Institutional Diversity, Equity & Access (IDEA)

College Chaplain

Jane Ellen Nickell has been Chaplain at Allegheny College since February 2006, where she oversees the Spiritual and Religious Life program and teaches in the Religious Studies Department. She advises Sojourners Christian Fellowship and the Interfaith Fellowship, leads weekly Chapel services, and coordinates support for students of any faith tradition. She supervises a staff of part-time and faculty advisors that include a Catholic priest, a rabbi, a Hillel advisor, an affiliate of the Coalition for Christian Outreach, a Fellowship of Christian Athletes advisor, and professors who work with an Islamic awareness group and with Buddhist and Hindu students. The staff works with other partners to enhance the spiritual dimension of campus life and bring together questions of faith and reason.

Jane Ellen teaches courses in ecology and religion, sociology of religion, and religious pluralism in the United States. Her research has explored these areas, as well as resistance to religious leadership based on racial, gender, and sexual identities. She has also explored the connection between Appalachian religion and mountaintop removal mining in her home state of West Virginia. As a Board member of Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light, she is actively involved in helping faith communities address moral issues related to climate change.

 An ordained United Methodist minister, Jane Ellen holds degrees from WV Wesleyan College (B.A.), Vanderbilt Divinity School (M.Div.), and Drew University (Ph.D.). Before entering ordained ministry, she studied musicology and worked for fifteen years in performing arts management at the University of Illinois.