Originally from South Africa, he completed a BTh and MTh at the University of Pretoria, after which he relocated to the US and earned an MDiv at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Dirk’s chaplaincy experience has predominantly been in palliative care, where he has collaboratively researched spiritual assessment tailored for the interdisciplinary team context. Dirk is attending the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he will earn an MPH in Epidemiology. In addition to working on improved models of spiritual assessment, he plans to explore how targeted chaplaincy interventions can be formulated based on a better understanding of patients’ spiritual processes.