Alex Molnar is a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Arizona State University and director of the school’s Education Policy Studies Laboratory.

Miriam Levering is professor of religious studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where she is the editor of Zen Inspirations: Essential Meditations and Texts and can speak about women in Zen Buddhism.

Jeffrey Samuels is an assistant professor of religious studies at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, where he has studied monastic recruitment and the training of young children as Buddhist novices. He has interviewed monks in Sri Lanka and children in training to become monks, studying how the rituals and aesthetics of Buddhist life inform their […]

Steven Heine is professor of religious studies and history and director of the Asian studies program at Florida International University in Miami, where he specializes in Japanese Buddhism and can also speak about contemporary Buddhism in the West. He is the author of White Collar Zen: Using Zen Principles to Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Your Career Goals.

Mario Poceski is assistant professor of Buddhist studies at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where his work focuses on the Chan school of Chinese Buddhism.

John D. Dunne is a professor in the department of east asian languages and literature and the distinguished professor of contemplative humanities at the Center for Healthy Minds. He was a former assistant professor in the religion department at Emory University in Atlanta. He is the author of Foundations of Dharmakirti’s Philosophy, an examination of Buddhist […]

Charles S. Prebish is a professor emeritus of religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is a co-founder of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics and can speak about the development of Buddhism in North America and the way the internet has been used to connect Buddhists worldwide.

Jin Y. Park is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy and religion at American University in Washington, D.C. She specializes in Buddhist philosophy; her doctoral dissertation was on Zen Buddhism and postmodern thought.

Janice Willis is a retired professor emerita of religion and social sciences at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. She is the author of Dreaming Me: An African American Woman’s Spiritual Journey. Read an excerpt on Beliefnet.com. Willis has talked about her journey from the segregated, revival-preacher South to a Buddhist monastery in Nepal where she began to find peace.