Dr. Thom Dawkins serves as the Director of the Bonner Center for Community-Engaged Learning, Teaching, & Research, Oberlin’s hub for connecting the classroom to communities engaged in social impact and public service. The Bonner Center is also a key partner in Oberlin’s Center for Engaged Liberal Arts, whose mission is to empower College and Conservatory students to pursue opportunities beyond the classroom that enrich and complement their academic pursuits and position them to launch into meaningful post-graduate life. As a teacher and administrator, Thom believes in the importance of educating the whole person, and in his work through the Bonner Center, engages students as they in turn engage complex challenges, as they learn by teaching, and as they learn to make space for joy, cooperation, and dialoguing across difference in all facets of their personal, academic, and professional lives.Thom earned his Ph.D. in English at Case Western Reserve University, an MFA in Creative Writing at Chatham University, and an MTS at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He also a proud first-generation college student who earned his B.A. at Washington & Jefferson College.