68 grads-to-be approved
by LTSP Trustees

Sixty-eight candidates for degrees and certificates were approved during the spring meeting of the Trustees of The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (LTSP). The seminary's commencement exercises will be conducted at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 19 at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lansdale, PA. The keynote address will be delivered by LTSP alum, the Rev. Dr. H. George Anderson, former presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Dr. Anderson is the seminary's St. John's Summit Professor during 2003.

In other business, the Trustees conferred emeritus status upon the Rev. Dr. Robert G. Hughes, who retires at the end of this academic year as St. John Professor of Homiletics. Dr. Hughes and his spouse, Dona Lee, were honored during a campus reception. The Trustees and the seminary community heard an inaugural address by the Rev. Dr. Timothy Wengert, who later this year will be chaired as the Ministerium of Pennsylvania Professor of Reformation History.

The Trustees also authorized the seeking of funds to establish the Jeremiah Wright, Sr., Chair in African American Studies for the seminary's Urban Theological Institute (UTI) program and authorized the naming of the UTI Scholarship Fund as the Rev. J. Q. Jackson Scholarship Fund. Wright and Jackson were the first African American graduates of the seminary and enjoyed distinguished careers as church leaders in Philadelphia. The seminary hopes to establish the chair in 2005.

Also approved was a process for establishing a faculty search in Bible and Homiletics, which will be a joint position with the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. The joint position is being made possible by a grant from the Teagle Foundation.

Finally, the Trustees took note with appreciation the retirements of two colleagues: Bishop Lee Miller of Upstate New York Synod, and Ms. Nancy J. Milleville of Sanborn, NY.