LATROBE, PA – Dr. Jason Jividen, an associate professor and chair of the Political Science Department in the Alex G. McKenna School of Business, Economics and Government at Saint Vincent College, was presented with the Boniface Wimmer Faculty Award on Wednesday, April 22, during the 2026 Spring Honors Convocation inside the Saint Vincent Archabbey Basilica.
“I spend much of my time attending academic events, reading books, thinking about big ideas and engaging with students and colleagues in conversation,” Jividen said after accepting the award. “This is a place where we get to live the life of the mind, a life of leisure, rightly understood. I really can’t imagine myself doing anything else.”
Named in honor of the founder of Saint Vincent College and Archabbey and a pioneer of Benedictine monasticism in the United States, the Wimmer Award annually recognizes a senior faculty member at the College who has demonstrated sustained excellence.
“If I’ve contributed anything good to the College, I hope that it’s been in working with this community to help perpetuate a tradition of liberal education at Saint Vincent,” Jividen said. “By this I mean the education not so much of a wage earner, a producer or a consumer, but an education worthy of free human beings and citizens who want to think about how they ought to live individually and in community with others. In doing these things, all of us really are participating in a very old tradition, a tradition that Boniface Wimmer knew very much about.”
At Saint Vincent College, Jividen added, everyone is invited to take part in this tradition.
“By keeping the tablets, as it were, by talking about good (or even great) books, by considering the most important and enduring questions, we’re doing our part to keep a delicate flame from burning out,” he said. “It’s our duty, each of us, to pass that flame onto others. And that duty continues long after you leave here.”
Jividen earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Marshall University and later completed doctorate studies at the University of Northern Illinois. He started teaching at the College in 2010 and in fall 2022 was named the Philip M. McKenna Endowed Chair in American and Western Political Thought.
The subjects of Jividen’s research have largely been American political thought with interests in the American founding, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln and Progressivism.
Among other articles and book chapters, his peer-reviewed publications include two books: “Claiming Lincoln: Progressivism, Equality, and the Battle for Lincoln’s Legacy in Presidential Rhetoric” and, with David Alvis, “Statesmanship and Progressive Reform: An Assessment of Herbert Croly’s Abraham Lincoln.”
Jividen is a past recipient of the Quentin Schaut Faculty Award as well as teaching awards from the College’s Student Government Association and the Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society for First-Year Academic Success.
He is also an honored visiting graduate faculty member in Ashland University’s Master of Arts in American History and Government program and a frequent contributor and seminar leader for Teaching American History, a project of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University.
