Sarah Drummond
Sarah Birmingham Drummond is the Founding Dean of Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School. She graduated from Yale College with a major in Ethics, Politics, and Economics; Harvard Divinity School with a Master of Divinity; and the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee with a PhD in Urban Education, specializing in administrative leadership. She is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.
Sarah has served Andover Newton since 2005, beginning as Director of Field Education and Assistant Professor of Ministerial Leadership in 2005. Her roles in the school changed numerous times, but her focus always centered on administrative leadership: its study, its teaching, and its execution. By the time she was called to become Andover Newton Seminary at YDS’s Founding Dean, she was a tenured professor of Ministerial Leadership and had served as Dean of the Faculty since 2011. She played a central role in the school’s becoming embedded at Yale Divinity School.
Sarah has written three books. Her first, Holy Clarity: The Practice of Planning and Evaluation, focused on how a religious leader can develop an abstract, theological idea into a realistic ministry program. Her second was a revision of her dissertation, Leading Change in Campus Religious Life: A Case Study on the Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation.
Her third, Dynamic Discernment: Reason, Emotion, and Power presents an interdisciplinary theory of change. It was published in June 2019 by the Pilgrim Press. Sarah is under contract to write two more books with Pilgrim Press in 2020 and 2021 respectively, one on United Church of Christ polity in everyday life, and the other on how leaders build community in a factionalized culture.
Sarah is a Commissioner for the Association of Theological Schools and chairs the task force that is redeveloping that accrediting body’s standards. She presides at Andover Newton’s weekly worship, “Emmaus,” every Thursday evening Yale Divinity School is in session.
