Members of the Spokane community are invited to join in the inaugural celebration with Whitworth trustees, administrators, faculty, staff, students, alumni, local and state leaders, and delegates from educational institutions across the country, including 10 college and university presidents.
Also taking part in the ceremony will be all three living former Whitworth presidents — Robert H. Mounce, Arthur De Jong, and William P. Robinson — who collectively led the university through the past three decades of its 120-year history. Video of the ceremony and of other inauguration week events will be available at www.youtube.com/WhitworthUniversity the week following the inauguration.
“I feel honored and blessed to serve as Whitworth University’s 18th president,” Taylor says. “My deepest values align with Whitworth’s mission to provide an education of mind and heart through rigorous and open academic inquiry and the integration of Christian faith and learning. My hope is that the inauguration is an opportunity for all of Whitworth’s constituents to gather and lift up that mission and celebrate God’s blessing on the past, present, and future of this great university.”
Executive vice president for academic affairs and 1989 Whitworth alum Michael K. Le Roy will preside over the inauguration ceremony. Following an invocation by Assistant Professor of Theology Karen Peterson Finch, greetings will be extended by representatives of Whitworth’s trustees, students, faculty, staff, alumni, and church leaders, as well as by Gonzaga University President Thayne M. McCulloh and Spokane Mayor Mary B. Verner. Laurie Lamon, a professor of English at Whitworth and a 1978 graduate, will present a poem composed for the occasion.
Mounce and De Jong will present the hood and symbol. Whitworth Board of Trustees Chair Walt Oliver, ’67, will conduct the installation and President Emeritus Robinson will deliver the charge. Philip Eaton, president of Seattle Pacific University and a 1965 Whitworth alum, will offer a prayer of dedication.
Larry Burnley, vice president of intercultural relations, will then read from Scripture. Andrew Westmoreland, president of Samford University, where Taylor served previously as dean of the Brock School of Business, will introduce Taylor. Following Taylor’s inaugural address, Terry McGonigal, Whitworth’s dean of spiritual life, will lead the closing prayer.
For more information, please visit (whitworth.edu/inauguration) or call (509) 777-3449.
