Academic Convocation – August 29, 2025

The Academic Convocation will be held on Friday, August 29, 2025, at 10 a.m. in the Peterson Recreation Center.

Academic Convocation, which marks the official opening of the academic year, welcomes new members of our community – students in the Class of 2029, transfer students, and new faculty members.

Anna Bonta Moreland, Ph.D. is the Anne Quinn Welsh Endowed Chair and director of the University Honors Program at Villanova University. A full professor in the Department of Humanities, she has academic expertise in medieval theology, interfaith dialogue, and comparative theology, especially between Christianity and Islam. Her latest book, co-authored with Thomas W. Smith, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at PC, is The Young Adult Playbook: Living Like it Matters (CUA Press, 2024). It reflects decades of listening closely to the challenges undergraduates face.

Dr. Moreland also wrote Known by Nature: Thomas Aquinas on Natural Knowledge of God (Crossroad/Herder, 2010) and Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) and edited New Voices in Catholic Theology (Herder & Herder, 2012). She has written articles in academic journals and popular venues and has been a guest on podcasts and radio.

She was awarded a “Hope in Higher Education: Networking, Resource Sharing, and Building a Brighter Future” Templeton Foundation Grant (2021-2024), Wake Forest’s Educating Character Initiative “Capacity Building Grant: Augustinian Leadership & Character Education Beyond 1st-Year Experience: Shared Understanding & Collaboration” Lilly Grant (2024-2025), and an “Institutional Impact Grant: Educating Augustinian Character: Cultivating the Pilgrim Virtues” (2025-2027).