Erica Brown (1996), a member of the Alumni/ae Council, was installed as Senior Minister of Howland Christian Church in Warren, Ohio, on April 15.

Congratulations to Santiago Piñón (1998), who has received tenure and been promoted to Associate Professor of Religion at Texas Christian University.

Melinda "Lindy" Keenan Wood (1997) will be installed as Senior Minister of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Durham, North Carolina, on Sunday, March 18 at 3:00pm. She has been serving the congregation since September.

Congratulations to current House Scholar Mark Lambert, who is now a PhD candidate in Theology. His dissertation proposal entitled, "The Sacramental Sickness: The Perceptual Marriage between the Eucharist and the Vestigial Leper-Christ in Medieval Theology," was approved in February. Willemien Otten is his adviser. Read more about it here.

The 20th anniversary of the Martin Marty Center at the Divinity School and Martin E. Marty's 90th birthday were celebrated on February 3. A group of Marty's former students, Rob Wilson-Black (1991), now the CEO of Sojourners, Paul Pribbenow (former resident), the President of Augsburg College, and fellow Divinity School alumnus William Sachs, organized a series of panels entitled, "Interpreting Faith, Nation and Academy." An interview of Mr. Marty and a conversation among of former Marty Center Directors W. Clark Gilpin (1970; trustee), William Schweiker, and Wendy Doniger were conducted by Gretchen Helfrich. A dinner and other festivities followed, with remarks by Divinity School Dean Laurie Zoloth and current Marty Center Director Willemien Otten, special music, and a keynote by author and Virginia Tech Professor Sylvester Johnson.

Beau Underwood (2006) will speak at Eureka College's annual Founders Day Convocation on February 2. His address is entitled, "The Virtue of Vocation."

House Scholar Jack Veatch was selected as a sponsored attendee of the National Festival of Young Preachers by the Fund for Theological Education. He will preach at the festival in Atlanta in January. He has selected Associate Dean Yvonne Gilmore (2001) to attend as his mentor.

Keri Anderson (2013) is an outpatient therapist at The Carson Center, a community mental health agency, in Westfield, Massachusetts. She passed her social work licensing examination in September 2017.

Garry Sparks (2001) has co-published, “A Sixteenth-Century Priest’s Fieldnotes among Highland Maya: Proto-Theologia as Vade mecum,” with Frauke Sachse (Univ. of Bonn, Germany). It is a study of a colonial Dominican missionary handbook held at the U.S. Library of Congress.It appears in Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Latin America. Edited by David Tavárez (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2017), 102-123.

On November 26, First Christian Church of Colorado Springs honored Chuck Blaisdell (1976), on his retirement as Senior Minister. He is starting a congregational consulting business, www.growagain.net.