The Rt. Rev. Dena Harrison, a 1987 graduate, is the new chair of Seminary of the Southwest’s board of trustees. Bishop Harrison is the first woman to head the Southwest board.
    Bishop Harrison’s election is decidedly unique in the history of the 11 Episcopal seminaries. She and the Rev. Eliza Linley, of Church Divinity School of the Pacific, are the only current (and ever) ordained, female board chairs of an Episcopal seminary.
    She joined the Southwest board in 2005 and was chair of its faculty & education committee and member of the finance committee before being elected board chair. Bishop Harrison succeeds the Rt. Rev. Don Wimberly who retired in June. Seminary policy allows the Bishop of Texas (the de facto board chair) – now the Rt. Rev. Andy Doyle – to name someone else to chair the Southwest board.
    Bishop Harrison is the regional bishop for the Diocese of Texas and has pastoral oversight of congregations in the Austin, Central, Southwest, and Northwest convocations. The diocesan regional office is on Southwest’s campus and its new quarters will be dedicated in September.
    Following graduation from Southwest, Bishop Harrison was assistant rector at All Saints’, Austin, and rector of St. James’ Church in LaGrange and St. James the Apostle in Conroe. Bishop Harrison left parish ministry in 2000 to be canon to the ordinary at the diocesan center in Houston. Three years later she was appointed archdeacon and canon for ministry in the Diocese of Texas.
     In addition to Seminary of the Southwest, she chairs the St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System and is bishop’s liaison to St. Stephen’s Episcopal School and El Buen Samaritano.