Theology

Rev. Robert P. Imbelli, Ph.D.

Father Imbelli is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York.  He studied in Rome during the years of the Second Vatican Council and was ordained there in 1965. After parish ministry in New York, he obtained his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Yale University.  Father Imbelli has taught theology at the New York Archdiocesan Seminary and at the Maryknoll School of Theology; and has been visiting lecturer at Princeton Theological Seminary and Fordham University. He has also lectured and given retreats in Central and South America, China, and East Africa.  From 1986 to 1993 Father Imbelli was Director of the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry at Boston College and is currently Associate Professor of Theology at Boston College. He is a member of the official Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue and is on the Steering Committee of the Catholic Common Ground Initiative. 

Father Imbelli’s numerous articles and reviews have appeared in such journals as Theological Studies, Theology Today, Pro Ecclesia, Communio, Church, Commonweal, Priests & People, and America. He contributed the article on "Holy Spirit" in The New Dictionary of Theology and the article on "Incarnation" in The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia. He has also authored a number of articles on the "Catholic Church" in The World Book Encyclopedia. He is the editor of the forthcoming volume, Handing on the Faith: the Church’s Mission and Challenge.

David Gentry-Akin, Ph.D., STD

Dave Gentry-Akin is completing his fifteen year at Saint Mary's College of California, teaching in the Great Books Core Program, the Theology and Religious Studies Department, and in Graduate Liberal Studies. He earned his masters in divinity from the University of Notre Dame and his pontifical licentiate and doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Long interested in finding ways to foster Catholic identity in Catholic Higher Education, he is the institutional liaison for Collegium, and is serving as a faculty mentor for their annual Colloquy on Faith and the Intellectual Life Summer 2009 at Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. Dave also serves on the Mission Integration Committee for CHRISTUS Health, one of the ten largest Catholic healthcare systems in the United States, sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word of Houston and San Antonio, Texas.

Dave has published in Horizons, the journal of the College Theology Society, Listening: A Journal of Religion and Culture and in several book-length anthologies. His study exploring the theme of nihilism and atheism in the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche is forthcoming from Edwin Mellen Press. With Professor Emeritus Dan Cawthon, Dave is co-editing a collection of faculty essays written in response to Pope Benedict's remarks to Catholic Educators on the occasion of his Apostolic Visit to the United States in April 2008, tentatively titled: How Beautiful Upon the Mountains: Reflections on Pope Benedict's Remarks to Catholic Educators. Dave will serve as a respondent to Father Robert Imbelli.

Philosophy

Tom Cavanaugh, Ph.D.

Professor Cavanaugh joined the Philosophy Department of the University of San Francisco in 1994 after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and his A.B from Thomas Aquinas College, which educates liberally by means of the great books. He teaches ethics, medical ethics, and the history of philosophy. In his book entitled Double-effect Reasoning: Doing Good and Avoiding Evil (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006), he addresses the morality of performing an otherwise good act that has foreseen bad consequences. He regularly writes on topics in military and medical ethics.

English Literature

Paul Contino, Ph.D.

Dr. Contino is the Great Books professor and Associate Director of the Center for Faith and Learning at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA.  He is also the editor of the journal, Christianity and Literature and in 2006, he received the Catholic Press Association Award. Dr. Contino received his B.A. Harpur College, the State University of New York at Binghamton.  He received his M.A. and his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame.  His areas of specialization include the Russian novel, literature, religion, and modernity, ethical reflection and the novel, and the Great Books.

Dr. Contino’s publications include: "Descend That You May Ascend': Augustine, Dostoevsky, and the Confessions of Ivan Karamazov." Augustine and Literature; "This Writer's Life: Irony and Faith in the Work of Tobias Wolff." Commonweal; "Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and the Idea of a Christian University," in Universality and History: Foundations of the Core; "Andre Dubus's Eucharistic Imagination." Religion and the Arts; "Manifestation and Proclamation in Teaching O'Connor's Parker's Back."' The Cresset; and "Dostoevsky and the Ethical Relation to the Prisoner." Renaissance: Essays on Values in Literature.

Robert Kiely, Ph.D.

Dr. Kiely is an Emeritus Professor of English and American Literature at Harvard University.   He is a graduate of Amherst College and took his doctorate at Harvard.   He served for three years in the U.S. Naval Reserve, two years in Pearl Harbor, and one aboard the USS Coral Sea.  Professor Kiely teaches courses in the Victorian, modern and postmodern novel, the English Bible, Classics of Christian Literature, and the Rhetoric of Belief. 

His books include Beyond Egotism: The Fiction of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence; Reverse Tradition: Postmodern Fictions and the Nineteenth Century Novel; and Still Learning: Spiritual Sketches from a Professor's Life.  His upcoming book, Blessed and Beautiful: Rereading the Saints with Help from the Italian Masters, focuses on the relationship between writings by and about saints and their depictions in Italian Renaissance art. Professor Kiely is a Benedictine Oblate and a member of the Community of Sant' Egidio, founded in Rome in 1968.  He is married to Jana Moravkova and is the father of three daughters and a son.

Psychology

Jeffrey B. Adams, Ph.D.

Dr. Adams received his A.B. in Psychology from Gordon College, MA, and his Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology from the University of Buffalo, NY.  He is presently a professor in the Psychology Department at Saint Michael’s College, VT, where he has served for twenty-four years. 

Professor Adams teaches General Psychology, Psychological Statistics, Social Psychology, Psychology of Religion, History and Special Issues:  Hunger.  He teaches these courses on the undergraduate level and he teaches Advanced Social and Dysfunctional Behavior on the graduate level.  His research interests involve religion, spirituality, and sexuality, the relationship between religion & spirituality, psychological and religious conceptions of maturity, and the relationship between cognitive development and religious apostasy.

Melanie M. Morey, Ed.D.

Dr. Morey has worked in the field of education and administration for the past thirty years. She received her BA from Smith College, a Masters degree in religious education from Boston College, and a Masters in educational administration from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Since receiving her doctorate in Higher Education Administration from Harvard in 1995, Dr. Morey has worked primarily as a researcher and consultant to Catholic colleges and universities and religious congregations around issues of governance, sponsorship, leadership, institutional identity and Catholic culture. She is the Senior Director for Research and Consulting at NarrowGate Consulting, a division of the Catholic Education Institute. 

Dr. Morey is a contributor to Catholic Women’s Colleges in America.  With John J. Piderit, S.J., she co-authored Catholic Higher Education: A Culture in Crisis and Renewing Parish Culture: Building for a Catholic Future.

John J. Piderit, S.J., Ph.D.

Father Piderit is the president of the Catholic Education Institute.  For most of his professional life he has been involved with educational institutions of higher education.  After completing theological studies in Germany and being ordained a priest in Germany, Father Piderit secured his master of philosophy degree in economics from Oxford University and his doctorate from Princeton University.  From 1978 until 1990 Father Piderit taught international economics and statistics economics at Fordham University in New York City.  In 1990 Father Piderit moved to Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he served as Corporate Vice President.  From 1993 until 2001, Father Piderit was as president of Loyola University Chicago. 

In his position as president of the Catholic Education Institute, Father Piderit has explored and developed new approaches to Catholic education and formation.  He created a unique Catholic after school program for children at the elementary school level in the archdiocese of New York.  Also, with Melanie Morey he established NarrowGate, the research and consulting division of the Catholic Education Institute. Father Piderit is the author of The Ethical Foundations of Economics.  With Melanie Morey he co-authored Catholic Higher Education: A Culture in Crisis and Renewing Parish Culture: Building for a Catholic Future.