Thursday, August 28, 2003 TODAY
Faculty of Religion news
Wil Alexander returns as director of Center for Spiritual Life & Wholeness
Wil Alexander, PhD, founding director of the Center for Spiritual Life & Wholeness
has returned to the Center to fill the vacancy left by Louis Venden,
PhD, who
is retiring.
The Center of Spiritual Life & Wholeness is no stranger to Dr. Alexander,
who founded the Center in 1997 and served as director until his retirement in
2001.
Dr. Alexander is also a professor of family medicine in the School of Medicine.
Dr. Alexander, a native of Boulder, Colorado, was born on October 12, 1921. Dr.
Alexander completed a program in psychiatric nursing at Colorado State Hospital,
Pueblo, in 1941. In 1942, Dr. Alexander entered the United States Navy as a chief
pharmacist’s mate attached to the Marine Air Corps in the Pacific.
At the end of World War II, Dr. Alexander entered La Sierra College (now La Sierra
University), Riverside, where he completed his undergraduate education in 1950
with a major in theology and biblical languages.
He entered the ministry in the Southern California Conference of Seventh-day
Adventists and was ordained in Lynwood, California, in 1954. From 1954 to 1963,
he was on the faculty at Loma Linda as an associate professor of practical theology
where he taught courses
in counseling, guidance, evangelism, preaching, and speech.
In 1957, Dr. Alexander was granted a master of arts degree from Andrews University,
Berrien Springs, Michigan; a doctor of philosophy degree in communication from
Michigan State University, East Lansing, in 1962; and a master of theology degree
in 1966 from Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, Scotland.
His professional career includes pastoral ministry, hospital chaplaincy, college-
and
seminary-level teaching, and administration. After rejoining the faculty in 1973,
he taught courses in clinical ministry and conducted research in the area of
clinical ministry to the dying patient.
In 1990, Dr. Alexander was appointed dean of the University’s Faculty of
Religion, a position which he held until 1993. He served Loma Linda University
as special assistant to the president for spiritual life and wholeness from 1993
to 1997 when he founded the Center.
Dr. Alexander has authored numerous articles in a variety of journals, as well
as two books, Strange Estrangement and Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt. A third
book, Innerweave: The Spiritual Connections in Whole-person Care—A Creative
Approach in Search of a Profession, is in the final stages of production.
His distinguished career has earned him a number of awards, including Loma Linda
University School of Medicine’s Senior Educator of the Year Award, La Sierra
University Alumnus of the Year, and the Loma Linda University Distinguished Service
Award.
The Center for Spiritual Life & Wholeness serves the institution as a base
from which to foster and nurture spiritual life and wholeness in health-care
professionals, their families, and their patients.
It 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. Here, educational
and teaching approaches are created for training health-care professionals as
servants/healers in the art of whole-person care, with special emphasis on sharing
the everlasting Gospel.
Finally, the Center serves as a resource for the Seventh-day Adventist health-care
system and for the health community at large.
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Thursday, August 28, 2003 TODAY
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