Submitted by Saint Martin’s University
LACEY, Wash. – The Saint Martin’s University Society of Fellows cordially invites the community to join its members for the Society’s Spring 2013 Colloquium on Monday, April 15, at 7 p.m. The event, free and open to the public, will be hosted in the Norman Worthington Conference Center on Saint Martin’s Lacey campus.
The evening celebration will feature distinguished speaker Ian Werrett, Ph.D., associate professor of religious studies and director of the Spiritual Life Institute at Saint Martin’s. Werrett will speak on “Societies of Fellows: Coincidences, Connections and Collaborations.”
“I want to show how my relationships with the members of the Saint Martin’s community, as well as with other communities, inspired me to go to graduate school, to study the Dead Sea Scrolls and to write a new book on ancient libraries,” explains Werrett, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar who received his undergraduate degree in 1996 from Saint Martin’s, earned a master’s degree in biblical studies from Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C., Canada, and received his doctorate in biblical studies from the University of St. Andrews in St. Andrews, Scotland.
“My hope is that the listeners will come away with a greater appreciation of the transformative power of relationships and the benefits of seeing familiar problems through the eyes of another human being,” he says. During his talk, Werrett will be sharing photos taken in Israel during his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as photos shot during his research on ancient libraries while in Turkey.
At the colloquium, newly inducted members of the Society of Fellows will receive medals. Graduating Fellows will wear their medals with their regalia at Saint Martin’s commencement on Saturday, May 11.
Founded in 1971 by Father Michael Feeney, O.S.B., the Society of Fellows is Saint Martin’s academic honorary society. Membership in the society recognizes students and faculty who, by their outstanding work in teaching and learning, contribute to the intellectual life of the University.
Saint Martin’s University is an independent four-year, coeducational university located on a wooded campus of more than 300 acres in Lacey, Washington. Established in 1895 by the Catholic Order of Saint Benedict, the University is one of 14 Benedictine colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, and the only one west of the Rocky Mountains. Saint Martin’s University prepares students for successful lives through its 23 majors and seven graduate programs spanning the liberal arts, business, education, nursing and engineering. Saint Martin’s welcomes more than 1,100 undergraduate students and 400 graduate students from many ethnic and religious backgrounds to its Lacey campus, and 300 more undergraduate students to its extension campuses located at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Centralia College. Visit the Saint Martin’s University website at www.stmartin.edu.
