Nashotah House implements innovative leadership structure

Concluding a year of leadership transition and institutional growth, the Nashotah House Theological Seminary Board of Directors has appointed Dr. Garwood P. Anderson as the seminary Provost and President. With the appointment to these permanent roles, the Board endorses Anderson’s capable leadership and marks an innovation in the leadership structure of the seminary.

Dr. Anderson has served as the professor of New Testament and Greek at Nashotah House since 2007, including service as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2009-2012. In July 2017, with the departure of the Rev. Andrew Grosso, Anderson was asked to step in again as Academic Dean and then in August 2017 as Acting Dean when then Dean-President, the Rev. Steven Peay, resigned to become Dean Emeritus and Research Professor of Homiletics and Church History. Anderson’s appointment to President marks the first time in the 176-year history of the seminary that a lay person serves as the institution’s executive officer.

Anderson’s appointment is also the first installment of an innovative restructuring of the institution’s senior leadership to better address the demands of the fast-changing milieu of theological education. Reflecting on the seminary’s history and mission, the Nashotah House Board of Directors determined that its venerable model of a single leader carrying all the functions of a “Dean-President” was no longer adequate for twenty-first century challenges. In response, the Board has designated that the seminary be led by two officers: a Provost, responsible for the institution’s academic and formational program, and a Chief Advancement Officer, leading the seminary’s external affairs to resource its mission.

Nashotah House begins a search this fall for Dr. Anderson’s counterpart, who is expected to assume the office in the summer of 2019. With a trend-defying growth in enrollment of 30 percent over the preceding year and the revision of several of the seminary’s growing programs, the future looks bright at the oldest institution of higher education in the state of Wisconsin.