Student Life Chaplain and Spiritual Life Association

Association Members 

The Rev. Nathan Bourne, Lead Chaplain
Nathan Bourne is the Rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Durham, where he serves a small but vibrant congregation. He comes to Durham after four years in Portsmouth, where he built community partnerships to help the Episcopal Church address issues of racial justice, environmental stewardship, and food equity on the Seacoast. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Yale Divinity School. Nathan grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, and has always found a spiritual home in the natural world. Since moving to New Hampshire, he’s grown to love the ruggedness of the White Mountains and learned to embrace winter. For him, spiritual health and a connection to the land are inseparable. Nathan lives in Durham with his wife, Nicole, and young son. Beyond his ministry to St. George’s and family life, Nathan is an avid trail runner and spends a couple of hours a week volunteering in the Hodgdon Herbarium reconnecting with his love of botany.

Derick Alexandere, Associate Chaplain
Derick Alexandere serves the Catholic community at the University of New Hampshire in his role as the Campus Minister at St. Thomas More Parish in Durham.   A native of Sanford, Maine, Derick has spent much of his life in New England and the last twelve years in Manchester, NH.  A Classical linguist by trade, Derick has degrees in Classics from Saint Anselm College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  In 2004, he received an MAR in Biblical Hebrew from the Yale Divinity School.  Dividing his time between education and ministry, Derick taught Latin and Religion at the University and secondary levels for fifteen years and continues to coordinate Adult Faith Formation for Saint Catherine of Parish in Manchester, NH.  In addition to these pastoral and professional pursuits, Derick enjoys spending time with his wife Anna and three daughters, Alice, Evelyn, and Isabelle, playing piano, coaching tennis, and curling up with the occasional mystery or true crime book.

Minister Tim Hafner, Associate Chaplain
Tim Hafner is a campus staff minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He is a native New Englander, having grown up in Massachusetts and then attending the University of New Hampshire, graduating in 1982 with a degree in forestry. After graduation he joined the U.S. Air Force where he flew F-16s on active duty and later transitioned to commercial flying for a major U.S. airline. While on active duty he earned a Master of Aviation Science degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. After 20 years of flying, God called Tim to fulltime ministry, first as a middle-school teacher, then a high school teacher, and now as a college minister where he focuses on the athlete and ROTC communities. In addition to his campus activities, he is also an elder and preacher at Durham Evangelical Church. Tim and his wife Laura (39 years and counting!) have been living in Durham for more than two decades. He has 2 grown children and 1 son-in-law, and when he isn’t working on campus, he spends his summers as co-owner and chief instructor of Fishtail Riding School, a motorcycle riding school based in New Hampshire.

Richard Haynes, Jr,  Associate Chaplain
Richard is currently the Associate Director of Admissions for Diversity at the University of New Hampshire.
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Richard Haynes was a first-generation student who was strongly encouraged by his middle school teacher to continue his education.  After serving in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, he earned a BFA from Lehman College and an MFA from Pratt Institute.  Richard is the recipient of the President's Excellence through Diversity Staff Award, the Social Justice Award, and the Presidential Staff Award of Excellence at the University of New Hampshire; the NEACAC IDEAL Award; the Baha'i Faith Vision of Race Unity Award; New Hampshire Magazine Best of New Hampshire Renaissance Man (with a citation from New Hampshire Governor Craig R. Benson); and the 2003 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, State of New Hampshire and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was also a nominee for the Educator of the Year Award at McIntosh College. Richard is a renowned artist, nationally recognized for his paintings and photographs.  His work is in the permanent collections of the Currier Museum of Art, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Historic New England, the University of New Hampshire, and many other public and private collections.  He has been an artist-in-residence in New Hampshire public schools, Historic New England, the University of New Hampshire, and the Currier Museum of Art.  

Rabbi Robin Nafshi, Associate Chaplain
Rabbi Robin Nafshi (also known as Rabbi Robin) was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2005. She joined Temple Beth Jacob in July of 2010. Before that, she served as the Assistant Rabbi at Temple Emeth in Teaneck, NJ and the Associate Rabbi of Temple Beth-El in Hillsborough, NJ. Rabbi Robin is a graduate of both New York University and Cornell Law School. She worked in the San Francisco Bay Area as an attorney, legal editor, and legal author before attending rabbinical school. Rabbi Robin embraces the definition of rabbi as “teacher” – in the classroom, while leading worship, during meetings, and in personal conversations and interactions. Rabbi Robin cares deeply about people and listens with an open and non-judgmental heart; pastoral counseling is another core part of her rabbinate.
Rabbi Robin shares her life with her partner, Cantor Shira Nafshi, who serves as TBJ’s part-time cantor. They are the delighted parents of Liba, who joined their family in January of 2014.

Jacob Young, Associate Chaplain
Jacob is the lead pastor of King’s Cross Church which meets at the Hope for NH Recovery Center in Manchester, NH. His pastoral ministry is primarily focused on helping people recover their humanity by loving and following Jesus, and has taken on specific expressions of serving people in recovery along with advocating and caring for survivors of abuse. Having grown up with his dad in the military, Jacob is “generally American” but feels most at home in New Hampshire. He is currently finishing his Masters of Divinity at Knox Theological Seminary and graduated from Auburn University with a degree in Philosophy and English in 2007. In his free time, Jacob takes Taekwondo with his kids, and holds several state records in powerlifting. He is an ultra fan of Nine Inch Nails, and also really likes cigars, comic books, Keanu Reeves, and Taylor Swift.

Mahmoud Sowe, Associate Chaplain
Mahmoud Sowe is a Muslim and practitioner of the Islamic faith. He was born in Tucson, Arizona, while his parents from the Gambia were completing their college education. They returned to the Gambia when Mahmoud was about a year old, and he spent most of his early childhood there. At 15, Mahmoud returned to the United States with his sister to join their mother, who was completing her Doctorate at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Mahmoud is an Assistant Director of Admissions & Student Engagement at UNH and an Advisor for the Muslim Student Association. He is also the Assistant Treasurer of the Islamic Society of the Seacoast Area, where he occasionally does the Friday sermons and serves in other capacities as needed. He received his undergraduate degree in Business Administration from the University of Maine at Machias and his master’s in Community Development from the University of New Hampshire. He enjoys soccer (the real football), which he played throughout high school and college. He is a Liverpool fan in the English Premier League and enjoys watching them during the weekends.