Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, Ed.D.

Dr. Jacobsen began teaching psychology at Messiah in 1984 and received both national and campus awards for her excellence in the classroom. For two decades, she was director of Faculty Development for the university. Starting in 2015, she also co-directed the Clergy Leadership Project of Central Pennsylvania, a five-year project funded by the Lilly Endowment that was designed to identify emerging pastoral leaders and connect them to other community leaders in the region. Dr. Jacobsen continues to co-direct (with Douglas Jacobsen) the Religion in the Academy Project, researching, writing, and lecturing about religion and higher education. Her publications include Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation (Oxford University Press, 2004), The American University in a Postsecular Age (OUP, 2008), winner of the Lilly Fellows Book Award, and No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education (OUP, 2012), winner of a Critics Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association.