Our PresidentGERSON MORENO-RIAÑO, Ph.D.
Meet Cornerstone's 12th President
Educating Global Influencers for Jesus Christ.
“Our university finds itself at this very moment with the greatest missional opportunity in its 82-year history. Never has our university had such an opportunity to be as compellingly distinctive than at this very moment. Never has our university had such an opportunity to prepare and educate tomorrow’s Christian influencers for our communities, churches, marketplace, and world.” – Dr. Gerson Moreno-Riaño
CAREER BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Gerson Moreno-Riaño has served in the vineyard of Christian higher education, as he calls it, for over two decades as a faculty member and tenured professor as well as holding numerous leadership posts including dean, executive vice president and now the 12th president of Cornerstone University. He is a teacher at heart who is committed to shepherding his students to love God with all of their minds, to follow God’s son, Jesus Christ, with all of their hearts and to love God’s word, the holy scriptures, for it is the inspired word of almighty God.
Besides his love for teaching, Dr. Moreno-Riaño is a scholar and intellectual, a man of ideas who believes that no idea is benign, since all ideas have consequences. His areas of expertise include the history of political philosophy with a special emphasis in early modern political ideas, democratic theory, and political theology and ethics. He is a member of the American Political Science Association and the foremost society for the study of medieval philosophy and intellectual history, the Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale – a by-invitation only scholarly society.
Moreno-Riaño’s distinguished scholarly career has included serving as a fellow in the Lehrman American Studies Center – hosted at Princeton University, an academic fellow in the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a fellow in the Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship at the University of Cincinnati, and a visiting professor in the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University (Budapest).
Moreno-Riaño received the 2011 John Witherspoon Lecturer Award from the Family Research Council, gave the inaugural Iwata Distinguished Lectures in Politics, Economics and Christian Ethics at Biola University (2008) and also was honored with a 2nd place Templeton Enterprise Award from the Templeton Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, based on his research in economics and natural law ethics.
He has presented both invited and accepted scholarly papers at Peking University, University of Cambridge, University of Oslo, University of Bergen, University of East Anglia, University of Helsinki and numerous scholarly societies including the American Political Science Association, the Renaissance Society of America, the International Medieval Congress, the International Political Science Association and the American Psychological Association.
Moreno-Riaño has published six books and numerous book chapters and scholarly articles in such prestigious academic journals as History of Political Thought and the American Review of Public Administration. His book, The Prospect for Internet Democracy (2009) (co-authored with Michael Margolis), was nominated as the Book of the Year in 2010 by the Information Technology and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. Moreno-Riaño also has been featured in numerous television, radio, and print interviews and publications through such outlets as The Washington Post, The Washington Examiner, CBN News, Fox News, Inside Higher Education, Virginia Business, Voice of America Radio, American Family Radio, and others.
EDUCATION
- Ph.D. Political Science, University of Cincinnati
- M.A. Political Science, University of Cincinnati
- B.A. Political Science and Pre-Seminary Biblical Studies, Cedarville University
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- History of political philosophy
- Government
- Political theology
LATEST INITIATIVES
- Cornerstone University Resets Tuition 22% Lower
- Cornerstone Establishes Inaugural President’s Fellows Program
- The CU Promise
LATEST PUBLICATIONS
Vision and Focus
For decades, Dr. Moreno-Riaño has been a champion for Christian higher education that is Biblically-centered, growth-minded and measurably excellent. Together with the entire Cornerstone University community, he is committed to helping the institution become the Destination of Choice amongst American Christian universities and has set a prayerful, collaborative, visionary course for the future to honor Jesus Christ.
01
Destination of Choice Distinction
Pursue distinctive excellence. A humble pursuit of compellingly distinctive academic excellence and student experience will expand Cornerstone’s mission, ministry, community and marketplace value and impact in Michigan and beyond.
02
Influence
Prepare and educate tomorrow’s courageous Christian influencers for our communities, churches, marketplace, and world to foster human flourishing.
03
Mission-centered Growth
Develop a mission-centric enrollment growth focus across the university that creates market and ministry-ready graduates who are academically trained and spiritually formed to make Jesus Christ preeminent in their life, work, ministry and community.
04
Fiscal Flourishing
Invest boldly in growth. A thriving university must create an operational enterprise that is agile, measurably effective, fiscally strong and purposeful in pursuing mission-centric growth to ensure a vibrant future.
Committed to Christ
When Dr. Moreno-Riaño was in third grade, his parents enrolled him in an Assemblies of God school—not because of its emphasis on faith, but because of its reputation. Nevertheless, he accepted Christ during a chapel service at the school, and then recommitted his life to Christ at 14. It was then that God called him to full-time ministry. God used Dr. Moreno-Riaño’s love for learning and growing interest in government and political science to fuel what would become a career in teaching students how Christ is moving in a broken world and how they can become influencers for Him.