Devoted peacemaker. Consummate leader. Principled pragmatist dedicated to creating inclusive communities. For Jan Love, the recipient of this year’s Thomas Jefferson Award, these lifelong commitments come down to attending to others.
“I grew up in a family that was deeply dedicated to service,” says Love, professor of Christianity and world politics and Mary Lee Hardin Willard Dean of Candler School of Theology from 2007-2024. “The church is all about service, and church is at the heart of what shaped me. Service is in the DNA of the communities I’ve associated with all my life, and it brings me great joy.”
It is fitting, then, that Love should receive the Jefferson Award, which honors “a faculty member or administrative officer for significant service to the university through personal activities, influence and leadership.”
Candler Dean Jonathan Strom is a professor of church history and was associate dean under Love from 2015-2023. He says he learned something from her in nearly every interaction they had.
“I learned about how the university works, how schools work, but moreover, I learned about human relations and how somebody leads an institution,” says Strom, who succeeded Love as dean. “I really think Jan is distinctive. When historians look back, the Jan Love era will be seen as a pivotal era in Candler’s history.”
An internationally recognized ecumenical leader and scholar of religion and world politics, Love also served as Emory University interim provost and executive vice president of academic affairs between 2019-2021.
Standing for principle
Love’s road has not been a smooth one.
When she was appointed dean in 2007, she was the first woman and first lay person at Candler ever to hold the role, and she faced opposition from some church leaders.
It didn’t faze her.
“I was raised as a preacher’s kid in the Methodist system,” says Love, who first role with the United Methodist Church was as a teenage lay leader. Her lessons in diplomacy began earlier.
“I grew up in conflict,” she says, explaining that her parents were deeply involved in the 1950s civil rights movement. She has vivid recollections of clashes with church leadership over her parents’ activism and a Ku Klux Klan attack on the family’s rural home.
“At a very young age,” she says, “I learned that we would be standing for important principles that people around us opposed.”
When she came to Emory, Love visited and gained the support of every church official who objected to her leadership. This approach — wading into conflict to find common ground — is a lifelong hallmark of Love’s work.
Transformation and growth
Love’s tenure as dean at Candler would prove to be a time of metamorphosis for the school.
It started with the construction of the 128,000-square-foot building that includes Candler’s classrooms and Pitts Theology Library, and the renovation of the iconic Cannon Chapel. Love calls the completion of these projects in 2014, which coincided with Candler’s centennial, “a joyful experience and such an exciting achievement by so many.”
She also oversaw the addition of three new degree programs and five dual degrees that reflected the way people learn and lead in today’s sacred landscape — including online and hybrid options for scholars and religious leaders around the world.
In 2020, the school established The Candler Foundry, which offers theological education to the global community. It has served more than 300,000 learners to date. In 2024, Love secured funds from the Lilly Endowment which led to the launch of La Mesa Academy for Theological Studies, a multicultural program offered in several languages for faith leaders whose traditions do not require a master’s degree.
Dedication to students and faculty
Students at Candler hail from 13 countries and 41 states, representing 42 denominations and faith traditions. Love committed to the goal that Candler’s faculty should reflect the makeup of the Emory student body, as well as Atlanta as a whole.
“We need instructors who the students can see themselves in,” she says.
For Love, inclusivity is an important factor in academic strength. “I think of excellence as defined by inclusion,” she says. “You can’t have the best educational outcomes without diversity in terms of experience, identity and opinion. You need all of it.”
Believing that a rich variety of experiences and viewpoints also results in a stronger institution overall, Love delights in “bringing people together who can expand a creative vision beyond what I have the capacity to do.”
“She’s a leader who had a very clear sense of herself and a very clear vision of the school,” notes Strom. “But it was never about her. And that’s part of why I think she was so effective. Jan really respects processes, and she respects the people she brings together.”
Candler hired three-quarters of its faculty during Love’s tenure. She created seven of the school’s 17 funds for endowed faculty positions, including an endowed deanship. In 2024, she obtained a $20 million gift from the O. Wayne Rollins Foundation to ensure scholarships for all master of divinity students.
Until she came to Candler, Love says she didn’t realize that she had a gift for helping prospective donors see the value in giving. “But it’s just fun!” she exclaims. “Because it’s an investment in a future that their grandchildren and their great grandchildren will live out.”
“She has a great genius for telling stories that help focus people and help deliver her message without preaching,” says Robert Franklin, James T. and Berta R. Laney Professor in Moral Leadership at Candler. “That’s the power of a good storyteller. And that gift has helped shaped her leadership.”
Leadership as service
Love’s leadership acumen shined on a larger stage in 2019, when she stepped in to serve as Emory’s interim provost and executive vice president of academic affairs.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Early in March 2020, Love convened the Council of Deans, which made the difficult decisions to extend spring break and institute remote learning. Love worked with colleagues for days on end to determine a logistical plan.
But what many in the Emory community remember Love for during the pandemic were her emails. She brought together a team of communicators to help her craft weekly informational missives, which some came to consider a lifeline.
“People would stop me on the street or in the grocery store and say, ‘Thank you for your email messages,’” says Love, “‘because they were just incredibly calming.’”
When she thinks of her work during that tumultuous time, Love reflects on her Methodist roots and the culture of Candler. “We care passionately about the whole person in every dimension of their life: mental, spiritual and physical,” she says. “So, it was really a project of pastoral care.”
To Franklin, Love’s work as interim provost demonstrated “a keen interdisciplinary mind that listens carefully and respects the wisdom that various disciplines bring. She’s a broad, comprehensive, complex thinker — and she’s continued to play that kind of role in national and international gatherings of church leaders.”
Colleagues also took note of Love’s leadership after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery in 2020, as she convened students, faculty and university governing groups for listening sessions.
“Once again,” says Franklin, “Jan acted as a sort of an ambassador for theology and a diplomat in her effort to find common ground, create common ground and, essentially, transform conflict.”
What these moments of compassion, foresight and decisiveness under pressure come down to, says Love, is service in action: “Service, really, is an opportunity to offer leadership that can have positive consequences. It’s a joy to effect this change, to have this impact, and we should imagine how we can have more impact.”