Dr. Dave Rampersad serves as the Vice President of Academic Affairs, the Dean of the Alabama Christian College of Arts & Sciences, a professor of chemistry in the Department of Natural and Physical Sciences, and the university’s accreditation liaison. He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Abilene Christian University, the Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the University of the West Indies, and is a post-doctoral fellow of the University of California (Irvine).
Rampersad specializes in organic chemistry and phytochemistry, fields of study in which he has several published articles and presentations. In addition to his interest in the chemical sciences, Rampersad is an avid student of theology. He has preached regularly in his native Trinidad, here in the U.S. and has participated in mission trips in Europe and Africa. As with chemistry, he has several published articles and presentations in religion. Additionally, he has also published and spoken on faith-based learning, as well as, the harmony of science and religion.
Rampersad chooses to work at Faulkner, because he sees the Christian university’s purpose as first and foremost to train its students to think Christianly, i.e. to see their life and their world in relation to its Creator. It exists to care for the soul, to promote virtue, to educate the whole person, to enlighten us in the art of being (what kind of person one becomes) and not merely doing (what one does with learning), to impart knowledge for its own sake. Like Augustine, he asks,“What do you want to know?” And the response from our halls, going far beyond the utilitarian learning of our day, is “God and the soul.” “Nothing else,” we insist, for “our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”