Carol Wehrheim
APCE 2001 Educator of the Year

"The church is about community, a community of faith that struggles daily to live its call to discipleship. Our task as educators is both to help form that community and to participate in its struggle."

The Association of Presbyterian Church Educators is proud to announce that the Educator of the Year for the Year 2001 is Carol Wehrheim. While Carol resides in Princeton, New Jersey where she serves as Clerk of Session at Nassau Presbyterian Church and as chair of the Presbytery's personnel committee, she represents well APCE's growing denominational diversity and international flavor. She is not only an editor for the new Bible Quest curriculum, but also of the new Seasons of the Spirit curriculum published by Logos Productions in Minnesota, the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, United Church Press (United Church of Christ), the Mediacom for Australia and New Zealand, and Wood Lake Books of Canada.

In fact, diversity and dedication might be the two best descriptors of Carol's distinguished career in Christian education. Carol's own description of herself is as an "educator with children at heart." She says that no matter what she is doing, from teaching in her own congregation, through editing national publications, even when she lectures at seminaries, that it is "to improve the way we teach and minister with children." Carol's deep love for children warms vacation Bible schools, Sunday school classrooms, and thousands at bedtimes (with her powerfully simple board books) across the continent.

Carol, who has an M.A. from McCormick Seminary, has been a local DCE, a classroom teacher, the director of a child development center, the Secretary for Early Childhood Development for the UCC (a denomination in which she is certified as a specialist in Christian education), and now a freelance writer and consultant. She has been Assistant Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program at McCormick and served as a lecturer there and at Princeton Seminary. She has served on design teams and task forces and chaired countless committees. No less than four APCE regions invited her to keynote their regional events in the year 2000, more than she could accept. Carol is not being honored simply because she has done it all, but because she has done it with vision, energy, and innovation.

Carol has been on the cutting edge of issues, helping the church to learn and teach about women's issues, inclusive language, and multiple intelligences theory. She has shaped the careers of many, gently nurturing those who never thought they could write. Moderator of the 211th General Assembly of the PC(USA), Freda A. Gardner, believes it is the breadth of Carol's gifts and the disciplined ways in which she has developed them that sets Carol apart. Freda says that as "theologian, theorist, writer, editor, teacher, moderator, lecturer, administrator, participant, and student, Carol steps in and out of these roles with confidence and ease which invites her colleagues and students to move also, because they trust her and her goals."

Carol Wehrheim is a model of what education can and should be in Presbyterian and Reformed congregations. She is definitely Reformed, but always reforming; she is biblically grounded, historically informed, communally nurtured, ecumenically involved, and socially engaged. Carol truly practices what she preaches-she is a great living witness to educators everywhere. No higher form of advocacy can be done for our calling.