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Ben Safranski (’06) Awarded Prestigious Lilly Fellowship
Recent Abbey alum Ben Safranski (’06) is one of fifteen top graduate students nationwide who have been selected for the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program. The program is in its first year of existence, making Safranski a member of its inaugural “cohort.”
Safranski, who will receive a Master’s degree in Theological Studies from Notre Dame later this month, will be entering the Catholic University of America this fall to begin a Ph.D. program in Church History.
According to its website, the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program was created to support “well-qualified Protestant and Catholic young men and women…who are interested in becoming teacher-scholars in church-related colleges and universities in the United States.” Lilly Graduate Fellows are selected from an elite group of students who are entering Ph.D. or equivalent graduate programs in the humanities and arts. Over a three-year period, the Fellows, with the help and guidance of two senior mentors, will communicate and collaborate with each other in the areas of research, teaching, and professional development. Each Fellow also receives three annual stipends of $3,000 which can be used at the discretion of the recipient.
Safranski has already chosen as his mentors Dr. Michael Beaty from Baylor University and Dr. Jane Rodeheffer from St. Mary’s in Wynona, Minnesota. “Both are philosophy professors, and Dr. Rodeheffer also teaches literature,” says Safranski. “I hope to learn from their experience -- trying to integrate faith and an academic vocation (after all, that’s what the whole fellowship is about) and to learn about how they approach faith through their fields of study, since neither of them is in theology as I am. Also, one teaches at a Catholic university and the other at a Baptist university, so it should be interesting to get those differing perspectives, as well.”
Safranski gives great credit to his Abbey education for preparing him for the intellectual challenges he has faced, as well as for helping him find his true vocational path: “The Lilly fellowship is for people interested in integrating their faith with an academic vocation, and the theology department at Belmont Abbey is so committed to approaching theology from a faith perspective, that as I began to be drawn more and more towards the academic track, I always had great examples of how an academic career could be integrated with faith.”
He also counts two individuals at the Abbey as profound influences in his intellectual and spiritual life. “Dr. David Williams was (and still is) an inspiration as someone who combines scholarly and intellectual rigor with obvious devotion to the Church and the faith,” he says. “Also, Abbot Placid Solari has always encouraged me when I haven’t entirely believed in myself. Without the two of them, there’s no way I’d be where I am now.”
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