FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Office of University Communications                                   

CONTACT:  
Stacie Royster
Media Relations Manager 
(202) 238-2332
sroyster@howard.edu

Washington, D.C., May 7, 2007 – Alton B. Pollard, III, Ph.D., was named today as dean of Howard University School of Divinity, effective July 1, 2007.

Pollard currently serves as director of the Program on Black Church Studies and associate professor of Religion and Culture at the Candler School of Theology and chair of the American Religious Cultures Program in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. From 1988 to 1998, he served on the faculty of the Department of Religion at Wake Forest University.

“The Howard University Community is elated to welcome Dr. Pollard to lead the School of Divinity,” said President H. Patrick Swygert. “I am confident that he will continue to champion the school’s rich legacy of producing religious leaders who are consistently at the forefront of global change.”

Pollard’s research interests include: African American Religion and Culture, Sociology of the Black Church, Southern African Studies, Pan-Africanist Religious Thought, American Religious Cultures, and the Sociology of Religion. He has published widely in the areas of religion and culture. He is the author of Mysticism and Social Change, and a new introduction to W.E.B. DuBois’s, The Negro Church. He is the co-editor with L. Henry Whelchel of How Long This Road: Race, Religion and the Legacy of C. Eric Lincoln; and editor of Black Church Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (forthcoming). Additionally, he is the consulting editor of the multi-volume Howard Thurman Papers Project, The Sound of the Genuine, and co-author of The Balm in Gilead’s Helpers for a Healing Community: A Pastoral Care Manual for HIV/AIDS (on-line). Pollard served as associate editor of the journal Black Sacred Music.

An ordained Baptist minister, Pollard has pastored John Street Baptist Church (MA), New Red Mountain Baptist Church (NC), and Bell Buckle and Hopewell A.M.E. Churches (TN). Currently, he serves as an associate minister of Trinity Tabernacle Baptist Church in Mableton, Georgia. He holds degrees from Fisk University (B.A. with honors in religion and philosophy and business management), Harvard University Divinity School (M.Div.), and Duke University, the Department of Religion (Ph.D.).

Howard University is one of 48 U.S. private, Doctoral/Research-Extensive universities and comprises 12 schools and colleges. Founded in 1867, students pursue studies in more than 120 areas leading to undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees. Since 1998, the University has produced two Rhodes Scholars, a Truman Scholar, a Marshall Scholar, 13 Fulbright Scholars and nine Pickering Fellows. Howard also produces more on-campus African-American Ph.D.s than any other university in the world. For more information on Howard University, call 202-238-2330, or visit the University’s Web site at www.Howard.edu .