My husband, Russell Genet and I have lived on the Central Coast, near Santa Margarita Lake, for over 7 years.  Russell is an Astronomer. My field of research was Science and Theology, and we both teach at Cuesta College. In addition, Russell is a Research Scholar in Residence at Cal Poly. (You can learn more about us at www.OrionInstitute.org)

In 2006, while I was still working on my doctoral dissertation (I received my degree in 2007) and shortly after my mother and father, longtime residents of Atascadero passed away, Russell and I took a much needed vacation to the leeward side of Oahu, in Hawaii.  There we found the most delightful oasis called the Makaha Resort, in this country area.  We immediately knew this would be a wonderful venue for a conference and, inspired by Russell’s recently published book, Humanity: The Chimpanzees Who Would Be Ants, we decided on a broadly interdisciplinary conference that ultimately drew, much to our delight, some of the world's foremost experts on the scientific study of religion. We dubbed it the 1st in a "Humanity Participants' Conference Series." We then produced a proceedings from the conference called The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques, under the auspices of our fledgling press (with our good friend Dwight Collins), the Collins Foundation Press, which became the publishing division of the Collins Family Foundation. 

This conference was followed in 2008, again in Hawaii, by The Evolutionary Epic: Science's Story and Humanity's Response.  Again, the conference was highly interdisciplinary and successful, drawing scientists, futurists, philosophers and theologians, artists, and poets.  And again, we produced an edited volume by the same name, which just came off the press. We have one more conference, our 4^th, scheduled in Hawaii in 2011, Humanity in the Cosmos: What does it mean to be human in a vast cosmos? 

But in the meantime, we have our 3rd in the conference series scheduled for San Luis Obispo on the Central Coast of California this June - the 24th-28th and it is called Science, Wisdom, and the Future: Humanity's Search for a Flourishing Earth.    

These conferences are a wonderful opportunity for all comers to join in a broad ranging conversation about our evolutionary future, considering science, wisdom, politics, philosophy and theology, humanism, and issues of sustainability, particularly in our business practices, with some outstanding speakers and participants.

Our publishing website is www.CollinsFoundationPress.org and displays our three books.