News from Colleges & Universities of the Anglican Communion
Christmas 2024
Inside This Issue:
Kenyon College's 200th
Canon Callaway is Awarded Bishop's Cross
Next Online Seminar 29th January - Save the Date
New Leaders Around the Globe
Kenyon College President Dr Julie Kornfeld with students at Founders' Day in October
A Diplomat and a Farmer Help Kenyon Celebrate Its 200th
One of the first things the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony did was to establish in 1636 the college that became Harvard. Two centuries later, one of the first things that Ohio’s first Episcopal bishop did was to found Kenyon College. Their motives were the same: to provide a learned clergy on the edge of the frontier. In 1824, when Philander Chase incorporated his new college, Ohio seemed a long way from civilization. But the location he found – a hill overlooking the Kokosing River – looked so promising, he famously declared, “This will do.”
Do it certainly did. Today, Kenyon College is one of the most selective small, 4-year liberal colleges in the country, with some 1,800 students and 200 faculty on a picture-perfect campus that is also home to the Kenyon Review, since 1939 one of the most prestigious of literary journals. As one of CUAC’s oldest members, Kenyon celebrated its Bicentennial in a series of events stretching across 2024 in which its Anglican heritage played a notable part.
Placed in the middle of Ohio, Kenyon nonetheless casts its net internationally, as seen in its choice of anniversary speakers.
For Reunion Weekend in May, the Hon Bridget A. Brink (Class of ’91) made what she described as “an arduous journey to get to Gambier [Ohio] including trains, planes, and automobiles.” She had started in Kiev, where she is U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, about as challenging a diplomatic post as you could ask for, in the midst of Europe’s largest land war since 1945. But she made the trip, she explained, because Kenyon had played so influential a role in her decision to join the Foreign Service and because she wanted to remind her audience “why Ukraine matters.”
She described herself as “a kid from Michigan who had never been overseas at 19 years old.” But a series of Kenyon professors opened her eyes to the world. Her baptism by fire came in Kosovo in the late 1990s. “Like Kenyon,” she said, “the Foreign Service gave me the sense of contributing to something bigger than myself.”
Another visitor to campus from abroad offered himself as a reminder to students that life will never turn out quite as you expected. Speaking at Founders’ Day in October, he said that in his 20s he had become a world traveler, a scuba diving instructor, a math teacher, and eventually an organic farmer on the Welsh border with England. Then suddenly his older brother died, and he became the 8th Lord Kenyon. Yes, he was Alexander Tyrell-Kenyon, the great-great-great-great grandson of the 2nd Lord Kenyon whose donation to Bishop Chase’s new college on the frontier answered what fundraisers today would call “a named-gift opportunity.” The bishop seems to have been very persuasive: he also raised funds from Lord Gambier (for whom the town is named) and Lady Rosse (whose name graces the chapel).
It has been a family tradition for the Kenyons to appear at their namesake on special occasions; the 6th lord, for example, attended the 175th celebration. Title or not, his son made sure his audience knew that he and the new Lady Kenyon were still crusading organic farmers. In his address, he explained in detail how to wash the chemicals off a non-organic apple, should you be so unlucky as to confront one. In the sprit of the late David Foster Wallace’s now famous commencement address at Kenyon in 2005 (immortalized on YouTube), Lord Kenyon offered some other down-to-earth advice. Floss often, and travel as much as you can when you’re young.
“Twenty years ago,” he told them, “I got on a plane to Malaysia with no idea where I was going to stay that night and my backpack didn’t get off the same plane I did – I survived, and you will too.” Famous visitors aside, the Bicentennial offered an important opportunity for the Kenyon community to reflect on its 19th-century heritage and how that history still shapes its identity. Kenyon’s Episcopal chaplain, the Revd Dr Rachel Kessler (Class of 2004) is well placed to nurture that link: she is also Rector of Gambier’s Harcourt Parish Episcopal Church and a visiting professor in its English department. She shares her spiritual responsibility for students with a Jewish chaplain, through Kenyon’s Interfaith Partnership.
“Many students may go through their time on our hill never knowing they attend an institution connected with a Christian denomination,” she said recently. “At the same time, so much of what we value at Kenyon -- rootedness in tradition, commitment to community, intellectual inquiry grounded in a holistic understanding of the human person -- arise from our history as an Episcopal institution. Our connection with the Association of Episcopal Colleges and CUAC also offers us a network of relationships far more enriching and diverse than any other organization. I hope we continue to view our Episcopal identity as the gift that it is!”
The Revd Canon James G. Callaway Jr., who for over a decade served as CUAC’s General Secretary and traveled tirelessly around the world visiting its member institutions, has been awarded the Bishop’s Cross of the Diocese of New York in recognition of his far-ranging services to the Episcopal Church and to Anglican higher education.
The Rt Revd Matthew Heyd (pictured above with Dr Mary Chilton Callaway) noted Jamie’s “gift for partnership and care for our global Anglican Communion” as well as his long career as “a beloved pastor.”
In 1980, he began three decades at Trinity Church Wall Street, focusing on support for churches in Africa through its Trinity Grants Program. He worked closely with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the anti-apartheid movement. Closer to home, he helped create St Margaret’s House in lower Manhattan for seniors. On 9/11, as Bishop Heyd recalled, “his care ensured the children of Trinity Preschool found safety through the tumult and uncertainty of the attacks on the World Trade Center,” where many of their parents worked.
"Sometimes a prophet IS honored, even in his homeplace!” said CUAC’s fifth General Secretary, the Revd Richard Burnett. “Jamie wears the Bishop’s Cross well: with modesty and no self-reference, yet appreciative of this sign of goodwill extended to him by his Bishop and the people of the place he's loved and served for many years in compassionate, creative, and faithful ways."
Save the Date
Online Seminar X: Learning to Disagree Well
29th January 2025, 12:00-1:30 GMT
We live in a world of increasingly polarized views where anyone who thinks differently from you is not seen as an opportunity to learn but an enemy to be overcome. So-called ‘’social media bubbles" do not help where we are only exposed to the voices that support what is already thought. In this context, the pursuit of truth is a conspicuous casualty. Universities and colleges have a vital role to play in helping people learn "how to disagree well" as part of teaching people how to argue. Yet, in some parts of the world, are there now some questions that cannot be asked, especially as these relate to questions of identity and diversity?
This seminar will help us explore how CUAC institutions can fulfill their vocation as places where students and faculty can argue logically and respectfully while being motivated by love and a genuine interest in the other.
Pictured from Left to Right: Moderator: Rob Pearigen, Vice Chancellor and President at Sewanee: The University of the South, China Yates, Student at Voorhees University, Julia DeLashmutt, Administrator of CUAC & AEC, Kimberly Moore, Alumna of Hobart and William Smith, Nicholas Brown, Student Government Association President at Voorhees University, Marie Carmel Chery, Chaplain & Dean of Chapel & Spiritual Engagement at Voorhees University, Nita Byrd, Dean of Spiritual Engagement & Chaplain at Hobart and William Smith
Association of Episcopal Colleges Tells Its Story at the National Association of Episcopal Schools Biennial
The workshop, held on Nov 14 in Fort Lauderdale, highlighted the six AEC US Episcopal colleges and their commitment to fostering student success through shared values. It also presented scholarship opportunities available to Episcopal high school students actively engaged in service learning.
Oceania Chapter Meets In New Zealand
The Revd Michael Wallace, Chaplain at Selwyn College (University of Otago, Dunedin NZ) and conference organizer, reports:
Greetings from the initial meeting of the Oceania Chapter of CUAC in Dunedin in July. Heads of colleges, chaplains, staff and board members of Te Rau College Gisborne, St. John the Baptist College Suva, St. John’s College Brisbane, New College Sydney, Trinity College Melbourne, Hoani Tapu St. John the Evangelist College Auckland, and Selwyn College Te Maru Pūmanawa were joined by colleagues from Cranmer Hall, Durham, and Knox and Salmond Colleges, Dunedin.
Chaplains gathered before the conference for a program organized by Revd Te Ata Roy, Māori Chaplain University of Otago, and Revd Samuel Dow, Chaplain St. John’s College Brisbane. The program included a panel conversation with Revd Te Ata Roy and Revd Aunty Lenore Parker (Yaegl elder, NSW). Worship took place at All Saints’ Church (Selwyn College chapel), Hui Te Rangiora Church (Puketeraki Marae), and at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Keynote speakers for the conference were Revd Dr Hirini Kaa, Manukura (Principal) of Hoani Tapu St. John the Evangelist College, Auckland, Archbishop Emeritus Philip Richardson, (Bishop of Waikato and Taranaki), Revd Liliani Havili, Principal of St. John the Baptist College Suva, and Revd Dr Graham Redding, Lecturer in Chaplaincy Studies at the University of Otago and Minister of Knox Church, Dunedin.
The importance of indigenous knowledge in higher education was affirmed by speakers. The changing nature of theological education and clergy formation needs in the region was also acknowledged… The church’s role in university residential colleges was affirmed. The dangers of Anglican special character being lost in our institutions and the church being sidelined in university settings were recognized in many contexts.
[The chapter will meet again in Brisbane in 2025.]
PASSAGES
News from Around the CUAC World
R. Beulah Jeyashree assumed office as Principal and Secretary of Lady Doak College, Madurai (Tamil Nadu, India) in a service at the Katie Wilcox Chapel in June. Dr Jeyashree succeeded Dr Christianna Singh, who had retired in April. Dr Jeyashree had been Vice-Principal of the college.
Dr Nick Mayhew-Smith is the new Head of College at Whitelands College (University of Roehampton, UK). He is a writer and researcher specializing in the impact that religious activity and ideas have on culture and commerce, on heritage, and on the environment. His research topics have included environmental theology, faith-based businesses and enterprises, and the ongoing legacy of religious activity in the British landscape.
Dr Mayhew-Smith is the author of Britain’s Holiest Places (2011) and the best-selling Britain’s Pilgrimage Places (2020) and “starred” in the BBC’s six-part series on such sites (2013). He is co-editor of Landscape Liturgies (2021), a study of outdoor worship rituals over 2,000 years of Christianity.
Kobe Shoin Women’s University (Kobe, JAPAN) welcomed Dr Takako Tokuyama, Professor of Fashion and Housing Design in the Faculty of Human Sciences, as its first female president in April. She specializes in the culture of daily life, history of clothing, and Kansei engineering. Her early studies were in textile research; her Ph.D. in Biological Function Engineering is from the Graduate School of Engineering, Shinshu University.
Sagato (Ziggy) Lesā has been appointed Warden of Selwyn College and has held senior management roles in residential colleges at the University of Otago. He gained his Physical Education Degree and Diploma of Secondary School for teaching at Otago.
As Warden, he is responsible for day-to-day management of the College and the welfare of residents and the College community itself.
Dr Eric Palmer-Amaning has been appointed the fourth President of the Anglican University College of Technology (ANGUTECH) in Ghana. He is a General Surgeon and teacher, many of whose former students are currently occupying responsible positions in the medical and academic world both at home and abroad.
Dr Amaning was educated at the Abuakwa State College and the University of Ghana (Legon) where he studied chemistry and biochemistry. He subsequently travelled to Poland on a Ghana Government Scholarship to study medicine, graduating as an MD at the Karol Marcinkowski University of Medical Sciences in Poznan. He also undertook training in Surgical Research as a Fellow at the Institute of Transplantation Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw from where he obtained his “Doktor nauk Medycznych” (Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine) degree. He describes himself as “an ardent Presbyterian.”
Dr Andrew Gower has been named Vice-Chancellor and CEO of Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln (UK). He has worked in education for 30 years, having originally trained as a teacher. He has held senior roles at Canterbury Christ Church University and more recently has been Principal and CEO of Morley College London.
Dr Gower’s accomplishments have focused on significant expansion of opportunities for lifelong learning and meeting the needs of diverse communities in London and beyond. He is committed to widening access and participation in the education sector.
In October, the Revd Dr Nancee Martin became Interim Chaplain at the University of the South (Sewanee TN). She holds her M.Div. and D.Min. degrees from Sewanee, where she has served on the Board of Regents and alumni/ae board. He has been Campus Chaplain at the University of Florida and has served as a priest in churches in Washington State, Colorado, and Oklahoma.
The Revd Leigh Preston has been named interim Associate University Chaplain at The University of the South (Sewanee, Tennessee). An specialist in Latinx ministry, she has introduced Day of the Dead and Our Lady of Guadalupe services in Sewanee’s All Saints’ Chapel. She has been an associate rector at St. Paul’s (Chattanooga TN) and St. Stephen’s (Richmond VA) and a missioner-in-charge in El Salvador.
The Venerable Dr Hirini Kaa has been appointed by Te Kaunihera as the next Manukura (Principal) of Te Whare Wananga o Hoani Tapu te Kaikauwhau o te Rongopai / the College of St John the Evangelist. Dr Kaa brings an impressive track record of leadership in academia, ministry and mission across the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia and in community and society.
As Archdeacon Kaa says, “Working with the staff and students and with the whole Church whānau, we can equip people for the mission of today, including facing increasing instability and the challenges of climate, militarization, and disinformation. We can create Oranga Ake (flourishing, abundant life) for the world and for our whānau, with Christ at the center of all we do.”
Renison University College (Waterloo, Ontario) welcomed the Revd Dr Marc Jerry as its 12th President and Vice-Chancellor in July, after a 2,700 km drive from Saskatchewan with his wife and daughter. He had served as president of Luther College, a federated college of the University of Regina. Dr Jerry holds degrees in economics, specializing in econometrics and quantitative methods, and graduate degrees in theology, and has over 25 years of experience in post-secondary teaching, research, and administration. He succeeds Dr Wendy Fletcher.
The University of Chichester (UK) appointed Professor Symeon Dagkas as Vice-Chancellor in November. He will take over from Dr Jane Longmore, who is retiring later this year, having grown the profile of the University of Chichester significantly over a very successful seven-year period.
Dr Dagkas currently serves as Provost and Chief Academic Officer at St Mary’s University, where he oversees all academic activities across the university’s three faculties and seven schools.He has held multiple senior leadership roles at various institutions, including those within the Russell Group and Post-92 universities.
In Canada, Stacy Sathaseevan became interim president of Thorneloe University in Sudbury (Ontario) in June, becoming the first female to hold that role. She succeeds the Revd Dr John Gibaut, who has retired. Raised in Holtyre, Professor Sathaseevan moved to Sudbury in 2001 to pursue her post-secondary education at Laurentian University, where she completed her B.A. Honours in 2005 in addition to B.Ed. in 2009, specializing in junior intermediate education. She finalized her Master’s in Interdisciplinary Humanities in order to convocate in June. She has spent her career dedicated to the education and development of youth in Northern Ontario.
Dr Sébastien Lebel-Grenier has become President and Vice-Chancellor of Bishop's University (Sherbrooke), the only English language university in Quebec outside of Montreal. Experienced bilingual higher education administrator with wide-ranging expertise, he is a full professor specializing in human rights and constitutional and tort law and a founding member of the SoDRUS multidisciplinary research center, which focuses on the interrelation of law, religion and society. With a PhD from Exeter University, he is an active researcher and has published extensively on all facets of sport, inclusion, exercise, and health.
Dr Eunice Simmons, the Vice Chancellor and Principal at the University of Chester (UK), has been appointed a Lay Canon of Chester Cathedral. She is an environmental biologist well known for her forestry studies.
The Historic Black Colleges and Universities Campaign Fund has named Dr Ronnie Hopkins, President of Voorhees University (Denmark, South Carolina, US) as one of its “Ten Most Dominant HBCU Leaders of 2025.”
The national award recognizes college presidents, chancellors, and sports-affiliated individuals who “model the characteristics” needed to help institutions move forward.
Dr Hopkins became President in 2001, leading the transition of Voorhees College into Voorhees University thanks to an expansion of its graduate programs. In January 2024, Voorhees received $1.96 million from the U.S. Department of Education’s Rural Postsecondary Economic Development Grant Program, which helps students move from high school to college and from two-year to four-year institutions. The future of such grants – indeed of the Department of Education itself – is uncertain, given the new administration in Washington.
HORIZONS From the General Secretary's Desk
A CUAC Year on the Road
He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness, and wonders of his love...
So we sang today in the Chapel of Christ the Lord at The Episcopal Church Center in New York City, the location of CUAC’s offices. Although we are still days from Christmas, the congregation was pleased to let out a glad song praising all that the God of Love has done - and calls us to do - in this world. And, as I listened to this 18th-century poem by Isaac Watts set to the lovely hymn tune Antioch, the matrix of activities and ceremonies and new learning and prayerful engagements on our campuses worldwide came into greater focus -- a brave sound for a world in need of all that higher education can offer.
As we consider the past year, my spirit is lifted recalling my visiting Sewanee (The University of the South) to award CUAC’s Distinguished Fellowship to the past chair of the Board of Trustees, Dr Linda Lankewicz. The warm and gracious welcome from current Trustee and Vice-Chancellor Rob Pearigen was echoed by the many CUAC friends gathered at a dinner in celebration of Linda’s devotion to international service-learning and the essential goodness of global partnerships. A few days afterward, I went to Gambier, Ohio, to join in a robust celebration of the founding, 200 years ago, of Kenyon College. In the midst of a ceremony that included an address by the 8th Lord Kenyon and greetings from his mother, Lady Kenyon, I dared to walk in the path of the College’s founder, the Rt Revd Philander Chase, first bishop of the Diocese of Ohio, offering a Citation of Remembrance from CUAC, signed by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury, which included this insight from Kenyon alum (1940) and former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Lowell: “History has to live with what was here...unlike writing, life never finishes.”
Nor do the possibilities for new encounters and new opportunities to serve globally through the talented CUAC and Association of Episcopal Colleges networks! As I recall singing “Joy to the World” in the chapel, I am struck by the vocation we have to “prove the glories” of God inside and beyond our many institutions. In a month, my wife, Katharine, and I will have the great joy of visiting several leading Indian institutions, meeting students and faculty and administrators, and learning more about the wonders of God’s love through our wondrous CUAC network! With every blessing to you all, The Revd Richard A. Burnett
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
"Conclave" and Christmas
A good friend recently asked me: can I send my granddaughter to a Sunday School without any of us having to join a church? He is very concerned that she will grow up lacking the kind of cultural literacy that enables you to walk into a great museum, say, and at least recognize Adam and Eve and the Serpent or David and Goliath. My first reaction was annoyance – what cheek, thinking you could give your offspring some quick Christian formation without any investment of time or treasure in the institutions that keep this heritage alive. But he went on to explain that it was the ethical lessons of Judeo-Christianity that he wanted her exposed to, not just the art history. So I told him there were some very good graphic Bible storybooks out there, and maybe that was the place to begin.
This notion of cultural Christianity as an enduring force among people who rarely set foot in church came to mind again the other day when I thought I’d take a quick look on You Tube at the celebration in Paris of the near-miraculous delivery of Notre-Dame from the flames. Two hours later – I had been transfixed – I began to understand how much that 862-year-old cathedral contributes to what it means to be French. It was as important for the President of the Republic to be there as it was for the Archbishop of Paris and all the bishops of France. And how much that luminous Gothic structure should mean to all of us concerned about Christian higher education. The schools attached to that Cathedral in the middle years of the Middle Ages (think of Heloise’s Abelard) were the place where Wisdom survived through the darkness.
At the ceremonies, I admit that what really struck me at first was the costuming of the clergy – hundreds of white robes decorated with chunks of primary colors, which the overhead cameras made to look like a vast sea of nougat candy. I slowly got used to this --- so French these vestments, the work of a leading fashion designer! – it was as if the Catholic episcopate had been as scrubbed and rejuvenated as the pristine interior of Notre-Dame herself.
(Of course there was not a single woman at the newly consecrated altar…)
This link of religion and costume – this theater of piety – was very much at the heart of another spectacle that held me fascinated for two hours – the film Conclave, a political and theological thriller that every thinking Christian should see, maybe more than once (so much detail to absorb!). Isabella Rossellini stole the show, but one of the greatest aesthetic experiences of the past year for me wasn’t the splendid crimson of the cardinals but the ability of Ralph Fiennes in close up to convey the act of thinking by the slightest little twitches of the muscles around his eyes and mouth.
There are two passages in the Bible that make me cry. One is the moment in Genesis when Joseph has to step out of the room, he is so shaken to realize that those are his murderous brothers who have come begging for food (a narrative that begins, don’t forget, with a “coat of many colors”). The other is the appearance of the Angels to the shepherds. One is a story about forgiveness, the other about humility.
In any pre-modern society, keeping sheep is one of the most marginal of jobs. Although they are cleaned up in our Nativity creches, biblical shepherds could have been found in the dark, they smelled so bad. Cold, dirty, literally lousy, they were about as far as you could get from Conclave’s Vatican or Macron’s Paris. They wore sheepskins and rags. Yet the Angels privileged them over all the rest of humanity. Now that’s a story my friend’s granddaughter really needs to hear. Charles Calhoun
Compass Points is published by GENERAL SECRETARY: The Revd Richard A. Burnett PUBLISHER: Julia DeLashmutt EDITOR: Charles C. Calhoun PRODUCER: Francis Rivera
