Welcome New Students

Community News

Incoming Class of 2005, from left: Lissa Gundlach, Heidi McCormack (front), France Yoli Joseph (back), Marian Stewart, David Pyle, Lynne Garner, Joseph Harrington, Jeff Stoyanoff (front), Erik Carlson, Leslie Kee, David Breeden, and Seanan Holland.

Nan Hobart, our Chaplain and Director of Admissions and Vocation, is so excited about the entering class of residential students, she's beaming.  "The diversity of their life experiences, is absolutely phenomenal and will really add to their educational experience," says Nan.

The students bring their experiences as professors, as Marine Corp aviators, as community and public health organizers, and as public school teachers. (more)

As the president of Meadville Lombard Theological School, there are two moments when I am most moved by the work we do here.  Our annual commencement is one.  I am especially confident in the future of Unitarian Universalism when women and men who have been our students become our colleagues in the work of ministry.

The other moment comes each year about this time: when the new residential students arrive on our campus and bring with them the excitement�and trepidation�of their new status as theological students. (more)

Learning for Life (for the student in each of us)

Walk the Edmund Pettus bridge and retrace the steps of those who marched from Selma to Montgomery. Visit the church whose burning drew Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman to Philadelphia, Mississippi. Meet veterans of the movement who are now members of the faculty of the school they helped integrate in Oxford, Mississippi.

These are only a few of the historic landmarks on the tour offered by Meadville Lombard Theological School this spring. The tour is being offered as a course for theological students but is open to the public, as well. Besides visiting the sites, participants will meet with activists from the 1960s.

Participants will board the luxury motor coach at the Meadville Lombard campus in Chicago on March 18, 2006 and return back to Chicago on March 26.

The course has been planned and will be led by the Rev. Dr. Gordon Gibson, who was involved in the early stages of the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign and was the Unitarian Universalist minister in Mississippi from 1969 to 1984.

For more information, view a brochure, or read more here.

Considering ministry? Know someone who is (or should)?

Each fall, Meadville Lombard holds a Prospective Student Conference for people who are thinking about ministry, or even just thinking about thinking about it. Learn more at the link above, or contact Nan Hobart.

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Welcome New Board, Faculty, and Staff Members

We've introduced you to our new residential students, but there are some other new members of our community with whom we would like you to become familiar.

We couldn't be more pleased with the committment and expertise brought to our Board of Trustees by its most recent additions: Larry Ladd and Kurt Steele.  Read more about them on our website by clicking on their names.

Michael Hogue was appointed Lecturer in Liberal Theology
at Meadville Lombard in the spring and joined the faculty in September.  Hogue, who will receive his PhD in Theology
from the University of Chicago in December 2005,
will teach two courses in the 2005-06 school year, as well as
offer two workshops on research methods, work with student advisees and perform faculty/school committee work.

We are pleased to have Ben Legg join the faculty, although we won't be seeing much of him.  He will be teaching English to Unitarian Students at the Protestant Theological Institute in Kolozsvar, Romania. He has just begun his first semester there.  Legg is a life-long Unitarian Universalist who has received his certification in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Legg speaks Spanish, Portuguese and French, and has been a bilingual tutor in the Amherst, Massachusetts, school district.

Tina Porter joined Meadville Lombard in December, 2004, filling the newly-created position of Director of Communications. She brings her experience in organizational communications, her skills in writing and design, as well as her dedication to the UU movement to this school.

Other Community News

At the June Board of Trustees meeting, Susann Pangerl was promoted from Associate Dean to Dean of Academic Programs.  Pangerl joined the Meadville Lombard faculty in 2000 and is the director of the Doctor of Ministry Program as well as an Associate Professor of Pastoral Care.

During their meeting in March, the Board of Trustees of Meadville Lombard Theological School voted unanimously to promote David Bumbaugh to the rank of full professor.

On June 29, 2005, Susan Harlow was presented the �Pioneer Award� by the United Church of Christ Coalition for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns for her work in 1984 in submitting a resolution to the Massachusetts Conference, UCC that later was passed by the 1985 UCC General Synod beginning the �Open and Affirming� process in the UCC.  "Three others and I were given this award because we were the group that wrote the resolution, submitted it to the Conference Annual Meeting, strategized and lobbied for its passage, and sweated nervously as the resolution was passed and referred for action by the national gathering of the denomination at its next General Synod," said Harlow.  During the last 20 years, the �Open and Affirming� program, similar to the UUA Welcoming Congregation program, has grown so that 700 of the 6,000 congregations have publicly voted to be �Open and Affirming� and has raised the level of discussion within the denomination on these issues so that in Atlanta this year, 80% of the delegates voted in favor of �Equality in Marriage� for persons of differing or same genders. 

Jon Rice, Building and Grounds Supervisor and Adjunct Faculty, spent part of his summer touring refugees camps in Gaza, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron with the Mideast Children's Alliance.  Read more here.

William Murry, former Meadville President and current editor of the Journal of Liberal Religion, announced that his book, A Faith for All Seasons, has been translated into Hungarian and published in Transylvania. The project was carried out by former Meadville Lombard student Czire Szabolcs (Szabi) and former Meadville-sponsored English language teacher, Collen Sanders.

Jerome Stone, adjunct faculty, is being featured in the book The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity, 1950-2005 (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), by Dr. Gary Dorrien. This book is the third volume in Dr. Dorrien�s trilogy on American liberal theology.

We are so very grateful to all our supporters this year. We are especially pleased to announce that 50 donors have become a part of our brand new Partners in Ministry multiple-year giving society.  To view the honor roll, click here.