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 Dr. Larry Dwight Shinn, a religion scholar and author and editor
of six books on world religions, became the eighth president
of Berea College in August, 1994.
The native of Alliance, Ohio, was selected by Berea's Board
of Trustees following a six-month national search that resulted
in 160 candidates. He assumed the presidency at Berea after serving
from 1989-94 as vice president for Academic Affairs and professor
of religion at Bucknell University.
Dr. Shinn was a faculty member and administrator at Bucknell
for 10 years and served from 1984-89 as dean of the College of
Arts and Sciences. He began his career in higher education at
Oberlin College where he taught for 14 years and was appointed
William H. Danforth Professor of Religion.
An ordained minister of the United Methodist Church, Dr.Shinn
has conducted research in India and in Jordan, where he and his
wife Nancy taught for 15 months. He has received a number of
major academic awards and research grants and was a Fellow in
the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University
of Chicago and a Princeton University Fellow.
Dr. Shinn received his bachelor's degree in religion in 1964
from Baldwin Wallace College, where he was graduated magna cum
laude. He earned his bachelor of divinity degree from Drew Theological
School in 1968, graduating summa cum laude. He received his doctorate
in the History of Religions from Princeton in 1972.
After graduating from high school in Alliance where he was co-Captain
of the football team and a member of the baseball and track squads,.
he declined football scholarships at several major universities
and attended Baldwin Wallace on an academic scholarship. He was
co-captain of the football team at Baldwin Wallace and was named
to the Methodist All-American team as a lineman. He also ran
track and was named the college's outstanding athlete for 1963-64.
At Drew, Dr. Shinn majored in New Testament studies and, at
Princeton, focused on the religions of India. His specialization
at Princeton was in the Hindu Bhakti (devotional) traditions
associated with the Indian deity Krishna. His dissertation was
on the 10th century A.D. Hindu (Krishna) scripture called the
Bhagavata Purana.
Dr. Shinn is the author of Two Sacred Worlds: Experience and
Structure in the World's Religions, a book published in 1977,
and the Dark Lord: Cult Images and the Hare Krishnas in America
(1987). He's the co-author of Lustful Maidens and Ascetic Kings
(1981), associate editor for the major reference work The Abingdon
Dictionary of Living Religions (1981), editor of In Search of
the Divine: Some Unexpected Consequences of Interfaith Dialogue
(1987), and co-editor of Krishna Consciousness in the West (1989).
He has received academic awards and grants from the American
Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for the Advanced
Study of Religion at the University of Chicago, the NEH, Princeton
University, and other institutions and foundations.
Mrs. Shinn, the former Nancy Lee Albright, also is an Alliance,
Ohio, native and a Baldwin Wallace graduate. Her undergraduate
degree is in education and she earned a graduate degree in that
field from Bucknell. She is a specialist in early childhood programs
and taught kindergarten prior to moving to Berea.
The Shinns were married in 1963 and have two daughters. Christie
(Mrs. Peter Latona) is a Swarthmore College alumna. She and her
husband, who live in Silver Spring, Md., have a daughter, Melina,
and sons, Andrew, and two year old Christopher. Robyn (Mrs. Erol
Miller), who was graduated from Guilford College, resides in
Rockville, Md., with her husband and their daughter, Dylan Shinn
Miller, and Ethan.
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