Ph.D.
University of Texas at Austin
About
Dr. Anna Stewart serves as the Bonnie & Peter Raquet Director of the Institute for Leadership and Service (ILAS) in Valparaiso University’s Division of Calling and Spiritual Life. ILAS is dedicated to preparing students for lives of leadership and service—lives shaped by a sense of calling, equipped for thoughtful reflection, engaged in the larger world, and responsive to its deepest challenges. A range of programming and initiatives at the Institute help to animate this mission–from reflective summer internships; to thriving scholar and faith communities; to faculty and staff support programs; to collaborative workshops and retreats, to name a few.
Dr. Stewart has been a part of the Valpo community since 2012. Prior to that, she earned her doctorate in English from the University of Texas at Austin, where her work was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Albert Greenfield Foundation Fellowship in African American History. She came to Valpo as a Lilly Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities and English and continued on at Christ College (the honors college) as an adjunct assistant professor and community education program coordinator. From 2015-2023, she served as an assistant dean, first in the College of Arts & Sciences and later in Christ College. Dr. Stewart is delighted to bring the wisdom and insight from these various roles in higher education into the deeply collaborative work she is privileged to do today at the Institute. She resides in a sociable downtown Valparaiso neighborhood with her brilliant husband (a professor here), her ever inquisitive children (ages 10 and 12), and her trusty Australian cattledog Freya who gladly visits campus whenever she can.
