Dr. Mark Hicks appointed Incoming Angus MacLean Professor of Religious Education
July 15, 2008
Dr. Mark Hicks, right, will begin working with the faculty at Meadville Lombard as the Incoming Angus MacLean Professor of Religious Education in a half-time consulting capacity beginning in September 2008. With expertise in contextual education, he will begin by working with the faculty and administration in the transition from our current educational model to one where students learn theory as they participate in the practical elements of ministry.
"I'm very excited to work with the faculty in creating this next generation of curriculum for Meadville Lombard, specifically around the issues of praxis," Dr. Hicks says in a videotaped interview. "My work as an educator [which] is very much concerned by issues of transformation, is to not just simply have powerfully reflective experiences around things but to actually do something based on what you have learned from those reflections."
"I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Hicks to our faculty," said Dr. Sharon Welch, Provost. "He has a depth of experience of providing educators with enriching experiences that really transform how they teach. We know his talents and expertise will translate well in this seminary, especially as we move into our new educational design where we are building on this very idea of combining--throughout the formation experience--theory with practice."
The Rev. Dr. Lee Barker, President of Meadville Lombard, describes Mark as "a unique kind of scholar for a position so unique that no other like it exists in the world." As the Angus MacLean Professor of Religious Education, Dr. Hicks will be working closely with the Rev. Dr. Qiyamah Rahman, MDiv '08, who has recently been appointed as the Director of Contextual Ministry and Senior Lecturer at Meadville Lombard. Dr. Rahman has been working for the school, identifying social services sites for our students participating in the new Community Partnership Program. The program requires first-year Master of Divinity Students to work in selected social service agencies in an area of Chicago that has great needs. Students will work for the agencies for eight hours per week throughout the academic year as they participate in a two-hour faculty-led seminar designed to provide the theory behind their real-life work.
Dr. Hicks is looking forward to working with the Community Partnership Program because of the opportunities it offers students preparing for the ministry. "Oftentimes people think about their educational experience only from the standpoint of what others tell them or only from the standpoint of what it might mean in a theoretical sense," he said. "But I think by students having a chance to literally think 'what does it mean to frame my ministerial experience in a multi-racial, multi-cultural context' is really an exciting opportunity for people ... it's very forward thinking of Meadville to create that kind of experience and I think it is also going to be very powerful for the students themselves."
Dr. Hicks has been a consultant to Meadville Lombard in the past, assisting the school in its Catalyst for Change, anti-racism/anti-oppression, program. He is currently Associate Professor of Educational Transformation at George Mason University and is known for his justice-oriented teaching practices, a pedagogy informed by aesthetics and by philosophical anthropology. He is the author of Building the world we dream about: an anti-racist, anti-oppression curriculum promoting multicultural Unitarian Universalist congregations, as well as numerous journal articles and essays. Some of his recent articles are "From hope to action: Creating spaces to sustain transformative habits of mind and heart," Journal of Transformative Education; "Barriers to transformation: Collaboration for justice within mixed educational communities," Handbook of Research on the Social Foundations of Education; "Beyond reflective competency: Teaching for audacious hope-in-action," The Journal of Transformative Education.
