Started UPSem 2020: Sedae Slaughter (pursuing MACE)

  1. Started UPSem 2002: Rev. Lori Raible (MDiv 2006)
  2. Started UPSem 2003: Rev. Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown (MDiv 2008)
  3. Started UPSem 2004: Rev. Nadine Ellsworth-Moran (MDiv / MACE 2011)
  4. Started UPSem 2005: Rev. Noe Juarez-Loayza (MDiv 2010)
  5. Started UPSem 2006: Rev. Lorenzo Small (MDiv 2013)
  6. Started UPSem 2007: Rev. Ken Fuquay (MACE 2011 / MDiv 2015)
  7. Started UPSem 2008: Rev. Jonathan Davis (MDiv 2014) 
  8. Started UPSem 2009: Rev. British Hyrams (MDiv/MACE 2016)
  9. Started UPSem 2010: Rev. Charmaine Smith (MDiv 2017)
  10. Started UPSem 2011: Rev. Vikki Brogdon (MDiv 2016)
  11. Started UPSem 2012: Rev. Dr. Doug Harr (MDiv 2018)
  12. Started UPSem 2013: Martin Pruitt (MDiv 2018 / MACE 2019)
  13. Started UPSem 2014: Rev. William Joseph “Joey” Haynes III (MDiv 2019)
  14. Started UPSem 2015: Rev. Gail Henderson-Belsito (MDiv 2020)
  15. Started UPSem 2016: Rev. Eric Tang (MDiv 2021)
  16. Started UPSem 2017: Rev. Marina Luckhoo (pursuing MDiv)
  17. Started UPSem 2018: Jason Smith
  18. Started UPSem 2019: Ryan Atkinson
  19. Started UPSem 2020: Sedae Slaughter (pursuing MACE)
  20. Started UPSem 2021: Matt Wiedle (pursuing MDiv and MACE)

The following is part of a series of 20 profiles that represent each year that Charlotte has been enrolling students. 

Special Needs Teaching Assistant
Harding High School
Charlotte, North Carolina

Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Sedae Slaughter traded the city for brotherly love for the Queen City, moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2008. Having graduated from Independence University, Slaughter works as a special needs teaching assistant and team ministry teacher at her church, the Family of Faith Christian Center, and as a mental and parenting coach.

Growing up in The African Methodist Episcopal Church, Slaughter now attends a nondenominational church where she is highly involved, an involvement that led her to consider more formal theological education. “I decided to start seminary to gain a better understanding of the Christian practices so that I can properly and effectively teach younger generations.” Slaughter, also, chose the Charlotte campus of Union Presbyterian Seminary because of its closeness to her home and because her husband, Mike, was already enrolled. “My husband found Union first,” she says. “I liked what I saw and heard from him. After meeting a few professors and staff members, I decided it was time.” Following several years of seminary, Slaughter has grown to appreciate the authentic passion that fills the seminary’s halls. She affirms, “The genuine love of Jesus is there. The emotions and lessons are real and truly from the heart.”

Slaughter finds having the seminary in Charlotte essential to the health of the community and church witness in the area. UPSem Charlotte, as she notes, provides a much-needed helpful gift. “There are so many uneducated people out here that spread false narratives of who Jesus is. The seminary allows the opportunity to correct and spread facts of our God.” Not only does the seminary provide an educational opportunity for those studying and the community where it serves, but the seminary provides a supportive extended family for its students. Slaughter explains, “We are really a family. Professors will invite you to their homes and take you out to eat. The spirit within the building feels freeing and uplifting.” After graduation, Slaughter hopes to use her degree to enhance and expand her work at her church, in the community, and with her nonprofit, Generation Genesis.

Slaughter lives in Charlotte with her husband and their three young children.