Two Samford University professors have received a $56,000 grant from the Lilly Fellows Program National Network Board for a summer seminar for college teachers.
Professors Dr. H. Hugh Floyd and Dr. Penny Marler will lead the seminar, "Spirituality and Social Justice: Lessons from the Civil Rights Movement: during the summer of 2001.
The one-month seminar, scheduled for June 4-29, will involve 12 college professors from throughout the nation in an interdisciplinary study of issues related to spirituality and social justice.
In addition to on-campus reading, discussion and research, participants will engage in activities in order to experience the people and places of the civil rights movement. They will trace the historic Selma to Montgomery "Freedom Trail," visit key church sites such as Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, and Bethel and Sixteenth Street Baptist churches in Birmingham; and explore the archives and libraries at the Civil Rights Institute and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Lilly Fellows Program seeks to renew and enhance connections between Christianity and the academic vocation at church-related colleges and universities.
Dr. Floyd is professor and chair of Samford's Department of Sociology. Dr. Marler, associate professor in the Department of Religion and Philosophy, also teaches in the sociology department.