New directors named for Center for Christian Bioethics and Center for Spiritual Life & Wholeness
|
|
Meeting in full session in May, 2001, the Loma Linda University Board of Trustees appointed Louis Venden, PhD, professor of theology and ministry, Faculty of Religion, as director of the Center for Spiritual Life & Wholeness; and Mark Carr, PhD, assistant professor of religion, Faculty of Religion, was named theological co-director of the Center of Christian Bioethics.
Carla Gober, MPH, assistant professor of religion, Faculty of Religion, continues as associate director of the Center for Spiritual Life & Wholeness. Ms. Gober is currently on sponsored graduate study leave while she completes her PhD at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.
A clinical co-director for the Center for Christian Bioethics will be named at a later date.
Both the Center for Spiritual Life & Wholeness and the Center for Christian Bioethics are a function of the Faculty of Religion and serve all Loma Linda University Adventist Health Sciences Center (LLUAHSC) entities.
Dr. Venden graduated from La Sierra College (now La Sierra University), Riverside, in 1951. He was ordained in 1955, and in 1958 received his master's degree in systematic theology from Potomac University, Washington, D.C. (The university was moved to Andrews University in 1959.)
Dr. Venden received a master's of divinity degree from Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, in 1966, and a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey, in 1979.
From 1977 to 1989, Dr. Venden served as senior pastor of the University Church of Seventh-day Adventists on the Loma Linda campus.
In 1989, he moved to Angwin and was pastor at Pacific Union College Church for more than three years before becoming chair of the religion department at Pacific Union College.
Dr. Venden and his family returned to Loma Linda in 1996, where Dr. Venden has served as professor of theology and ministry, Faculty of Religion.
"I am personally pleased that Dr. Venden has agreed to take up the leadership of the Center for Spiritual Life & Wholeness," says Gerald R. Winslow, PhD, vice president, spiritual life & wholeness, LLUAHSC, and dean, Faculty of Religion. "His many years of effective leadership in both church and academic settings provide a wealth of experience that he brings to his work as director."
"I am confident that Dr. Venden will build on the vision of the Center's founding (and now emeritus) director, Dr. Wil Alexander, to make 'whole-person care'
a living reality at Loma Linda," adds Dr. Winslow.
The Center for Spiritual Life & Wholeness was established in 1998 to foster and nurture spiritual life and wholeness in health scientists, health-care professionals, their families, their students, and their patients. The Center also provides research opportunities to explore the bio-psycho-social-spiritual innerweaving connections in the healing, health, wholeness, and restoration of broken and ill human beings.
Dr. Carr received a bachelor's degree in theology in 1987 from Walla Walla College, College Place, Washington. From there, he went directly to Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, to prepare for pastoral ministry in Alaska. Several years later, still longing for a more rigorous academic experience, Dr. Carr moved his family across the continent to Virginia where he was accepted into the PhD program in both religion and bioethics. His education there included ethical traditions in Jewish, Islamic, and Christian ideals, as well as philosophy and bioethics.
In 1998, Dr. Carr began teaching for the Faculty of Religion. In the fall of 2000, he was named director of the master's program in biomedical and clinical ethics for the Faculty of Religion.
Upcoming projects for Dr. Carr include a contributors' convocation, where all contributors to the Center for Christian Bioethics can fellowship together, which will be held November 3 at the Desert Falls Country Club, Palm Desert. He will also continue to collect ethics material for the ethics library.
"We have an outstanding ethics library here, one of the best I've seen anywhere," he proclaims.
Ethics, according to Dr. Carr, is fast becoming a hot topic in today's media.
"Especially with all of this stem cell talk, ethics is becoming a field of huge interest," he adds.
The Center for Christian Bioethics, now completing its 17th year of operation, is the oldest of the two Centers.
"Dr. Carr is a successful scholar and teacher whose work in ethics shows the kind of creativity that will be of great use in his leadership of the Center for Christian Bioethics," states Dr. Winslow.
[Top]