News

May 14, 2011 - Nicholas Valentine Riasanovsky, an emeritus professor of European history at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading authority on the history of Russia, died May 14 in an Oakland, Calif., nursing home following a long illness. He was 87.

Riasanovsky had close ties to the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and was a founder of its Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute, serving as an institute board member from 1986 to 2005.

This year the Sarlo Excellence in Teaching Award honors Ronald (Ron) Y. Nakasone as a teacher who embodies the values of interreligious sensitivity and commitment, interdisciplinary approach and content in teaching, sensitivity to ethnic and cultural diversity, and creative classroom pedagogical methods and performance.

“I am a teacher, yes, but I see myself as a mentor,” says Nakasone, who is a Buddhist cleric from the Pure Land tradition — one of the most popular traditions of Buddhism in East Asia — and a renowned calligrapher. And because of his interest in spirituality and aging, he is also on the faculty at Stanford Geriatric Education Center, charged with training caregivers who work with ethnic minorities.

The College of the Holy Cross (Worchester, Mass.) has selected Rev. Philip L. Boroughs, S.J., as the College’s 32nd president beginning January 2012. He graduated in 1989 with a Ph.D. in Christian Spirituality from the Graduate Theological Union. His doctoral dissertation was on John Woolman (1720-1772), the itinerant Quaker preacher in Colonial America, who advocated against slavery and whose journal is considered a spiritual classic. Fr. Boroughs also holds a Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley.

The May 12 Commencement ceremonies marked the beginning of a new journey for 62 graduates who completed their degrees in Fall 2010 or Spring 2011. Thirty-three students graduated with a Master of Arts degree, four received a Master of Arts with a concentration in Biblical Languages, and 25 received the Doctor of Philosophy degree.