The thistle is the national flower of Scotland, according to the Natural Trust for Scotland website.
Charisma Bray, the English Hall director, and her family lived in Scotland for eight years before returning to the midwest in the summer of 2025. Her kids missed Scotland, so they named their dog Thistle.
While she may have traded Scotland’s moors for Upland’s cornfields, Bray still gets a taste of wilderness through books by Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen. She also enjoys spiritual formation books, Christian classics and fantasy books.
Entering her second year as a hall director, Bray has been able to work with multiple groups of PAs and DAs. While this year’s team is still new, she loves seeing their uniqueness as people and how they lead in different ways.
The PA/DA team went all out for welcome weekend, cheering with the rest of campus, Bray said. She was impressed with how cheerful and dedicated everyone was.
The people at Taylor have a desire to help others, she said. They show up in tangible and visible ways.
“My college experience was not that,” Bray said. “It was not 50 people cheering for me and helping unload my car and moving it into my dorm. I was at a Christian college; people were kind-hearted and wanted to help, but it wasn’t this giant expression of visible excitement, but also tangible help. And it seems like people here are just very quick to volunteer or quick to say yes to helping with practical needs.”
The soccer team carried in the freshmen’s belongings with a positive attitude, Bray said, and she can always count on Samuel Morris Hall residents to step up to help.
Although English welcomed everyone, the basement floor of English flooded, dampening some spirits as residents were temporarily displaced to neighboring residence halls.
Still, Bray said the PA/DA teams worked to welcome the displaced Cellar residents back into the community. They were missed, she said, and English Hall is glad to have them back.
Bray values the culture Taylor and English have developed. English Hall has 51 years worth of traditions, and its residents continue to build more, she said.
Bray wants to foster the culture English has, but also welcome the freshmen and other new residents, ensuring they are cared for.
She can relate to the freshmen’s feeling of “starting over.” As a kid, she moved around a lot. She lived in Minnesota, North Dakota and Alaska before the age of seven. Eventually, she and her family settled in southeastern Colorado.
“(It was) not what people think of when they think ‘Colorado,’” Bray said. “I never skied and I never snowboarded. I just lived with the tumbleweeds and the tractors. It was very rural.”
Then she moved again, to go to Nelson University, formerly Southwestern Assemblies of God University, in Texas. She studied counseling before attaining her masters in human services counseling.
Around this time, she started dating Dennis Bray, the man who is now her husband.
He decided to pursue his PHD in Scotland at the University of St Andrews. So, Bray moved, feeling like she was starting over again.
She compared the intense bonding she experienced with new friendships in Scotland to the residence hall experience.
“You’re (Taylor freshmen) on this wing or this hall with new people, and they’re like your new family, and you just attach quickly because you’re going through kind of an intense experience together. And those relationships can be really deep and meaningful and last,” Bray said.
Bray experienced a similar process for building relationships in Scotland, and it was great, she said.
Still, Bray wrestled with some cultural differences, including her midwestern small talk seeming out of place in Scotland. Sometimes, even though they all spoke English, words had different meanings.
Even emotional expressions were different. Bray found that her American impulse to share her emotions and speak her mind were different from the more reserved manner of others in Scotland. She learned to adapt while maintaining a genuine and authentic version of herself, she said.
“For them, it seems like it’s a long and steady showing up that makes a friendship, not so much the initial friend chemistry that you might feel with someone,” Bray said.
Throughout her travels, Bray said she gained an inner sense of flexibility. Rather than seeing new experiences as a threat, she could approach them with curiosity.
Her family and “safe-people” helped her navigate new situations, Bray said.
She looked at Taylor as another new adventure with her family.
There is something providential about where God places people, Bray said. She brings the hope of finding beauty in new things to Taylor.
Bray encouraged students not to shy away from the difficult parts of life. She has found community in doing fun and wonderful things, but also vulnerable and difficult things. The hard parts of life are not necessarily roadblocks — they can be opportunities, she said.
“They might be actually what God is using to open our eyes to who we are, to who He wants to be in our lives, to things we need to change, or to ways of developing empathy for others,” Bray said. “So, be encouraged. There will be hard things, and there will be great things, and rejoice in the gift of the good things, and realize that God is also there in the times of desolation, and that He’s working them for your formation into the image of Christ.”
