Cynthia A. Jarvis, 1971
B.A., Denison University
M.Div., Vanderbilt University
Citation awarded May, 1991
Following her graduation from Denison, Phi Beta Kappa, Cynthia Jarvis attended the Vanderbilt Divinity School where she received a master of divinity degree in 1974. Cynthia did her graduate work as a recipient of the Rockefeller Theological Fellowship. She was ordained in Wooster, Ohio in 1974.
Cynthia began her career in the clergy as first assistant and then associate at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Wooster. In 1979, she became director of field based programs at the McCormick Theological Seminary, and in 1983, went to Princeton, New Jersey, to begin service as the associate minister of the Naussau Presbyterian Church.
A fellow alumna and fellow Presbyterian pastor wrote that Cynthia had been singled out as a role model for women seminarians at the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, and she was the only woman educator at the Presbyterian Pastors School, which is held annually at Hastings College in Nebraska.
In September, 1976, the Reverend Cindy Jarvis, while pastor of the Westminster Presbyterian Church and chaplain at the College of Wooster, became the first woman ever to deliver the invocation before the U.S. House of Representatives.
While a student at Denison, she was co-president and co-vice president of the Denison Community Association. She shared the Kussmaul Town-Gown Award and was a member of Mortar Board and Crossed Keys.
