Jennie S. Knight, Ph. D.  serves as Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Development, where she develops, leads, and oversees faculty development programs to empower faculty from across UVA to thrive at all stages of their careers. She directs the Leadership in Academic Matters Program and the Teaching Race at UVA Place-based Faculty Development Seminar, leads workshops for departments and schools on leadership development and bias mitigation, equity, and inclusion along the faculty career span, and organizes programs for department chairs, new faculty, and newly tenured faculty.

Before coming to UVA in 2017, she served as Director of Engaged Teaching in the Center for Principled Problem Solving at Guilford College and as Director of Religious Education/Assistant Professor in the Practices of Religious Education and Community Ministries at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

Her interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching are in the areas of Religion and Education, Moral Development, Women’s Studies, Practical Theology, Community Engaged Teaching, Scholarship, and Problem Solving, and Moral Leadership. She is the author of Feminist Mysticism and Images of God:  A Practical Theology (Chalice Press, 2011) and co-author of Engaged Teaching in Theology and Religion with Renee K. Harrison, Ph.D. (Palgrave, 2015), as well as multiple articles about transformative education.  She earned her Ph. D. in Religion and Education and Women’s Studies from Emory University, an M.Div. from the Claremont School of Theology, and her B.A. from Williams College.