Nicholas Rowe

Jamaica Plain, MA
Connect with Nicholas

About Nicholas Rowe

I've been a theoretician and practitioner of racial and ethnic conflict transformation and reconciliation for over 30 years. As a historian, I apply the study of the past to inculcate in students and clients the ability to situate themselves outside their own experience and conceptual frameworks to facilitate mutual respect and collaboration. As a vocational ministry, I’ve also worked with clients to promote post-conflict healing and restoration from the effects of racism and ethnic-based identity conflict. My experiences have had me working in the US and the African continent with educational institutions, churches, parachurch organizations, and non-profits to mature and restore communities seeking to model the diverse representation of the Kingdom of God. I look forward to working with the next generation of communities and their leaders to this end.

Areas of Expertise

Christian Colleges
Churches
Individual 1 on 1 coaching
Other Organizations

Services

References

Carl Stauffer, Ph. D.
Senior Expert, Reconciliation - United States Institute of Peace
I have known Dr. Nick Rowe as a colleague and friend for the past 17 years and he comes with high recommendation. Nick was an Associate with the Regional Peace Network where he offered conflict coaching, peacebuilding consulting, and reconciliation training within the community, church, and civil society sectors in South Africa, Zambia, and the US. Nick has exceptional integrity as demonstrated by his "grounded" Christian faith and praxis in personal, familial and community relationships. He is committed to engaged community building and activism, and excellence in organizational leadership in higher education, nonprofit management, and church ministry programming. Nick is a great communicator, innovative classroom instructor, and insightful scholar within the fields of history, education, racial justice, and peace and reconciliation. Nick is a caring, insightful, and challenging coach with global reach!
Jennifer Jukanovich
Former Vice President for Student Life - Gordon College
I had the privilege of working with Nick in his role as the Dean of Student Engagement at a faith-based college. Nick brought his perspective as a history professor to create meaningful opportunities for college students to engage complex issues facing our society. He built a strong team and empowered them to lead. Nick worked collaboratively with faculty, staff, administration and students to create a guiding framework, called the Shalom Statement, for the college's diversity initiatives. Nick not only laid out a robust theological framework but worked with the team to create an implementation plan. Nick is able to work with diverse teams to move a mission forward. He has experience as an interim college president, higher education administrator, faculty member and nonprofit leader and board member. Nick is discerning and wise and would bring great value as a coach to a leader or organization.
Henry Johnson
Pastor - Central Square Church
Nicholas was one of the facilitators for mental wellness for a group of clergy. Their services were extremely helpful, Pastor's really need to focus on their wellness, mentally, physically and spiritually. Our small group discussion we helpful, men in their group and women in theirs. This allowed open and honest conversations. Nicholas challenged us to take an introspective look into our lives, if possible pin point those areas of hurt, brokeness. Share them in the group and pray for one another. We invited the Holy Spirit to search us, and point out anything that was hindering our healing. Many found the sharing to be helpful, purifying.

Work Experience

Workgroup Participant
"Lift Every Voice and Teach: Teaching Race, Memory, Justice, and Reconciliation," Project on Lived Theology, University of Virginia - Charlottesville, VA
September 2021 - Current
Workgroup Participant From the website (https://www.livedtheology.org/initiatives/lift-every- voice-and-teach/): The Project on Lived Theology is assembling a group of professors from church-related colleges and universities, from a range of disciplines, who teach courses to undergraduates on the subjects of race, memory, justice, and reconciliation. Over the course of two academic years, we will explore how we have had to adapt our curricula and pedagogical approaches in order to teach undergraduate students who have come of age in this era of hyper- partisanship and heightened rhetoric around race and immigration. We will also discuss how we have tried to meet the challenges in our classrooms, where once acceptable or neutral terms and concepts dealing with race, racism, and systemic injustice have become loaded or freighted in new and unhelpful ways, making them very difficult topics to address. Participants will share their collective hope, experience, and wisdom for transformative education and will address some of the hardest parts of teaching our churches’ histories and our present practices. The workgroup’s purpose will be to encourage and develop pedagogy from the rent and fraying fabric of our present in order to prepare our students for the necessary decades-long task of fostering hope and healing to our communities.
Associate Vice President, Student and Global Engagement
Gordon College - Wenham, MA
June 2016 - January 2022
Cabinet officer providing oversight of student engagement programs including programs for communities of color; Cabinet officer providing oversight and shared responsibility for developing diversity, equity, and inclusion programming through the College's Shalom Plan. Chair, Faculty Multicultural Affairs Committee; lead developer, College Shalom Statement (College statement on diversity and inclusion)
Co-Lecturer
The Center For Justice And Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite University - Harrisburg, VA
June 2017 - July 2017
Workshop Module co-leader: "Truth Telling, Reconciliation & Restorative Justice"
Associate Professor and Academic Dean
St Augustine College Of South Africa - Johannesburg, South Africa
April 2006 - December 2015
Among multiple academic responsibilities, co-developer of Honours and Masters degree programs in Peace Studies and Conflict Transformation, one of the first in the country.
Workshop Leader
Africa Peacebuilding Institute - Mindolo Ecumenical Center, Kitwe, Zambia; St Augustine College of South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa
January 2006 - January 2015
Workshop leader for peacebuilding practitioners from the African continent, including Northern Nigeria, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Workshop modules taught: “Reconciliation: Theory and Praxis” and “Identity-Based Conflict.”

Education

Doctorate - History
Boston College - Chestnut Hill, MA
September 1989 - Current
Bachelors - Mechanical Engineering
MIT - Cambridge, MA
September 1980 - Current

Resources

Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations: Global Awakenings in Theology and Praxis, Katherine Smith and Daniel Hawk, eds. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.

https://www.amazon.com/Evangelical-Postcolonial-Conversations-Awakenings-Theology/dp/0830840532/

I co-authored two chapters in this book: Nicholas Rowe and Safwat Marzouk (2014). “Christian Disciplines and God’s Shalom in the Postcolonial Community." In Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations: Global Awakenings in Theology and Praxis, Katherine Smith and Daniel Hawk, eds. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic. Nicholas Rowe and Ray Aldred (2014). “Healthy Leadership and Power Differences in the Postcolonial Community: A Reflection." In Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations: Global Awakenings in Theology and Praxis, Katherine Smith and Daniel Hawk, eds. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic. In both these chapters, we examined dynamics of leadership and conflict resolution for multicultural communities.
Gordon College Chapel Service, 12/11/2017: "Our Bodies Tell Stories, Too: Reflections on a Healing Process (1 Corinthians 12:12-27)"

https://youtu.be/z4FO4alddi0

Chapel Service exposition on I Corinthians 12: The Church as the Body of Christ.
Nicholas Rowe: “History and Hope: Collective Memory, Group Identity, and the First Thanksgiving.”

https://youtu.be/UVG2IiQsACo?t=2820

Panel Respondent for the Panel: "Thanksgiving at 400: Revisiting American History and "Founding" Narratives," sponsored by Gordon College and Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. Here, I explain how a collective past is selective, and can make for ongoing conflict and exclusion, or for a healthy imagination where all are honored.