Office

PO Box 4405
Ithaca, NY 14852-4405

734

Live Lecture Attendances in 2022

2518

Meals Served in 2022

244

Course Enrollments Since 2014

What We Do

Events

Every semester, we bring highly sought after speakers who are at the top of their fields to Cornell to speak about their work and the role that their faith plays in it. Click to find out what lectures and other events are coming up.

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Residences

Chesterton House's living-learning community is made up of three beautiful residences and offers male and female students the opportunity to live in intentional Christian community at Cornell. Click to learn more or apply.

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Courses

Too many students in college fail to integrate their intellectual growth with their religious faith. Explore your questions about the Christian tradition in Chesterton House’s Logos Seminar, designed to help students develop their minds for God in a sustainable way.

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The rationale behind our mission.

Our Past

Upon graduating from Cornell in 1989, Karl, along with graduate student Ray Zimmerman and a few others, began a small ‘intentional Christian community’ at 201 Stewart Ave. The community was characterized by daily prayer, community meals, and ‘living simply.’ This was not the first such community at Cornell…

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Our Future

We recently purchased the house next door to the men’s facility to be the new women’s residence and built a beautiful patio between the houses to create a unified living-learning campus. We look forward to completing renovations over the next year. Interested in what we’ve done and what we hope to do? Check out our Building for the Future Campaign.

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Staff

Vivek Mathew

Executive Director
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Vivek Mathew

Executive Director

Vivek Mathew (M.Div Princeton Theological Seminary 2011, B.Phil Oxford 2013, Ph.D Cornell 2019) was born and raised in Defiance, Ohio. From Ohio, he moved to New Jersey to study computer science at Princeton (B.S.E. 1999), and then to New York City where he worked for eight years in quantitative finance at Morgan Stanley. While in New York he attended Redeemer Presbyterian Church (where he met his wife Jeanie) and grew more interested in theology and philosophy. Returning to Princeton, he did his M.Div at Princeton Theological Seminary and found himself pulled toward both ordained parish ministry working in Episcopal church contexts as well as historical theology and philosophy. The philosophy bug led him to move overseas to the UK to read the B.Phil in philosophy at Oxford University. From there he came to Cornell in 2013 where he spent the next 6 years doing doctoral work at the intersection of metaphysics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, cognitive science, and history of philosophy. He was one of five nationwide fellowship recipients for cross-training grants given by the Society of Christian Philosophers and the Templeton Foundation. He and Jeanie have three children and attend Bread of Life Anglican Church. In his spare time, you’ll find him enacting overly elaborate make-believe stories with his daughters or riding scooters with his one-year-old son.

Bailey Trimmell

Pastoral Care & Residential Formation Manager
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Bailey Trimmell

Pastoral Care & Residential Formation Manager

Bailey Trimmell is originally from Texas where she graduated from West Texas A&M University with a degree in social work. From Texas Bailey moved to Memphis, Tennessee for a Systematic Theology program where she worked in various ministry settings. Upon learning of Chesterton House Bailey was immediately drawn to the work Chesterton House was currently involved in and the community they fostered at Cornell University. She moved to Ithaca in 2019 to join the team full time and has since attended Bread of Life Anglican Church. On her days off she can be found curating beautiful spaces, completing the daily Wordle, and feasting among friends.

Marissa Koeller - Chesterton House - Communications Manager

Marissa Koeller

Student Engagement & Operations Manager
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Marissa Koeller - Chesterton House - Communications Manager

Marissa Koeller

Student Engagement & Operations Manager

Marissa was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA where she also graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. In the height of the COVID-19 shut downs, she expanded her knowledge in digital marketing, combined it with her experience in web/graphic design, and founded her own business in Social Media Management. She was recently a member of The Equipping Academy at Mission City Church in NYC developing her skills and knowledge as a Christian leader. Marissa is an anomaly of creative and analytical; in her free time you can find her dancing, reading by the water, or working out tricky calculus equations.

Hannah Eagleson

Round Table Project Director
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Hannah Eagleson

Round Table Project Director

Dr. Hannah Eagleson is Assistant Director of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s Emerging Scholars Network (ESN), where she supports over 4000 Christians to live out their vocation in higher education and beyond. She’s working toward a world where every Christian with an advanced degree is energized throughout their careers to think, teach, and engage missionally for the common good with the university, the church, and the world. To that end, ESN builds pathways and resources for Christian academics everywhere to find the relationships, ideas, and public voice they need in the early decades of their careers. Dr. Eagleson’s most recent book is Science and Faith: Student Questions Explored, from Hendrickson Publishers (2019). With Emerging Scholars Network, Dr. Eagleson also launched an ongoing online devotional for academics exploring their vocation, called Scholar’s Compass (https://blog.emergingscholars.org). She holds a PhD in Renaissance literature from the University of Delaware and an MA in liberal arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. She co-designed a series of study guides to works by J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Dorothy L. Sayers for Classical Academic Press.

Stevie Lazenby

Office Manager
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Stevie Lazenby

Office Manager

Stevie Lazenby graduated from The Ohio State University with a degree in Social Work and worked with special needs populations until departing the workforce to start a family. In addition to raising a family, she has filled her time participating in various volunteer activities. She also enjoys baking, paper crafting, hiking, running, biking, and gardening.

Mary Milbrath

Bookkeeper
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Mary Milbrath

Bookkeeper

Mary Milbrath graduated from Minnesota State University-Moorhead with a bachelor’s degree in Accounting. She passed the CPA exam upon graduation and worked in banking and public accounting before serving as the Director of Finance and Operations of the Fargodome. Mary has spent the last 18 years raising and homeschooling her four children, continuing her work in accounting, and volunteering.

Tom Atwood

Tom Atwood

Building Superintendent
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Tom Atwood

Tom Atwood

Building Superintendent

Thomas grew up in the Finger Lakes region often taking trips to Ithaca with his family, first introduced to Cornell through a Corning Incorporated summer science program tour of the synchrotron. Years later he attended Chesterton House lectures on Cornell’s campus and worked with the organization’s founder Karl Johnson to help the organization establish its residential facilities. He has had the great pleasure of watching God’s blessing on the Chesterton House ministry since 2014.

Katlyn Wilhoit: Executive Assistant and Development Coordinator

Katlyn Wilhoit

Executive Assistant and Development Coordinator
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Katlyn Wilhoit: Executive Assistant and Development Coordinator

Katlyn Wilhoit

Executive Assistant and Development Coordinator

Katlyn Wilhoit graduated from Liberty University with a degree in Special Education and Elementary Education. Both during and after graduating, Katlyn worked alongside numerous nonprofit organizations, including campus ministries and churches, in several different administrative and leadership roles. She is currently a stay at home, homeschool, mother of three children.

Peter Biles

Fellow
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Peter Biles

Fellow

Peter Biles was born and raised in Ada, Oklahoma and received his B.A. in English at Wheaton College in Illinois. He just recently earned an MFA in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University. He is the author of the novel Hillbilly Hymn (Resource Publications, 2022) as well as many essays and stories in publications such as Plough, The Gospel Coalition, Dappled Things, and Wheaton Magazine.  Besides reading, studying, and writing, Peter loves to ride his unicycle, play pick up basketball, kayak, and record music.

Adam Ziccardi

Fellow
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Adam Ziccardi

Fellow

Originally from snowy Western New York, Adam received a BA in Religious Studies from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. He is interested in communal learning, ecology, and his catholic faith. Interests which have taken him on journeys to Japan, France, and best of all, the Chesterton House. He recently graduated from the John Jay Institute, a Christian graduate program for development in leadership, prayer, and grounding in philosophy and church history. Aside from these, Adam is a musician, playing the piano, French horn, and accordion for fun.

 

Learn About Our Founder

Adjunct Faculty

Ryan O'Dowd

Chesterton House Senior Fellow
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Ryan O'Dowd

Chesterton House Senior Fellow

Ryan O’Dowd serves as Chesterton House Senior Fellow and is the founding rector of Bread of Life Anglican Church in Ithaca, NY. He is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Reformed Theological Seminary, and the University of Liverpool (PhD 2005). His teaching and research interests include Old Testament law, wisdom literature, and poetry, as well as Christian ethics. He has a particular interest in the way cultures throughout history have understood the nature and purpose of work and vocation (calling). He also holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve with almost 30 years of combined service, both Active Duty and Reserve. Ryan and his wife Amy live in Ithaca and have four children.

Select publications:

Articles and chapters:

  • “Pain and Danger: Unpleasant Sayings and the Structure of Proverbs,”Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 80 (2018) 619–35
  • “Aesthetic Shaping of Agur’s Oracle in Proverbs 30:1–9,”Inner Biblical Allusion in the Poetry of Psalms and Wisdom, eds. Mark Boda, Kevin Chau, Beth Tanner, Society of Biblical Literature (Atlanta: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2018) 103–119
  • “A Prophet in the Sage’s House? Origins of the Feminine Metaphors in Proverbs,”Riddles and Revelations: Explorations into the Relationship between Wisdom and Prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, eds. Mark Boda, Russell Meek, William R. Osborne (LHBOTS; London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark: 2018) 165–79
  • “Wisdom and Poetry,”The Old Testament: A Christian Companion, ed. Hywel Clifford (Norwich: SCM Press, 2016) 101–129
  • “Epistemology in Ecclesiastes: Remembering What It Means to Be Human,”The Words of the Wise are Like Goads: Engaging Qohelet in the 21st Century, eds. Mark Boda, Tremper Longman III, and Cristian Rata (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013) 197–219

Books:

  • Proverbs, Story of God Biblical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017)
  • Old Testament Wisdom Literature: A Theological Introduction, with Craig Bartholomew (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Academic Press, 2011)
  • The Wisdom of Torah: Epistemology in Deuteronomy and the Wisdom Literature, FRLANT (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009)

Elaine Phillips

Professor and Harold John Ockenga Chair of Biblical Studies
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Elaine Phillips

Professor and Harold John Ockenga Chair of Biblical Studies

After receiving her undergraduate degree in social psychology from Cornell University and the Master of Divinity degree from Biblical Theological Seminary, Elaine Phillips, along with her husband, Perry, studied and taught for three years in Israel. Upon their return, they taught at a small Christian junior college outside of Philadelphia from 1979-1992 and Elaine earned her Ph.D. in rabbinic literature from The Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning in Philadelphia. She has taught biblical studies at Gordon College since 1993 where she serves as the Harold John Ockenga Chair of Biblical Studies. She and Perry have continued to take Gordon students back to Jerusalem University College, where they serve as adjunct faculty for the three-week summer study program in historical geography. In addition to field study in Israel, her areas of interest and scholarly writing include the books of Exodus and Esther, biblical wisdom literature, and rabbinic texts. Her book-length commentary on Esther is included in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, edited by Tremper Longman III and David Garland. In 2014, her devotional, With God, Nothing is Impossible, was published by Deep River Books. Her latest book, An Introduction to Reading Biblical Wisdom Texts was published by Hendrickson Publishing in August 2017. She has received both the Junior and Senior Distinguished Faculty Awards and at the commencement ceremonies in May 2014 was granted the inaugural Distinguished Professor award. She also enjoys music, hiking and all things related to summers in northwestern Ontario.

Board & Advisors

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See how you can get involved and utilize your time, talents and resources.

Students

In addition to residential facilities, courses, and lectures, Chesterton House offers pre-orientation programs for incoming students. Find links to resources for students below.

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About Cornell University

About Cornell

Cornell University is one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the world. Founded in 1865, Cornell is a member of the Ivy League, and the land grant institution for New York State. It consists of thirteen colleges, including both privately endowed and state-assisted colleges. Professional schools include management, law, medicine, and veterinary medicine.

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About GK Chesterton

About GK Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was one of the most brilliant and prolific writers of all time. This British journalist’s 100 books, 200 short stories, and over 4000 newspaper essays include history, philosophy, theology, economics, social commentary, and literary criticism. His best known works include Orthodoxy, The Man Who Was Thursday, and the beloved Father Brown detective stories.

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Partnerships

Annual Report 2021-2022