The Octet Collaborative is pleased to convene a conversation between Prof. C. Kavin Rowe and a special guest about the role and work of the university. What is the purpose of the knowledge generated and disseminated by MIT? What does it mean for MIT to form leaders of integrity? What role do communities of faith play in supporting the university in its vocation?

C. Kavin Rowe is the Vice Dean of the Faculty and the George Washington Ivey Distinguished Professor of New Testament. The second of three volumes of his collected essays has recently been published as Method, Context, and Meaning in New Testament Studies (Eerdmans, 2024). The first volume is Leading Christian Communities (Eerdmans, 2023). Rowe is the author of four other books: Christianity's Surprise: A Sure and Certain Hope (Abingdon, 2020), One True Life: the Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions (Yale University Press, 2016), World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford University Press, 2009, paperback 2010), and Early Narrative Christology (de Gruyter, 2006, repr. Baker Academic, 2009). He has published dozens of articles and essays, and co-edited The Word Leaps the Gap (Eerdmans, 2008) and Rethinking the Unity and Reception of Luke and Acts (University of South Carolina Press, 2010). He is on the editorial board of several international peer-review journals and has also frequently written articles for faithandleadership.com.

Rowe has been a Fulbright Scholar, Regional Scholar for the Society of Biblical Literature, chair of the Society’s Southeastern Region New Testament section, president of the Society's Southeastern Region, and was elected to the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. He was awarded a Lilly Faculty Fellowship, a Christian Faith and Life Grant from the Louisville Institute, the John Templeton Prize for Theological Promise, the Paul J. Achtemeier Award, and a Distinguished Scholars grant from the McDonald Agape Foundation.