SPEAKER EXAMINES LEGACY OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING

Posted on January 14, 2013

All members of the campus community are invited to attend a program about the life and work of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at 11 a.m. Jan. 31 in the Vulcan Theater, inside the Natali Student Center. 

The speaker is Dr. Charles E. Thomas Jr., an adjunct professor in the Communication Department at Slippery Rock University, an adjunct in the Department of Communication and Rhetoric at Duquesne University, and adjunct assistant professor of homiletics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.  

About the speaker

In addition to teaching, Thomas is the senior pastor at Mt. Carmel Community Baptist Church in Steubenville, Ohio. He and his wife, Chantel, also provide premarital and marital counseling for couples. 

Thomas grew up in Houston, Pa., and graduated from Chartiers-Houston High School.  He holds a bachelor’s degree in community ministry from Geneva College and a Master of Divinity with emphasis in urban ministry, homiletics and pastoral care from the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where he was awarded the Michael Wilson Keith Memorial Prize in Homiletics and the John W. Meister Award in Pastoral Ministry for outstanding preaching and pastoral care abilities.

Thomas earned his doctorate in communication and rhetoric at Duquesne University.  

Prior to his appointment at Mt. Carmel, Thomas held positions as pastor of communal life at Macedonia Baptist Church, program director at Macedonia FACE, senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Pitt Gas, associate minister at Mt. Olive Baptist Church, office manager for the Metro-Urban Institute of the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and youth counselor at Mel Blount Boys Home. He worked as a steelworker and millwright for 10 years and served in the U.S. Army for more than five years. 

He is married to the former Chantel Penn of Canonsburg, Pa. The couple has four children, Carra, Keirsten, Tierra and Andrew, and one granddaughter, Nalia. 

Open to the public

The public may attend this free program. Parking is available in the Vulcan Garage, off Third Street near the campus entrance.