Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) is a private liberal arts university in the Shenandoah Valley of the U.S. state of Virginia, affiliated with one of the historic peace churches, the Mennonite Church USA. Its 97-acre (390,000 m2) main campus is located near Harrisonburg, Virginia. The university operates a satellite campus in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which primarily caters to working adults.
Worldwide, EMU is probably best known for its Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP), especially its graduate program in conflict transformation. CJP has educated and trained more than 3,000 people from 119 countries. CJP's founding director, John Paul Lederach, and its expert in restorative justice, Howard Zehr, are considered to be international leaders in the fields of peace and justice. In October 2011, CJP alumna Leymah Gbowee was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Half of EMU's undergraduate students do not come from Mennonite backgrounds, though the majority are Christian. EMU's graduate students represent a diversity of faiths, as exemplified by the mini-bios on Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu alumni posted on EMU's website. About 57 percent of EMU's undergrads are from out of state (32 states; 21 countries), and 19 percent are of non-U.S. origins or minority ethnicity.
EMU describes itself as a "leader among faith-based institutions" in emphasizing "peacebuilding, creation care, experiential learning, and cross-cultural engagement."
Read more about Eastern Mennonite University: History and Mission, Academics, Campus Life, Notable Alumni and Faculty
Famous quotes containing the words eastern and/or university:
“Midway the lake we took on board two manly-looking middle-aged men.... I talked with one of them, telling him that I had come all this distance partly to see where the white pine, the Eastern stuff of which our houses are built, grew, but that on this and a previous excursion into another part of Maine I had found it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look for it. With a smile, he answered that he could hardly tell me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Poetry presents indivisible wholes of human consciousness, modified and ordered by the stringent requirements of form. Prose, aiming at a definite and concrete goal, generally suppresses everything inessential to its purpose; poetry, existing only to exhibit itself as an aesthetic object, aims only at completeness and perfection of form.”
—Richard Harter Fogle, U.S. critic, educator. The Imagery of Keats and Shelley, ch. 1, University of North Carolina Press (1949)