Virginia Union University’s Board of Trustees has named Dr. Corey D. B. Walker as vice president and dean of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology. Dr. Walker will succeed senior vice president and dean Dr. John Kinney, effective July 1, 2017. Dr. Kinney is stepping down as dean after 27 years of service and will remain as a distinguished professor of theology at the University’s Graduate School of Theology.
Dr. Walker brings a wealth of academic experience to Virginia Union. He is currently Dean of the College of Arts, Sciences, Business, and Education and John W. and Anna Hodgin Hanes Professor of the Humanities at Winston-Salem State University. As dean, he provides academic leadership for 19 academic departments that enroll more than 3,500 students in courses each year, over 50 undergraduate majors and minors, three master’s level graduate programs, four academic centers, the Diggs Art Gallery, the Office of International Programs, and more than 200 full-time faculty members.
Prior to his appointment at Winston-Salem State University, Dr. Walker was a tenured faculty member and chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Brown University. He also served as a faculty member in the department of Religious Studies and the Carter G. Woodson Institute of African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. Dr. Walker was the inaugural director of the Center for the Study of Local Knowledge established by the Carter G. Woodson Institute, with support from the Ford Foundation, as the only research center in the country dedicated to new and innovative research related to the concept of local knowledge. He also served as a visiting professor at the Historisches Institut at Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena in Germany.
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The presidential search committee has named the Rev. Dr. Linda McKinnish Bridges as the presidential candidate for Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.
Upon approval by a vote of the BTSR Board of Trustees on March 21, McKinnish Bridges will succeed president Dr. Ron Crawford, effective July 1, 2017. Crawford is retiring after a decade of service to BTSR. Crawford says he is “very excited” about McKinnish Bridges returning to BTSR to serve as the next president. “Dr. Bridges’ disposition, training and experience uniquely qualify her for this position,” says Crawford. “She is known and loved in the larger BTSR community, and will lead the school well in the coming years.”
McKinnish Bridges was selected after a comprehensive nationwide search led by a BTSR committee consisting of trustees, faculty and staff, with assistance from AGB Search. McKinnish Bridges will serve as the third president of BTSR, and comes to the seminary at the culmination of BTSR’s 25th anniversary.