Date: May 25, 2022
One of the delights at the end of the academic year is the designation of the Suzanne F. Thomas Award for Faculty Research. This award was established at Virginia Theological Seminary in 2005 in honor of Suzanne F. Thomas of Aylett, Virginia, and her strong commitment to excellence in education and the mission of the Episcopal Church. It aims to support faculty research and foster excellence in scholarship at Virginia Seminary.
This year I am proud to announce on behalf of the Dean that the Thomas Award for Faculty Research is awarded to the Rev. Ross Kane, Ph.D.
As you know from yesterday’s commentary, Ross successfully achieved tenure this year. After publishing an excellent monograph on syncretism with Oxford Press in 2021, he recently sent in a full manuscript titled The Church and Politics to a publisher this spring. The Dean and I agreed that his scholarship at both the academic and popular level is extraordinary, methodologically and conceptually original, and addresses significant ethical and theological themes.
Also of note is that Ross achieved all of this during a time of such extraordinary challenge. For the past several years he has been coaching and encouraging doctoral students run ragged in churches and schools to put their best efforts into their courses and theses. He also redesigned the annual residency for doctoral programs at VTS into an online context. As the father of two very young sons who could only recently get vaccinated, he and Liz juggled home schooling and health concerns in the midst of it all.
Please join me in congratulating Ross on this award.
The Rev. Melody Knowles, Ph.D.
Vice President of Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Old Testament