Spring Opening Convocation on Jan. 18

Opening Convocation for the Easter semester at the University will be at noon, Friday, Jan. 18, in All Saints’ Chapel. Honorary degrees will be presented and new members will be inducted into the Order of Gownsmen. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson will give the Convocation address and will receive an honorary degree. Stan Brock, the Rt. Rev. Jacob W. Owensby and the Rt. Rev. John McKee Sloan will also receive honorary degrees during the Convocation. Robinson will also have a reading on Thursday, Jan. 17 [see accompanying story about Robinson].

Stan Brock is the founder and president of Remote Area Medical, Inc. (RAM), a corps of volunteers providing free medical, visual, dental, and veterinary care to uninsured and under-insured individuals in the U.S. and the developing world. An Englishman by birth, Brock spent 15 years with the Wapishana Indians in the Central Amazon Basin, becoming general manager of the world’s largest tropical cattle ranch. He is a bush pilot and former star of the popular television program “Wild Kingdom.” Brock’s experiences living and working in the Amazon basin, witnessing the suffering of those without access to medical services, inspired him to create RAM in 1985. RAM clinics are held in the U.S. and worldwide, and have inspired more than 70,000 volunteers to provide care to more than a half million people. A clinic at Sewanee last May served more than 500 area residents.

The Rt. Rev. Jacob W. Owensby, Ph.D., T’97, was ordained on July 21 as the fourth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana. Owensby has served as dean of St. Mark’s Cathedral, the seat of the Western Louisiana diocese, since January 2009. He previously served as rector of Emmanuel Church, Webster Groves, Mo.; as rector of St. Stephen’s Church, Huntsville, Ala.; and as assistant rector at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Jacksonville, Fla. He holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in philosophy from Emory University, and a master of divinity degree from the School of Theology at the University of the South. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1997.

 The Rt. Rev. John McKee Sloan, T’81, currently serves as bishop of the Diocese of Alabama. A native of Vicksburg, Miss., Sloan received his bachelor of science degree in sociology from Mississippi State University in 1976 and his master of divinity degree from the School of Theology at the University of the South in 1981. Sloan’s previous service to the Church includes calls to parishes in Mississippi and Alabama as curate, chaplain and rector. He is an active participant in programs that support people with mental and physical disabilities. In the national Church, he is a member of the standing commission for liturgy and music. Sloan and his wife, Tina Brown Sloan, have two children, McKee, C’11, and Mary Nell, a freshman at the University of Montevallo.