Parker J. Palmer is a writer, teacher, and activist who works
independently on issues in education, community,
leadership, spirituality, and social change. His work spans a
wide range of institutions-colleges and universities, public
schools, community organizations, religious institutions,
corporations, and foundations. He serves as senior associate
of the American Association of Higher Education and senior
adviser to the Fetzer Institute and is the founder of Fetzer's
Teacher Formation Program for K-12 teachers.
Palmer travels widely domestically and abroad-
conducting workshops, delivering lectures, leading
retreatsand has often been cited as a master teacher. His
work has been featured by the New York Times, the
Chronicle of Higher Education, Change magazine, Christian
Century, CBS-TV news and the Voice of America. The
Danforth Foundation and the Lilly Endowment have
supported his work with major grants. In 1993, he won the
national award of the Council of Independent Colleges for
Outstanding Contributions to Higher Education. In 1998,
"The Leadership Project," a national survey of ten thousand
administrators and faculty, named Palmer one of the nation's
"most influential senior leaders" in higher education and one
of the ten key "agenda-setters" of the past decade, declaring:
"He has inspired a generation of teachers and reformers with
evocative visions of community, knowing, and spiritual