Project Staff

Rev. Sarah Ann Bixler, PhD

Program Director and Co-Principal Investigator

 

Rev. Almeda Wright, PhD

Co-Principal Investigator

Almeda M. Wright (PhD Emory University, MDiv Harvard Divinity School, MAT Simmons College, BS Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is the tenured Associate Professor of Religious Education at Yale Divinity School. Her research focuses on African American religion, Womanist practical theology, adolescent spiritual development, and the intersections of religion, education, and public life. Almeda recently launched Communitas, a young adult ministry innovation hub at Yale.

Almeda’s most recent book Teaching to Live: Black Religion, Activist-Educators and Radical Social Change (Oxford, 2024) explores religion, education, and radial social change among African Americans through the stories of eight educators across the twentieth century. She is also the author of The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans (Oxford, 2017) and the editor, with Mary Elizabeth Moore, of Children, Youth, and Spirituality in a Troubling World. Almeda contributed to the exciting student bible, the Common English (CEB) Student Bible.

Almeda is an ordained minister of the American Baptist Churches and has worked with young people for over 25 years, including as a 5^th and 6^th grade teacher, as a youth minister, and the Assistant Director of the Youth Theological Initiative at Emory University.

Gregory Czyszczon, PhD, LPC

Restoring Connections Lab Professor

Gregory Czyszczon (PhD, EDS, MA, MED and BA, James Madison University) is Associate Professor of Counseling at Eastern Mennonite University and a Licensed Professional Counselor. Greg has worked with children, adolescents, individuals, couples, and families in the fields of education, social
work and counseling for over 30 years. His research explores how parent/child attachment informs human experience using the framework of attachment theory in the Bowlby/Ainsworth tradition. Greg is founder and director of the Restoring Connections Research and Practice Lab at Eastern Mennonite University, and is involved in investigating the effectiveness of Transformative Couples Therapy.® Greg is an Executive Board member of the Global Association for Interpersonal Neurobiology Studies.

 

Rev. Michael Droege, PhD

Research Associate

Michael William Droege (PhD University of Pretoria, MAR Drew University) is a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale Divinity School and a researcher with Conectere. Michael’s work has been focused on the practical theology of adolescents and he has presented his work at the International Association of Youth Ministries Conference, the Intergenerate Conference, through seminary courses at Drew Theological School, as a congregational coach, as well as various journals and the edited volumes The Generational Church and Engage All Generations.

Michael is an ordained minister with the International Council of Community Churches and has served in both youth ministry and pastoral ministry.

Brenda Watson

Administrative Assistant

 

 

 

 

Kathy Smith

Finance Administrator