Mark A. Hicks
Dr. Mark A. Hicks will be consulting with the Meadville Lombard faculty this year as the Incoming Angus MacLean Professor of Religious Education; he will assume full-time responsibilities in the fall of 2009. He currently is Associate Professor of Educational Transformation at George Mason University, Virginia.

Committed to the ideals of creating collaborative, democratic, socially conscious learning communities, he has been recognized for his work in transformative thinking and teaching, most recently being honored as a finalist for a university Teaching Excellence award at George Mason. Critical pedagogy, music, the arts, social justice, and progressive teaching are woven through every aspect of Mark's teaching and consultancy work.  He is known for creating 'social containers' that help to morph problems into possibilities. 

He has written Building the World We Dream About: A Welcoming Congregation Curriculum on Race and Ethnicity, a national curriculum for the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations that weaves anti-racist and anti-oppressive thinking and practice into the spiritual life of Unitarian Universalist congregations.  He is a member and lay leader in two nationally historic congregations, All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, D.C. and The Riverside Church in New York City (often regarded as a national model for a multicultural spiritual community).

He is presently a member of the progressively-minded faculty of Initiatives in Educational Transformation (IET), a professional development Master's degree program for public school teachers in the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area.

As a teacher and administrator, Mark has a wide-ranging background in higher education, from being the associate director of admission at Rice University in Texas to an assistant dean of Columbia College, Columbia University in New York City. He has published solicited and refereed articles in journals such as Educational Studies, The Journal of Transformative Education, Teacher Development, and the Journal of College Counseling (where his research was twice honored as "the most significant contribution to the Journal" and research that "stands the test of time"). 

He is currently working on a book, Becoming, which theorizes and documents educational and social practices that free learners from oppressive contexts.

For a full list of Mark's publications, visit his website.