CONWAY, Ark. (May 19, 2016) — Hendrix College alumnus C.J. Sentell ’03 has joined the Hendrix Office of Development as Leadership Gifts Officer.
“I am thrilled to have C.J. on the Development staff. We are very fortunate to have his diverse background and impressive educational background,” said Rev. J. Wayne Clark ’84, Associate Vice President of Development and Dean of the Chapel. “As an alumnus, he will be able to connect
well with donors and help articulate the vision of the College.”
Sentell graduated magna
cum laude in 2003 from Hendrix, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 2005, he graduated with distinction from the University of Cambridge and in 2015 completed his Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University, where he also received the 2007
Outstanding Teaching Award from the Department of Philosophy.
Prior to joining the Development Office, Sentell served as Central Arkansas Regional Manager for Financing Ozarks Rural Growth and Economy and as Curriculum Coordinator and Instructor for Brightwater: A Center for the Study of Food.
“I couldn’t be more excited to return to Hendrix and work for the long-term progress of the College,” said Sentell.
About C.
J. Sentell
A 2003 Hendrix College graduate, C.J. holds an M.Phil. from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. His areas of research include social and political theory (esp. freedom and slavery, race and sexuality), applied ethics (esp. environmental, bioethics and
business), the history and philosophy of science (esp. agriculture and biotechnology), and American Philosophy (esp. African-American and pragmatism). He is currently working on a monograph entitled Freedom
and Food, Slavery and Agriculture: A Philosophical Ecology of Democracy.
C.J.’s doctoral research began with a grant from the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities to form a research colloquia on food politics, and a fellowship with the Center for the Americas to study sustainable agriculture in Cuba and Guatemala. As co-director of
the Food Politics group, he organized a national roundtable, “Politics of the Lunch Counter,” bringing together civil-rights leader Rev. James Lawson and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers for a discussion of economic justice, food politics, and agrarian labor. During fieldwork in Latin
America, C.J. worked with small-scale farmers in the Guatemala highlands and studied the unique peri-urban agriculture in Cuba before the re-introduction of petroleum-based cultivation.
As the experimental apparatus to his dissertation, C.J. started a small sustainable farm outside Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to serving as an agrarian education center, at
Ecotone Farm he raised organic poultry, acorn-finished pastured pork, and grass-fed beef and lamb, all marketed farm-to-fork. At the farm C.J. led classes for students ranging from first-graders to undergraduates, including the innovative Curb Scholars at Vanderbilt. In five
years he built the project into a locally well-regarded Animal Welfare Approved farm, and gained a modest national prominence in sustainable agriculture in the process. C.J. is a former member of the Board of Directors for the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) and a past recipient of an Animal
Welfare Approved (AWA) Good Husbandry Grant. He is a current trustee for Kiva Zip Social Impact Investments, and has served as a consultant for the Agrarian Trust, the E. F. Schumacher Center for New Economics, and Heifer USA.
The same commitment to historically-sensitive, socially-engaged research is also evident in his work with the
Grass Roots Farmers’ Cooperative (GRFC). A project of Heifer USA, the GRFC is a cooperative of small- and mid-sized sustainable livestock farmers across the state of Arkansas that aims to build a local food system that is economically viable, environmentally sustainable and
socially just. As production manager C.J. provided technical assistance (both financial and agrarian) to small farmers across the state, collecting and analyzing a range of data to improve individual and collective performance. The intersecting and overlapping communities of farmers and philanthropists,
bankers and butchers, created a unique community between the nonprofit and business sectors and gave him distinctive insights into the theory and practice of local agrarian socioeconomic development.
His work since has led C.J. to become the Central Arkansas Regional Manager at
Financing Ozarks Rural Growth and Economy – the oldest community development finance institution (CDFI) in Arkansas – where he helps traditionally-underserved farmers and entrepreneurs gain access to capital and infrastructure. C.J. also serves as a faculty member and curriculum coordinator
for
Brightwater: A Center for the Study of Food at the Northwest Arkansas Community College.
With his wife, Jessica, and their two children, Jasper and Harper, C.J. lives on a farm north of Conway in the Ozark Mountains. Click here to read his essay,
Beyond the Future to the Past: Notes toward a Radical Agrarianism. Click
here to listen to an interview with C.J. on agricultural slavery in the Americas.
Before returning to Hendrix, C.J. taught at the Arkansas Governor’s School, the University of Arkansas, Vanderbilt University, and Northwest Arkansas Community College. Along the way, he has worked as a paralegal in Little Rock, a grocery store clerk in Tuscaloosa, the operations
manager of a sustainable livestock cooperative, and the regional manager of an Arkansas-based non-profit bank, Financing Ozarks Rural Growth and Economy.
About Hendrix College
Hendrix College is a private liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas. Founded in 1876 and affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884, Hendrix is featured in Colleges That Change Lives:
40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges and is nationally recognized in numerous college guides, lists, and rankings for academic quality, community, innovation, and value. For more information, visit
www.hendrix.edu.