Nancy Springer is the assistant rector at St. Alban’s Episcopal Day School, and is the former assistant rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in McAllen, Texas. In her former position, she and her congregation worked with other border churches and government agencies to help unaccompanied children and other migrants in U.S. custody.

Read a July 7, 2014, New York Times story about a 2008 law that may be behind the rise in children crossing the U.S.-Mexican border.

Dennis Myers is a professor of social work, with an emphasis on gerontology, at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He spoke at a September 2013 conference about what congregations can do to help members who have dementia and about how to support their caregivers as well.

Read another Oct. 17, 2011, column at Patheos that talks about how seminary education can be improved.

Bob Abegg is director of online and external studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, which started with one online course in 2003 and now has two dozen, with 1,000 students. He is also elder emeritus at Centerpoint Church in Mesquite, Texas. Contact via DTS’ External Studies Office.

Penny Linsenmayer of Houston, Texas, helped organize Nimbus 2003, the first international symposium about Harry Potter, held in July 2003. Linsenmayer founded the Harry Potter for Grownups Internet discussion group, which has nearly 7,000 members.

The Rev. O.S. Hawkins is president of Dallas-based GuideStone Financial Resources. He has said that taking care of the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit is one of the duties of a Baptist. The top two medical claims paid by the denomination’s health insurance program in 2002 were for obesity-related ailments, including back […]

Jenifer Kunz, an associate professor of sociology at West Texas A&M University, has researched the attitudes of 21st-century members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints toward polygamy.

Rice University’s Galileo Project provides a webpage with information on Galileo Galilei’s life and work.