Mark Watney
Visiting Lecturer in Theology and Literature
Born and raised in South Africa, Mark immigrated to the United States as a high school senior in 1977. As a college student he crisscrossed his new country four times by bicycle, motorbike, and Greyhound bus. He has also taught English in Japan and downtown Los Angeles for 8 years, done ethnographic research in India, and travelled with an evangelistic troupe across Puerto Rico. He and his wife, Laurel, spent their first 18 months with a church-planting team in Turkey, but have lived their last 19 years in the middle of Kansas—teaching college and raising three sons.
Mark is now professor emeritus at Sterling College (Kansas), assisting in its newly established C. S. Lewis Center. He has given papers at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, Dordt College, Lee University, and The Southwest Conference for Christianity and Literature. His essays and poetry have appeared in Philosophy Now, The Anglican Theological Review, The Other Journal, and elsewhere, and he is the 2017 recipient of the Jacques Maritain Award for Non-Fiction.
Mary Gammill
Lecturer in Theology and the Arts
Mary Gammill isn’t exactly a new face around YTI, but the 2024 graduate is taking on a new role as she joins the Institute faculty this academic year as Lecturer in Theology and the Arts.
Mary is working to form an artist collective in the Bozeman area. She is an abstract, explorative artist who expresses her relationship with God in art. Focusing on light and color with acrylic ink as her primary medium, Mary is inspired by the symbolism, light, and the theology represented in Christian Art History, as well as the beauty of God’s creation in which she lives.
Mary earned her M.A. in Theology and the Arts from Yellowstone Theological Institute, and also completed her B.A. in Advertising with an Art emphasis from the University of Georgia. She and her husband Mike live in Bozeman and have been married for 27 years. They have two beloved adult daughters and a golden retriever named Sunny.