ACE Fest Keynote Address
Date: Wednesday, April 15
Time: 10:15-11:15 a.m.
Location: Lehman Auditorium
More info:

Dr. Deborah Lawrence, chief scientist and director of forest and land at Calyx Global, will open the 2026 Academic and Creative Excellence (ACE) Festival as keynote speaker at 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday, April 15, in Lehman Auditorium.

At Calyx Global, a Colorado-based carbon credit ratings agency, Lawrence ensures the scientific integrity of its greenhouse gas ratings. She spent 25 years as an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia, where she conducted global forest and climate research.

She also served as a science advisor to the U.S. Department of State and established SilvaCarbon, a U.S. federal program for forest carbon measurement and monitoring, according to a staff listing on . 

Lawrence holds a BA in anthropology from Harvard University and a PhD in botany from Duke University. 

Her keynote address will reflect on “our connections to nature and how they have changed over the course of my life,” Lawrence said, “informing my scholarship, my work, and my daily life.”

Jennifer Ulrich, chair of the Intellectual Life Committee, said Lawrence’s teaching experience, research, and international background were key factors in selecting her as keynote speaker. 

She said Lawrence readily embraced both the university’s annual theme of environmental sustainability and its Common Read, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, as she developed her address.

“I am grateful for her willingness to speak with us and look forward to her keynote address,” Ulrich said.

About ACE Festival

EMU’s Academic and Creative Excellence Festival provides an opportunity for students to learn from their peers and to showcase their own research, creative projects, and papers. It’s also an opportunity to continue conversations sparked by EMU’s Common Read for the year.

In addition to poster and oral presentations held throughout the day on Thursday, April 15, ACE Fest events include a music department student recital at noon in Lehman Auditorium, an art exhibition opening for senior capstone projects at 4:45 p.m. in the Margaret Martin Gehman Gallery, and a wind ensemble concert at 7 p.m. in Lehman Auditorium.

The 17th EMU Authors’ Reception and Award Presentation will be held from 3:45-5 p.m. in Old Common Grounds (University Commons 177) on Thursday. The annual event, hosted by the Office of the Provost, recognizes and celebrates winners of the university’s Excellence in Teaching Awards and recipients of student writing awards, as well as EMU faculty, staff, and students who have published scholarly work since Jan. 1, 2025. The awards presentation part of the program will begin at 4:30 p.m.

An EMU Career Fair, hosted by the Alumni Engagement Office, will be held from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. on Thursday at the Hall of Nations. It will provide an opportunity for students to interact directly with employers, connect with alumni professionals, explore career options, and potentially secure internships or employment. 

The ACE Festival is hosted by the Provost’s Office and made possible by the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the Center for Interfaith Engagement, and the Daniel B. Suter Endowment, which supports EMU’s commitment to fostering curiosity, discovery, and scientific learning. 

For more information about the festival and a schedule of events, visit .

Kniss’s speech, at the ASR’s 75th annual conference in New York City on Aug. 11, 2013, marked the end of his one-year term as president of the leading professional association for sociologists of religion, which has about 700 members. As president, Kniss chose a “rivers” theme for the conference, and used his speech to make a case for the importance of understanding the ways that “fringe” religious traditions (like the Mennonite Church) influence, and are influenced by, mainstream religion.

“My argument is that, to our detriment, we have focused too much on the mainstream of religion,” said Kniss, professor and chair of sociology at Loyola University Chicago before he became provost of ��ݮ���� (EMU) in 2009. “Conversely, we have too often failed to notice how the mainstream is a product of multiple dynamics and contestations – the tributaries, eddies and crosscurrents that combine and interact to form the broad course of religious experience and institutions.”

Planning the annual conference was one of Kniss’s major tasks as president of the ASR. After the event, he will become the association’s immediate past president, a position now held by Dr. Roger Finke of Penn State University. Dr. Chris Ellison, from the University of Texas-San Antonio, is the next president.

Kniss, whose doctoral research at the University of Chicago focused on social change and conflict within the Mennonite Church, argued that a monolithic understanding of “the mainstream” leads to unhelpful, black-and-white distinctions such as liberal-conservative or mainline-evangelical that diminish scholars’ ability to “grasp the complexities” of religious life.

Returning to the river metaphor, Kniss pointed out that the main body of the stream is constantly affected and changed by smaller tributaries and currents. One example, drawn from his own religious tradition, is the experience of the Mennonites and other “peace churches” during World War II, who worked with the federal government to carve out civil service exemptions for members opposed to military service on moral grounds.

This accomplishment, starting from the fringes of American religion, had the effect of creating “conscientious objection to war as a respectable ethical and political position to take” more broadly in our society, Kniss said in his speech. “[This] also produced significant change within the religious mainstream, strengthening the voice of pacifists within denominations who officially embraced a ‘just war’ theology.”

In an interview before the speech, Kniss said his call for increased academic attention to the peripheries of American religious life is also an appeal for better awareness of and relating to the growing religious diversity in American society. In his speech, Kniss noted that sociologists increasingly agree that a healthy religious diversity within a community “[produces] religious vitality and [increases] the participation of religion within the public sphere.”

In other words, relating to members of other religious faiths, Kniss said, strengthens one’s personal (or communal or institutional) faith commitments.

Increasing religious diversity is certainly a reality at EMU. In the fall of 2012, 45 percent of traditional undergraduate students came from Mennonite or Mennonite-related backgrounds. In 2003, that number was 55 percent and, in 1993, it was 69 percent. Along the way, the university has made an effort to engage internal and external diversity through programs such as the new , the , and other areas of its core undergraduate curriculum, like the .

While the perception sometimes exists that these kinds of programs might threaten EMU’s institutional faith commitments, Kniss argued in the interview that the effect is precisely the opposite.

“Having something like the Center for Interfaith Engagement isn’t taking us down the road to secularism,” he said. “It’s helping us to better understand ourselves.”

As provost, in charge of EMU’s academic programs, Kniss said he thinks daily about how EMU relates to the growing eddies, tributaries and crosscurrents of religious diversity while maintaining its own “mainstream” Mennonite identity. The key question he bears in mind, from considering broad institutional efforts to individual faculty hiring decisions, is how EMU can accomplish higher education in a way that reflects Mennonite and Anabaptist ideals.

“As long as we keep that question in front of us, the mission and identity of the university will stay strong,” he said.

New EMU provost Fred Kniss (Photo by Jim Bishop)

EMU President Loren Swartzendruber announced that Fred Kniss, currently of Chicago, Ill., will assume the second highest administrative post at the university on July 1, 2009.

Lee F. Snyder, president emeritus of Bluffton (Ohio) University, has served as interim provost for the 2008-09 academic year.

The provost gives overall guidance to the undergraduate and graduate academic programs of the university as well as Eastern Mennonite Seminary, various auxiliary programs and the Adult Degree Completion Program.

“We are pleased that a person of Dr. Kniss’ experience is prepared to join the team at EMU,” Dr. Swartzendruber said. “He has demonstrated a long commitment to Christian higher education and to scholarship in our kind of context.”

Kniss is chair of the department of sociology at Loyola University, Chicago, where he has been a faculty member since 1991. During his tenure he was interim dean of The Graduate School at Loyola, 2004-05, and graduate program director the sociology department, 2000-04.

“EMU is well-positioned to face the challenges and opportunities that confront higher education,” said Dr. Kniss. “We have a clear and attractive mission, with smart, innovative faculty and staff who are not afraid to try new ideas and programs. I look forward to working with faculty, staff and students to build a dynamic community of learning, rooted in Anabaptist values, training the next generation of global citizens to serve and lead,” he added.

Kniss was a double major in sociology and philosophy and religion at EMU. Following five years of service in Kenya, he went on to earn MA and PhD degrees in sociology from the University of Chicago.

His professional activities and associations include: chair-elect, American Sociological Association Section on Sociology of Religion; Association for the Sociology of Religion; and chair, publications committee, Association for the Sociology of Religion. He is a member of the editorial board of the “Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion” and has been associate book review editor and associate editor of the “American Journal of Sociology.”

Kniss is a member of the American Sociological Association, Midwest Sociology Society, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Religious Research Association.

He is married to Rosalyn Myers Kniss, associate administrator of clinical laboratories at the University of Chicago Medical Center and a member of the EMU class of 1977. They have two children – Michael, a 2006 EMU graduate, and Stephen, an EMU sophomore. They are members of Chicago Community Mennonite Church.

The new faculty, announced by Dr. Beryl H. Brubaker, EMU provost, and Dr. Marie S. Morris, vice president and undergraduate academic dean, are:

Peter Dula, assistant professor of religion and culture. Dr. Dula earned a BS in history from EMU, an MATS from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind., and a PhD in theology and ethics from Duke University.

Dula has taught at Lancaster (Pa.) Mennonite High School, Duke University, Meserete Kristos College in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and at Babel College in Baghdad, Iraq. He is a member of the Peace Committee of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and has served with MCC in Burundi and most recently in Iraq.

Dula says he “will seek to offer students theologically disciplined models of relating to other religions and thinking about other religions. Education, at its best, draws the self into question. Christian education subsumes that questioning under the great question mark of the cross, allowing the life and death of Christ to interrogate all our human projects and fantasies.”

Violet A. Dutcher, associate professor of English. Dr. Dutcher earned BA, MA, and PhD degrees in English, rhetoric/communication from Kent (Ohio) State University. She has given numerous presentations related to her dissertation topic and writing and comes to EMU with many years of teaching experience at Kent State and The University of Akron.

Dutcher incorporates service-learning into her teaching and engages in community literacy research. “My pedagogical theories and practices are informed by my faith and by my commitment to helping meet the needs of students and the community,” she states.

Toni M. Flanagan, associate professor of teacher education. Dr. Flanagan earned a BS in biology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, an MT in science education from the Curry School of Education at University of Virginia and an EdD in educational leadership from Liberty University.

Flanagan comes with over 13 years of teaching experience as a science and mathematics teacher (grades 5-7), as a biology and earth science teacher (grades 9-10) and several years tutoring students in reading and mathematics. She wants to interact with local school systems in developing teacher mentoring programs and linking the university with these mentoring programs.

“Christian liberal arts education should weave Christ into the fabric of each course – not as the fringe, but as the very fiber of the cloth,” Flanagan says.

Greta Ann Herin, assistant professor of biology. Dr. Herin earned a BS in biochemistry and psychology from Kansas State University and a PhD in neurobiology from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Herin has taught at Kansas State University and at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Most recently, she completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany. She has numerous publications to her credit and received the Scottish Rite Schizophrenia Research Fellowship.

She notes that “a liberal arts atmosphere and Mennonite tradition” were primary reasons for applying to teach at EMU.

Karen L. Madison, associate professor of nursing. Madison earned a BS in nursing from George Mason University, an MS in psychiatric-mental health nursing from Catholic University of America and completed a post-MSN Adult Nurse Practitioner Program from George Washington University. She has more than 15 years of professional and teaching experience in nursing with 10 years of private practice as a therapist.

Madison has teaching experience at George Mason University, Marymount University and Northern Virginia Community College and has served as a consultant, pulmonary hypertension nurse specialist and nurse practitioner. She holds professional certification from the American Nurses Association as an adult nurse practitioner and a clinical specialist in adult psychiatric-mental health. She is a member of Sigma Theta Tau and the Northern Virginia Council of Nurse Practitioners.

Lara L. Scott, associate professor of visual and communication arts. Scott earned a BA in art from Yale University and a MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. She comes most recently from Greenville (Ill.) College where she taught digital video, graphic design, digital imaging, digital photography and painting. She has numerous solo and group exhibitions and was a panel participant at a Pew Graduate Summer Seminar held at The University of Notre Dame on “Christian Scholarship in the Visual Arts.” She also received the Lawrence Shprintz Award at the University of Pennsylvania.

Scott says that her teaching goal is “to create an environment where students will engage with the whole fabric of aesthetic, political, cultural and theological questions as they make art. Together with my students, I hope to create a learning community where we engage with the created and creating world, in the context of Christian faith, through the process of artmaking.”

Matthew S. Siderhurst, assistant professor of chemistry. Dr. Siderhurst earned a BA in chemistry and molecular biology from Goshen (Ind.) College and a PhD in entomology from Colorado State University. He has taught at Colorado State University and just completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship as a research chemist/entomologist for USA ARS PBARC in Hilo, Hawaii. In addition to having received several major academic and teaching awards, he has three patents pending for termite feeding stimulants and one patent pending for a western corn rootworm feeding stimulant blend.

“Learning is a lifelong process, and the small college setting is a particularly exciting learning environment with its class sizes, opportunities for undergraduate centered research and close interactions between students and teachers,” Siderhurst states.

Heidi Winters Vogel, associate professor of theater. Vogel earned a BA in theater from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in directing from Pennsylvania State University. She comes with teaching experience at Webster University Conservatory of Theater Arts, St. Louis University, Washington University in St. Louis and Pennsylvania State University. In addition, she has directing and costume design experience at Huntington College, North Hennepin Community College and Normandale Community College.

“Theater, at its best, fires an audience’s imagination and reveals truth to them,” Vogel notes. “If a production doesn’t capture our interest, the truth is buried. Without substance, the effect is fleeting. Without ‘truth and action’, theater is ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing,’ ephemeral and boring. The same applies to my Christian
faith.”

Judith H. Wilfong, associate professor of teacher education. Dr. Wilfong earned a BA in education from Bridgewater College, an MA in reading from James Madison University, and an EdD in educational leadership from Nova Southeastern University.

Wilfong brings more than 20 years of teaching and administrative experience in the local public school system to her new role at EMU. Most recently she was principal of Fulks Run (Va.) Elementary School where under her leadership the school won the Distinguished Title I School of Virginia award in 2005. She will retire from the public school system in December this year and join the EMU faculty full time in January 2007.

“When I learned that a position in elementary education was open, I was ecstatic,” Wilfong notes. “Teaching students aspiring to become educators is exactly what I want to do. I love working with student teachers. I choose to live my life in service to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and will be delighted to work in an atmosphere that is openly Christian.”

In addition, the modern languages department at EMU will have four teaching assistants through a program sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee:

Rachel HannebicqueL (French), France
Jakob Kneisler (German), Germany
Leonardo Chavarria (Spanish), Honduras
Rolando Urquizo (Spanish), Bolivia