• Lund-Gill Chair
• 2009, Richard Woods
• 2008, Stephen Kinzer
• 2007, David Bevington
• 2006, Leon M. Lederman

Lund-Gill Chair

This year's holder of the Lund-Gill Chair is Father Richard Woods, OP, Professor of Theology at Dominican University. The chair is named for former Dominican University President Sr. Candida Lund, OP, and former English professor, Sr. Cyrille Gill, OP.

Each year, the Lund-Gill Chair in the Rosary College Arts and Sciences brings to campus an individual of the highest moral and intellectual reputation who can address themes and issues at the heart of the liberal arts and sciences.

About Richard Woods

Woods was born and raised in New Mexico, pursued undergraduate studies in Washington, D.C., New Mexico, and Iowa before becoming a member of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), a Roman Catholic community of priests, brothers, sisters, and laypeople founded in the thirteenth-century. He holds the PhD in the Philosophy of Religion (Loyola Chicago, 1978), MAs in systematic theology and scholastic philosophy from Aquinas Institute, and the STM (Master of Sacred Theology) from the Dominican Order (Rome, 2000). Presently, he is Professor of Theology at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois.  For twenty-seven years, he served on the graduate faculty in the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Chicago, taught undergraduate theology and philosophy, and in 1981 became adjunct associate professor in the  department of psychiatry at Loyola University Medical School. From 1991-99 he was also lecturer and tutor at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University and held the Aquinas Lectureship at the Aquinas Center of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, in 1999.  In addition to work in medieval and contemporary spirituality, he continues research in contemporary religious experience, especially in the area of health and nutrition.  From 2005 to 2006 he was chair of the Eckhart Society (London).

On the literary front, he has written ten non-fiction books, co-authored a fictional work on dragons with Anne McCaffrey, and published three novellas about the Knights Templar for Warner Books.  A novel, Epiphanius Tighe and the Dragon of East South Water Street , was published in October 2000 by Authors Choice Press. In addition, he has edited three anthologies in religious studies and authored several dozen articles in spirituality, theology, sexuality, the Middle East, and Celtic studies. His last non-fiction book, Wellness: Life, Health, and Spirituality , was published in August, 2008, by Veritas Publications (Dublin). The third revised and expanded edition of Christian Spirituality: God's Presence through the Ages , was published by Orbis Books in 2006 and the second revised edition of Eckhart's Way was published in Veritas in August, 2009.

Ordinarily he spends a couple of months during the summer writing and gardening in Ireland, where his family has its roots and an old stone cottage. He likes animals of all kinds, Mexican and Italian food, oil and water color painting, and enjoys making and even playing Irish harps when he can find the time.