Dominicans dedicate new academic center

The Province of St. Joseph of the Order of Preachers has inaugurated an $18 million academic center at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. The new center (above) houses the theological library, administrative offices, and classrooms. The Dominican House of Studies includes both the Priory of the Immaculate Conception and the Pontifical Theological Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, one of seven pontifical faculties of theology in the United States.

Seminary combines two schools to form new program

The trustees of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary have approved the creation of a new School of Church Ministries to replace the former School of Church Music and Worship and the School of Leadership and Church Ministry.

The Rev. Al Mohler, president of the seminary, notes that the restructuring comes in the wake of a "substantial drop" in the number of graduate-level music students in his and other Southern Baptist seminaries. The music school, founded in 1944, is "not economically viable" today, he said. A reduction from 11 to four full-time music faculty will take place by attrition.

Satellite campus launched as independent seminary

On February 16, 2009, the board of trustees (left side) and faculty (right side) of Redeemer Seminary assembled at Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas for the new school's inaugural convocation.

Formerly the Texas satellite campus of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Redeemer Seminary has been launched as an independent school with its own board. The Rev. Steven T. Vanderhill is the new school's first president. A graduate of Kuyper College (formerly Reformed Bible College) and Westminster Theological Seminary, Vanderhill was vice president and dean of the satellite campus. The new school rents office and classroom space in an 18-story office tower in Dallas.

Recent gifts and grants

■ Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester, New York: $4 million from B. Thomas Golisano to establish the American Cancer Society Hope Lodge and Hospitality House. Also, $1.5 million from Mr. and Mrs. John S. Middleton.

■ Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Shawnee, Kansas: $2.2 million from Des Peres Baptist Church. 

■ Christ the King Seminary, East Aurora, New York: $3.5 million from an anonymous donor. 

■ Queen's Theological College, Kingston, Ontario: $250,000 from the Rev. Stephen Weaver. 

■ Wake Forest University School of Divinity, Winston-Salem, North Carolina: $207,000 from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, $148,000 from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and $275,000 from the Luce Foundation.

Changes at the top

■ The Rev. Paul M. Martin has been appointed president at the American Baptist Seminary of the West, after serving as interim president since 2008. The seminary's former president, the Rev. Keith Russell, now serves as director of the doctor of ministry program at New York Theological Seminary.

Martin is a graduate of Pepperdine University, Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University, and the California Graduate School of Theology. He has also served as chaplain for the Colorado senate.

The American Baptist Seminary of the West is a charter member of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA and the Progressive National Baptist Convention. The school was formed by a 1968 merger of the Berkeley Baptist Divinity School and California Baptist Theological Seminary.

Mark Young

■ The board of trustees of Denver Seminary has named the Rev. Mark S. Young as president of the school, succeeding the interim president, the Rev. Gordon MacDonald, who was appointed last year following the resignation of the seminary's former president, the Rev. Craig Williford.

A professor of world missions at Dallas Theological Seminary since 1995, Young is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Marshall University. He is the founding academic dean of Biblijne Seminarium Teologiczne, the first evangelical seminary in Wroclaw, Poland, and has taught in seminaries in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Since 2001 he has also served on the staff of Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas, where he is currently senior executive pastor of missions. He and his wife, Priscilla, have three adult children.

Denver Seminary was founded in 1950 by the Conservative Baptist Association of Colorado. In 2005 it moved to a new campus in Littleton, Colorado.

■ The Rev. William Richards, professor of New Testament language and literature at the College of Emmanuel & St. Chad, has been appointed acting principal of the school following the resignation of Dr. Walter Deller, principal from 2001 to 2008.

Richards is a graduate of the Universities of Waterloo, Western Ontario, Saskatchewan, Winnipeg, and Toronto. He has served various parishes in Saskatchewan and Manitoba since 1978; last year he was appointed priest-in-charge of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

The College of Emmanuel & Saint Chad is an Anglican theological college in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It was formed in 1964 from the merger of the University of Emmanuel College and St. Chad's College. Through the Saskatoon Theological Union, it is affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan.

Katherine Hancock Ragsdale

■ The board of trustees of Episcopal Divinity School has named the Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale as the new leader of the school, which is in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She became president and dean on July 1, succeeding Bishop Steven Charleston, who led the school from 1999 to 2008.

A graduate of the College of William and Mary, Virginia Theological Seminary, and Episcopal Divinity School, Ragsdale has served as president and executive director of Political Research Associates, a think tank, since 2005. She has also been vicar of St. David's Episcopal Church in Pepperell, Massachusetts, since 1996. She serves on the board of directors of the White House Project (an organization that promotes women in leadership) and NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion-rights advocacy group.

Episcopal Divinity School, formed in 1974 by the merger of the Philadelphia Divinity School and the Episcopal Theological Seminary, is a member of the Boston Theological Institute, a consortium of nine schools, seminaries, and departments of religion.

Paul Nyquist

■ On June 1, the Rev. Paul Nyquist became president of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. He succeeds the Rev. Michael J. Easley, who served as president from 2005 to 2008 and as president emeritus until 2009. Easley is now teaching pastor of Fellowship Bible Church in Brentwood, Tennessee.

Nyquist is a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and of Dallas Theological Seminary, and has led churches in Iowa and Nebraska. He moved to Moody from Avant Ministries, an international mission agency based in Kansas City, where he had served as president since 2001.

Nyquist and his wife, Cheryl, are the parents of four grown children, two of whom are currently students at Moody, and one who graduated from the school in 2005. Moody Bible Institute was founded in 1886 by evangelist Dwight L. Moody, and enrolls 4,000 students. Not a member of the Association of Theological Schools, Moody is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and the Association for Biblical Higher Education.

Mark Rutland

■ The board of trustees of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has elected the Rev. Mark Rutland as president. He succeeds Dr. Ralph Fagin, the university's former vice president for academic administration, who was appointed interim president in 2008. The previous president, the Rev. Richard L. Roberts, son of the school's founder, resigned in 2007 amid allegations of misspending.

For the past 10 years, Rutland has been president of Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. A graduate of the University of Maryland, Candler School of Theology at Emory University, and California Graduate School of Theology, he will take office in July 2009. He and his wife, Alison, have three children and five grandchildren.

Oral Roberts University, founded in 1963, is a nondenominational evangelical university with 65 undergraduate majors and graduate programs in business, education, and theology and missions. The university enrolls about 4,000 students.

Anne Anderson

■ Sister Anne Anderson, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Hamilton, has been appointed president and vice-chancellor of the University of St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto. Her five-year term as president has been declared retroactive to July 2008, when she was appointed interim president. She succeeded Dr. Richard M. H. Alway, who had been president for 18 years before becoming president of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Formerly a division of the University of St. Michael's College, the institute became a separately incorporated nonprofit organization in 2005.

A graduate of Regis College in the University of Toronto, Sister Anderson is also a member of the General Council of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Hamilton, president and chair of the board of directors of the St. Joseph's Health System in Hamilton, and chair of the pastoral theology department in the Toronto School of Theology.

From 2001 until this year, Sister Anderson was dean of the faculty of theology at the University of St. Michael's College. Basilian Father Mario O. D'Souza has been appointed to fill that position.

Father D'Souza has been on the faculty of St. Michael's since 1999. Prior to that appointment he taught at the University of Windsor and was academic dean at St. Joseph's College in the University of Alberta. He is a graduate of Boston College, the University of St. Michael's College, the University of Toronto, and University College, Dublin.

St. Michael's College was founded in 1852, and is the largest Catholic postsecondary educational institution in English-speaking Canada, with more than 4,200 students.

Craig Williford

■ The Rev. Craig Williford has been appointed president of Trinity International University. Dr. Jeanette Hsieh, interim president since 2007, resumed her previous role as executive vice president on April 1, 2009.

A graduate of Cedarville College, Denver Seminary, and Trinity International University, Williford was president of Denver Seminary for eight years and has led churches in Colorado, Ohio, and Illinois. He and his wife, Carolyn, have two sons and three grandchildren.

Trinity International University includes an undergraduate college, a graduate school, a law school, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In addition to its principal campus in Deerfield, Illinois, it includes regional centers in Illinois, Florida, and California. Affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church of America, the school traces its roots to 1897.