Emilie M. Townes, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Religion and Black Studies at Boston University School of Theology, is an American Baptist clergywoman, and a native of Durham, North Carolina. Townes is the Dean Emerita and the former University Distinguished Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and the College of Arts and Science, becoming the first African American to serve as Dean of the Divinity School in 2013. She holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a PhD in Religion in Society and Personality from Northwestern University.

She is the former Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology at Yale University Divinity School and in the fall of 2005, she was the first African American woman elected to the presidential line of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and served as president in 2008.

She was the first African American and first woman to serve as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Yale Divinity School. She is the former Carolyn Williams Beaird Professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Social Ethics at Saint Paul School of Theology.

Editor of two collection of essays, A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering and Embracing the Spirit: Womanist Perspectives on Hope, Salvation, and Transformation; she has also authored Womanist Ethics, Womanist Hope, In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality as Social Witness, Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care, and her groundbreaking book, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. She is co-editor with Stephanie Y. Mitchem of the Faith, Health, and Healing in African American Life and co-editor with the late Katie Geneva Cannon and Angela Sims for the Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader done with was published in November 2011. Her most recent co-editorship is with Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Alison Gise Johnson, and Angela Sims for Walking Through the Valley: Essays: Womanist Explorations in the Spirit of Katie Geneva Cannon (2022).

Townes was elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. She was the first Black woman to serve as president of the American Academy of Religion in 2008 and served a four-year term as president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion from 2012 to 2016.

In 2022, Townes was elected to the presidential line of the Society of Christian Ethics. Her presidential year will be 2025. At that time, she will be the first Black woman to hold this office.

Brian Webb serves as the Director of Campus Sustainability at the College of Wooster, with his primary responsibility being to lead the college’s efforts to promote environmental stewardship at an institutional level. This includes planning sustainability events and programs, working with faculty to incorporate sustainability into the curriculum, partnering with facilities to reduce energy usage, and coordinating with the administration to implement policies and procedures that help elevate Wooster’s position as a leader in environmental sustainability.
Before coming to Wooster in August 2023, Brian worked at Houghton University as the Director of Sustainability and as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies. Under Brian’s leadership, the college achieved a 46% carbon footprint reduction in just ten years. Brian also serves as an active leader in the faith-based environmental movement and co-directs the Christian Climate Observers Program, which mentors emerging faith leaders by bringing them to the annual UN climate conference. His research area of interest centers around the intersection between climate change policy, environmental communication, and faith communities in the United States and elsewhere.