ABOUT ME
I have a broad and diverse background in higher education. After completing Bachelor's degrees at the University of Michigan and the Moody Bible Institute, I earned a Master's and Ph.D. in history at the University of Notre Dame, where I studied with George Marsden.
After starting my career as a history professor, I served as a Fulbright Scholar to Germany in spring 2004. That was followed by six years as academic dean at John Brown University, six years as provost at Cornerstone University, and four years as vice president at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities in Washington, D.C., a higher education association with over 180 members worldwide. While at the CCCU, I partnered with Acadeum, an educational technology firm, to create the Christian College Online Course-Sharing Consortium, which now includes nearly seventy member institutions. Over the past two decades, I have visited nearly eighty colleges and universities on six different continents.
I currently serve as Executive Director of Westmont Downtown and Assistant to the President for Academic Innovation and Global Education at Westmont College in California. I also continue to work with Acadeum on a part-time basis to foster collaboration across independent higher education, and I lead a team that is launching a Christian Study Center at my alma mater, the University of Michigan.
In addition to numerous articles and presentations, my books include The Life of Prayer in a World of Science (Oxford, 2001), Head, Heart, Hand: John Brown University and Evangelical Higher Education (University of Arkansas, 2003), and Reconsidering College: Christian Higher Education for Working Adults (Abilene Christian University Press, 2014). My book, Why College Matters to God: Academic Faithfulness and Christian Higher Education (Abilene Christian University, 2009) is currently in its third edition and is widely used as a first-year text by U.S. colleges and universities.
My wife Lonnie and I have four adult children. I’m an avid cyclist who logs thousands of miles a year on my road bike.
