Adapted from a Nashotah House news release
Lauren Whitnah, Ph.D., will become the next dean of Nashotah House Theological Seminary on August 1.
A lifelong Episcopalian, Whitnah hails from a family of vocational commitments to the church. Whitnah’s father and brother are both priests in the Episcopal Church, and her mother holds a Doctor of Ministry in spiritual formation.
Whitnah joins Nashotah House from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she has held academic and administrative roles. Whitnah earned a master’s degree and her doctoral degree in medieval studies, both from the University of Notre Dame. She also has a master’s degree in history from the University of Oxford and a bachelor’s degree in history from Gordon College.
Whitnah has served on the teaching faculty of the University of Tennessee since 2014. In an additional role as research manager and associate director of the university’s Global Computing Lab, she oversees communication with collaborators in academia, industry, and national nuclear laboratories, securing and managing grants totaling more than $30 million from the National Science Foundation and other entities.
“What distinguished Dr. Whitnah among a strong pool of candidates was not only her stellar academic credentials, but also her administrative competence and background in development,” said the Rev. Canon Ed Monk, chairman of Nashotah House’s board. “We’re confident in her capacity to lead Nashotah House into a bright future.”
As dean, Whitnah’s priorities will include continuing Nashotah House’s recent progress in student enrollment and fundraising, management of operations, and maintaining trust with all seminary constituencies.
“I’m honored and delighted to step into this role at Nashotah House,” Whitnah said. “As an educator, I’m eager to join a seminary that is serious about cultivating students’ love of God and neighbor through a Benedictine ethos of prayer, worship, and community. As an administrator, I feel deeply privileged to lead an institution with as rich a tradition as Nashotah House and to inherit it during this season of growth. The House has been built on a strong foundation, and I am confident that it is well situated to form the next generation of leaders for lives of knowledge, love, and service.”
She added: “My dad’s first day at Virginia Theological Seminary was my first day of kindergarten,” Whitnah said. “So, most of my life has been spent in close proximity to those discerning, preparing for, and living out their call to ministry. To get to join in Nashotah House’s mission of raising up more ministers for the church feels like a full-circle moment.”
As senior lecturer at the Knoxville campus, she taught more than 400 students annually in interdisciplinary classes exploring the history, politics, culture, art, religion, economics, and literature of Western Europe from ca. 300 to ca.1500. During the decade she taught medieval and Renaissance studies at the university, the number of students pursuing majors and minors in that discipline tripled.
Nashotah’s board worked with Dr. Andrew Westmoreland of the Dallas-based executive search firm FaithSearch Partners during the search. After a five-month nationwide search and prayerful consideration, the board approved Whitnah’s appointment as dean on April 25.
She will succeed Dr. Garwood Anderson, who has served as dean since 2017 and announced in fall 2023 his intention to retire from the deanship at the end of this academic year. Anderson’s term concludes May 31. He plans to return to the classroom in the fall of 2024, serving as the Donald J. Parsons Distinguished Professor of Biblical Interpretation.