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When Michelle Dodson BA ’02 was asked by former seminary Dean David Kersten if she could see herself teaching in a prison, a light bulb went off in her head.

“I said, ‘yes, that’s exactly what I want to be doing now,’” recalled Dodson. “The Lord had been putting on my heart a burden for prison ministry.”

That fortuitous encounter led to Dodson, now the Milton B. Engebretson Chair in Evangelism and Justice, joining the seminary’s faculty in 2019 as an adjunct professor in the School of Restorative Arts (SRA). She’s been teaching classes at Stateville and Logan Correctional Centers ever since. As part of the SRA program, incarcerated, or “inside” students, learn alongside the un-incarcerated, or “outside” students.

…When you’re in the city and you have to cross Foster Avenue and you see someone not like you, their embodied presence reminds you that they come from a different place. Place matters.

“The inside students are so hungry,” Dodson said. “The first week of my first class, the inside students, not only had they done all the assigned reading, but they had read the citations in those readings. I had one outside student shake her head and say ‘I think I need to do the reading again, I didn’t catch half of that.’”

A native of the San Francisco Bay area, Dodson transferred to North Park from Tuskegee University her junior year, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies. In fall 2023, she received her doctorate of sociology in religion at Garrett Theological Seminary. She’s also a founding pastor of New Community Covenant Church’s two locations, in Bronzeville and Logan Square, and is associate pastor of the Bronzeville branch.

Dodson, who lives on the South Side with her husband, two daughters, and mother, says North Park’s presence in Chicago is one of its richest assets.

“One of the things we talk about in the seminary is why it matters to be in the city,” Dodson said. “It gives you an opportunity to be exposed to so many ideas and perspectives. You can sit in a classroom anywhere in the world and if you have a good instructor, you can learn. But when you’re in the city and you have to cross Foster Avenue and you see someone not like you, their embodied presence reminds you that they come from a different place. Place matters.”