Published on March 18, 2014  
Jason Wallace

Samford University's board of trustees executive committee announced at its March 6 meeting that Dr. William Jason Wallace will be the first professor to hold the Richard J. Stockham Jr. Chair of Western Intellectual History.

The chair is named in honor of Mr. Richard Stockham, Jr., a Birmingham native and Princeton University graduate who cared deeply about the educational value of the Western and Christian intellectual traditions.

As outlined by the board, the holder of the Stockham Chair provides administrative oversight of the university's Core Texts Program. For Wallace, these duties include managing the Cultural Perspectives (UCCP) curriculum, defining the needs of the curriculum, assessing and revising the program as needed.

Wallace, who joined Samford’s history faculty in 2002, specializes in religious and intellectual history and researches the relationship between religion and political thought. In addition to a number of articles and review essays, he is the author of Catholics, Slaveholders, and the Dilemma of American Evangelicalism, 1835-1860 (Notre Dame, 2010). His latest book, Collapse of the Covenant: The Transformation of the Puritan Ideal, is forthcoming from The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Among his other professional honors, Wallace earned the 2011 Howard College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teacher award.
 
Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 6,101 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.