inauguration banner

Speaker Biographies


John E. Ydstie ’74
YdstieJohn Ydstie is National Public Radio’s economics correspondent. His current focus is reporting on the global financial crisis. He is also a regular guest host on the NPR news programs “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered,” “Weekend Edition” and “Talk of the Nation.” He graduated summa cum laude from Concordia College with a major in English and a minor in speech communication. He began his public radio career at Minnesota Public Radio, where he was a producer and award-winning reporter. He has worked for NPR since 1979 and was a senior editor and executive producer before becoming NPR’s economics correspondent. He has traveled the world covering the economy, Wall Street and the federal budget.


ChurchillDr. John Churchill
John Churchill is the secretary of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the nation’s oldest academic honor society. He was educated at Rhodes College, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa; at Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar; and at Yale University, where he was awarded a doctorate in 1978. His scholarly interests include the philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and David Hume, the history of philosophy, the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of liberal education. He has published journal articles in the U.S. and the U.K., book chapters in the U.S. and Germany, several dozen reviews and critical notes, as well as essays and stories in the popular press and college magazines. He writes a weekly blog for Phi Beta Kappa titled “From the Secretary.”


Dr. Susan M. O’Shaughnessy
O'ShaughnessySusan O’Shaughnessy is professor and chair of the philosophy department at Concordia College. She is keenly interested in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the problem of the origin of truth. Other areas of research include the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, history and philosophy of biology, and classical phenomenology. O’Shaughnessy served as conference director for the 36th meeting of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle. She referees articles for “The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology” and holds memberships in Phi Beta Kappa and Eta Sigma Phi.


LewisDr. Earl Lewis ’78
Earl Lewis is provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs and the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of History and African American Studies. He will become president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation effective March 2013. He graduated magna cum laude from Concordia College, earned a doctorate from the University of Minnesota, and began his academic career at the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the Emory faculty in 2004, he served as dean of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies and vice provost for Academic Affairs/Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan. Lewis holds degrees in history and psychology and is author and co-editor of seven books, among them the award-winning “To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans,” and the widely acclaimed “Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White.“ He is co-editor of the award-winning book series “American Crossroads.” He was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008. Lewis currently serves on the Concordia College Board of Regents.


Dr. Linda L. Johnson
JohnsonLinda Johnson is a professor of history at Concordia College. She currently serves as the project co-director under a U.S. Department of Education grant to build a comprehensive Asian studies program at Concordia. She recently wrote a paper titled “Evangelists for Women’s Education: The Collaboration of Tsuda Umeko and Alice M. Bacon,” which was presented at the annual Asian Studies Conference in Tokyo in June 2011 and will be published in a forthcoming issue of “Asian Cultural Studies.” With Dr. Stewart Herman, she has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Enduring Questions course development grant. Johnson holds memberships in Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Alpha Theta.



Dr. William J. Craft
Eleventh President of Concordia College
 
CraftWilliam Craft began serving as president of Concordia College on July 11, 2011. Prior to his election as president, he served as the dean of Luther College and vice president for Academic Affairs, holding a faculty appointment as professor of English.

His scholarly work on early modern poetry and prose includes a book on Philip Sidney, and his academic leadership has focused on curriculum reform, faculty development and workload, institutional diversity, and institutional planning.

Chair of the Wye Seminar Advisory Council, a program of the Aspen Institute, he is a frequent speaker and workshop leader at national meetings for deans and faculty. He is a member of the American Conference of Academic Deans Executive Board and has played an active role in devising and sustaining the Midwestern Alliance for Learning in the Liberal Arts, a group of seven colleges devoted to cross-institutional evaluation of student learning.

Craft earned his doctorate in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has been a Fellow of the Newberry Library and the American Council on Education. In summer 2008, he attended the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University.

Information For:

current students
faculty and staff		 parents
alumni		 high school students
admitted students