The Rev. Janet Cooper Nelson, chaplain of the University, will receive the Peter J. Gomes STB ’68 Memorial Honors, Thursday, April 16, 2015, at the Harvard Divinity School.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The Rev. Janet Cooper Nelson, chaplain of the University, is a 2015 recipient of Harvard Divinity School’s Peter J. Gomes STB ’68 Memorial Honors.

Selected annually by the Harvard Divinity School Alumni/Alumnae Council, the Gomes honorees represent the diversity of personal and professional paths that the School's graduates follow. The honors were established in 2013 in memory of the Rev. Peter Gomes, a scholar, author, and longtime minister of Harvard’s Memorial Church.

Cooper Nelson, who was awarded a Master of Divinity degree by Harvard Divinity School in 1980, said in a press release that she was moved to receive an honor that bore the name of her “beloved friend and dear colleague, whose loss still makes my heart ache.”

She said that her Harvard Divinity School experience has resonated throughout a long career.

“Nothing in our 1977 orientation in Andover Hall prepared me for the many blessings that continue to emerge from the unlikely convergence of students, alumni/ae, and faculty that made HDS my home for a season,” Cooper Nelson said. “Many, many, thanks and blessings to God and to the Divinity School family.”

The Harvard Divinity School community will mark the 2015 Gomes Honors in a ceremony at noon on Thursday, April 16, 2015.