The task before us now
is to build the Earth.
—Teilhard

The board

President

Kathleen Duffy, SSJ, PhD,

President of the American Teilhard Association, is Professor Emerita of Physics at Chestnut Hill College where she directs the Institute for Religion and Science. She is former editor of Teilhard Studies and serves on the Advisory Board of Cosmos and Creation. She has published Teilhard’s Mysticism: Seeing the Inner Face of Evolution (Orbis, 2014), Teilhard’s Struggle: Embracing the Work of Evolution (Orbis, 2019), an edited volume of essays entitled Rediscovering Teilhard’s Fire (St. Joseph’s University Press, 2010), as well as several book chapters and articles that deal with connections between Teilhard’s religious essays and modern science. Kathleen also guides evening, weekend, and week-long retreats on topics related to Teilhard’s life and work.

Board of Directors

About the ATA

Vice President
Frank Frost
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Treasurer
Paula Guarnaccia
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Secretary
Tracy Higgins
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Parliamentiarian Richard Jordan
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Bede Benjamin Bidlack
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Joshua Canzona
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Andrew Del Rossi
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Laura Eloe
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Mary Frost
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Jennifer Morgan
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Kusumita P. Pederse
Kusumita P. Pedersen
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Louis M. Savary
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Ernie Tamminga
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Advisory Board:

John Borelli ● Marianne Borelli ● Kevin Cawley, CFC ● Judith Emery ● John Grim ● Sam Guarnaccia ● John Haught ● Hazel Henderson ● Jean Houston ● Ursula King ● Daniel Martin ● Maria Myers ● Marilyn Nichols, CSJ ● Marilyn E. Noz ● Rev. James F. Salmon, SJ ● Allerd Stikker ● Brian Thomas Swimme ● Mary Evelyn Tucker ● Rev. Franklin E. Vilas

American Teilhard Association

The American Teilhard Association

Chestnut Hill College
9601 Germantown Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19118

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Frank Frost

Frank Frost is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker partnering with his wife Mary. Frank earned his PhD in Cinema from the University of Southern California. The Frosts have created more than 30 national broadcast documentaries over 40 years, that have aired on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and The Hallmark Channel. They are the producers of a film on the life of Teilhard de Chardin for public television, Teilhard: Visionary Scientist. The 2-hour television biography tells Teilhard’s story in his own words and those of his correspondents as found in his prolific writings. Interviews with noted Teilhard scholars provide context and interpretation. The Frosts filmed on three continents, at 12 major locations where Teilhard lived and worked, in France, England, China, and the U.S. Teilhard: Visionary Scientist is the first ever television documentary on Teilhard made for American television.

Treasurer

Paula Guarnaccia, MEd is the current Treasurer of the American Teilhard Association. She has been an active member of ATA since 2012. Paula’s primary work is in partnership with her husband, the composer, Sam Guarnaccia. Together they created the Emergent Universe Oratorio Project which is a choral orchestral musical rendering of the story of our evolving Universe to the present day. It was inspired both by the work of Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry. Paula’s background is in administration in both higher education and healthcare. At the time of her retirement from the University of Vermont, College of Arts and Sciences, she was the Assistant Dean of Administration and Finance. Prior to that position for almost twenty years she had been an Administrative Director for the University of Vermont College of Medicine Health Network.

Secretary

Tracy Higgins has been a member of the American Teilhard Association and active in the French Amis de Teilhard de Chardin for over 20 years. Providentially, she had been introduced to Teilhard by an Irish priest assigned to an historic Spanish mission church in Texas where she was living at the time, just prior to moving back to France where she became intimately familiar with Teilhard’s life and work. During her career in the Defense Department, Tracy also served in Italy, Rwanda, Korea, Burundi, Israel, Egypt and India. Upon retirement in NY, she earned a PhD from Columbia University and became a practicing RN specializing in neurological disorders and pediatric psychiatry. She is studying Jungian psychoanalytic theory which she incorporates clinically into expressive arts and Sandplay therapy.

Parliamentarian

Richard Jordan holds a B.A. from Iona College (’70), Major in Classics, Minors in theology/philosophy, and is a 2021 Alumnus of the U. of South Florida Muma College of Business School of Tourism Management. Richard was also a Courtesy Faculty Member of the USF Patel College of Global Sustainability 2018-19. Richard joined ATA in 1990, is a ATA Life Member, and has served on the Board for a decade, and serves on the current Governance and Nominations Committees. As Dean of UN NGOs for over 40 years, Richard speaks in UN meetings on the role of Teilhard in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

Bede Benjamin Bidlack

Bede Benjamin Bidlack is Professor of Theology at Saint Anselm College. He  teaches and publishes in the areas of creation theology (anthropology and sacramental theology), comparative theology, interreligious dialogue, Daoist Studies, and philosophy. He is the author of, among other things, In Good Company: Body and Divinization in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Daoist Xiao Yingsou (Brill 2015).

Joshua Canzona earned a PhD in Theological and Religious Studies from Georgetown University in 2018 with a dissertation comparing the thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Muhammad Iqbal, the intellectual father of Pakistan. Dr. Canzona is currently serving as the Associate Ombudsman at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, where he acts as a confidential and alternative dispute resolution resource for over 40,000 students, faculty, and staff. He also teaches graduate courses on comparative mysticism, Muslim-Christian dialogue, and religion and art at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity.

Andrew Del Rossi

Andrew Del Rossi, ThD has served as a theology teacher, service-learning educator, campus minister, non-profit operator, and palliative care consultant for alternative and holistic therapies.  He is currently the Director of the Spirituality Center at Daylesford Abbey in Paoli, PA and is publishing and presenting on Teilhard, spirituality, and psychology. He was recently nominated to the board of the American Teilhard Association and is the editor of Teilhard Perspective.  Andrew resides in New Jersey with his wife and their two children.

Laura Eloe

Laura Eloe, PhD works in the office of the Fr. William J. Ferree, S.M. Chair of Social Justice and is an adjunct instructor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton in Ohio. She has been a member of the American Teilhard Association since 2016 and is the editor of Teilhard Studies. Her 2019 dissertation at the University of Dayton, titled Loosing the Bound: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Analogical Imagination in the Post-Euclidean Tradition explores the impact of Teilhard’s baccalaureate studies in mathematics and his long-time relationship with mathematician and philosopher Édouard Le Roy on his writing. In 2019 she published “From Newman through Teilhard and Beyond” in the Newman Studies Journal, an expanded version of a talk given at the 2018 “Newman and 20th Century Thinkers” conference of the Newman Association of America.

Mary Frost is Mary is an independent filmmaker, who, with her husband Frank and their production company, Frank Frost Productions, has more than 35 years of experience.  Mary is a journalism graduate of the University of Toledo and was a syndicated reporter on Capitol Hill before joining Frank Frost Productions.  The Frosts are the producers of a film on the life of Teilhard de Chardin for public television, Teilhard: Visionary Scientist. The 2-hour television biography tells Teilhard’s story in his own words and those of his correspondents as found in his prolific writings. Interviews with noted Teilhard scholars provide context and interpretation. The Frosts filmed on three continents, at 12 major locations where Teilhard lived and worked, in France, England, China, and the U.S.  Teilhard: Visionary Scientist is the first ever television documentary on Teilhard made for American television.

Jennifer Morgan

Jennifer Morgan is an award-winning author, storyteller, and educator inspired by the work of Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry, and Brian Swimme. Her Universe Story Trilogy — Born With a Bang, From Lava to Live, and Mammals Who Morph are used in classrooms around the world, particularly in Montessori schools as part of the Cosmic Education Curriculum, and have received the Teachers Choice Award, Nautilus Semi Finalist, highest ratings from AAAS and endorsements from Jane Goodall, Neil de Grasse Tyson, astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme and others. She’s founder and president of the Deeptime Network (dtnetwork.org), a global educational network that offers professional development, courses and study groups in the New Cosmology. Members can blog and add resources and events, and promote their work through DTNetwork social media.

Kusumita P. Pedersen

Kusumita P. Pedersen is Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at St. Francis College and Chair of the Interfaith Center of New York. She is also a Trustee and a member of the Climate Action Task Force (CATF) of the Parliament of the World’s Religions and of the Climate Working Group of the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations. She is co-author of Global Ethics in Practice: Historical Backgrounds, Current Issues and Future Prospects (Edinburgh University Press, 2016) and co-author of Faith for Earth: A Call to Action (UN Environment Programme and Parliament of the World’s Religions, 2020). She has been a student of Sri Chinmoy (1931-2007) since 1971 and is the author of The Philosophy of Sri Chinmoy: Love and Transformation (Lexington Books, 2021).

Louis M. Savary

Louis M. Savary, PhD, STD, holds two doctorates, one in mathematical statistics and another in theology. He was a Jesuit for thirty years, and for the past forty years has been explaining Teilhard’s ideas in ordinary language. He has published over eight books on Teilhard, including “The Divine Milieu” Explained and “The Phenomenon of Man” Explained. He has written The New Spiritual Exercises: In the Spirit of Teilhard de Chardin, bringing Teilhard’s evolutionary perspective to the classic Ignatian Exercises. He has also written essays for Teilhard Studies. He lives with his wife and, often, co-author, Patricia H. Berne, a clinical psychologist, in Tampa, Florida.

Ernie Tamminga

Ernie Tamminga is a trained Spiritual Director and holds a PhD in Cross-Cultural Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied for five years with Raimon Panikkar. His dissertation focused on Teilhard’s notion of a “Privileged Axis” of evolution. During the 1970s he was a member of the board of “The Phenomenon of Man Project,” which offered presentations and retreats centered on Teilhard’s vision. Ernie calls himself a “planet empath” whose heart has long been broken by the degradation we are inflicting on our Home Planet and all her living beings. He shares Raimon Panikkar’s frequently stated hope, “I’m holding out for a mutation.” Ernie also had a career in the technology industry and has taught university-level courses in World Religions and in Computer Science. (One of his business cards identifies him as a “Consulting Multitasker.”)