UU House of Studies Advisory Board
The Advisory Board of the UU House of Studies serves as a locus of accountability and advice.
Governance of the Unitarian Universalist House of Studies is provided by MTSO. The UU House of Studies Advisory Board provides strategic help in refining our mission; assessment of current activities in light of mission-fulfillment goals; advice and assistance relating to funding and resourcing; and relational diplomacy with mission partners.
Advisory board members
Eva Marx has been a UU for more than 50 years, much of that time at First Parish Hingham, Massachusetts, where she is a deacon. She has been president of the Ballou Channing District of the Unitarian Universalist Association and a member for eight years of the Board of Trustees of the UUA.
The Rev. Joan Van Becelaere is a congregational life consultant for the Central East Region of the UUA and served the last five years as staff lead. Previously, she was vice president for student services at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, where she also taught.
Michael Butler is CEO of OhioNet, a Columbus-based library and information services organization that serves many seminaries and institutions of higher learning, including MTSO. He has served on boards of trustees for many nonprofit organizations, including libraries and historically black colleges.
The Rev. Colin Bossen is a UU minister and Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University. His academic work focuses on the relationship between theology and social movements. He serves on the board of the UU History and Heritage Society, and he has been involved in justice struggles for more than two decades.
Gini von Courter served as chief governance officer and moderator of the UUA and chair of the Board of Trustees from 2003 to 2013. She is a principal of TRIAD Consulting, through which she develops and delivers training.
Katie Kuntz-Wineland is an M.Div. student at MTSO. She currently serves as student minister at North UU Congregation in Lewis Center, where she is a member. Katie’s wife, Beth, is MTSO’s plant-based chef, preparing farm-to-table meals featuring food grown on MTSO’s Seminary Hill Farm.
Dr. Cynthia Grant Tucker is professor emerita of English at the University of Tennessee. She is the author of five award-winning historical biographies, many about women Unitarian Universalists, including the groundbreaking Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women Minsters on the Frontier: 1888-1930 (Indiana University Press).
Christina Rivera was elected to the UUA Board of Trustees in 2014. In 2004, she and her husband relocated to rural Virginia with their twin sons. Seeking community, she joined the UU Fellowship of Waynesboro, Virginia, where she now serves as director of religious education.
The Rev. Sylvia Howe graduated from MTSO and was ordained as a UU minister in 1980. She has served congregations in Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida, Maryland and Massachusetts. She retired in 2008 from the First Parish Church in Beverly, Massachusetts, and was named that congregation’s minister emerita.