as the deputy chief counsel for the Health Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the United States Congress. He says every week he relies on the basic building blocks of critical thinking and communications skills that Union helped him develop.
鈥淯nion helped me flesh out an understanding of how each person is made in God鈥檚 image and thus is capable of accomplishing great good, yet fallen and thus capable of committing great evil,鈥 Trent says. 鈥淪tudying the Bible, history and ethics, I gained a better appreciation of the depravity of humankind鈥檚 sin and the gloriousness of the grace and forgiveness found in Jesus.鈥
Trent graduated from Union with degrees in communication arts and Christian ethics. After graduation, he moved to Washington, D.C., to intern in the George W. Bush administration. He worked at the Labor Department, the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services. After getting his master鈥檚 degree in international relations, Trent worked on health care policy in the U.S. Senate.
Trent says many of the lessons he learned in his undergraduate years still inform his thinking as a professional today, and some of his strongest and dearest friendships were forged at Union.
鈥淭here were so many faculty, staff and administrators who I learned from inside and outside of the classroom,鈥 Trent says. 鈥淭hey each helped shape and inform my thinking professionally and personally in different ways.鈥
He says Union鈥檚 commitment to a Christian worldview, rigorous intellectual inquiry and integration of faith and learning made him a well-rounded student and professional.
鈥淭he things that made Union attractive to me in 1997 remain hallmarks of the Union experience two decades later,鈥 Trent says.