National Advisory Board

Darby Ray 

Board Member

Darby Ray is the Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Professor of Civic Engagement at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, where she also directs the Harward Center for Community Partnerships. She spent the first half of her career as a professor of religious studies, spending sixteen years at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, where she taught and published in the areas of feminist, liberationist, and ecological Christian thought and the meaning of work, and where she participated in numerous social justice and community organizing initiatives, with an emphasis on racial equity in housing and K-12 education. At Bates College she leads the institution’s multipronged civic/community engagement program, including faculty development for community-engaged teaching and research and public scholarship; partnership, collaboration, and project cultivation; and student leadership, democratic engagement, activism, and community work study programs. Her publishing these days tends to take the form of grant applications with community partners rather than books or articles, but the focus remains social justice across multiple vectors. Deeply embedded in local justice and equity work in Lewiston, Maine, she serves on numerous boards, commissions, committees, and working groups, and enjoys the many delights of the Maine outdoors.