Jim Ellison

Volunteers Exploring Vocation Coordinator

Email: jellison@fteleaders.org
Phone: 304.233.2615

Address:
Riley Building, Suite 600
53 - 14th Street
Wheeling, WV 26003-3423

James Ellison is the Fund’s Volunteers Exploring Vocation (VEV) Coordinator, and officially joined the staff after serving as a member of the leadership team that implemented VEV as a pilot program from 2005-2007.

With more than three decades of service to the church (nineteen years of which as a parish pastor within the inner city and Appalachia), Jim spent the last twelve years directing another mission of the church, a community center in Appalachia serving 300 children and youth. Jim’s article reflecting on this work, “The Power of a Sustained Relationship between Community Partners and Colleges and Universities,” was published in Diversity Digest of the Association of Colleges and Universities.

Jim founded the Mother Jones House in Wheeling, WV, an intentional community of students from Wheeling Jesuit University living and serving in a neighborhood, near but also culturally distant from campus. He was also the founder of the East Wheeling Business Council. For his community efforts, Jim has received special recognition from both Wheeling Jesuit University and the Bonner Foundation.

A member of the Presbyterian Church/USA, Jim is married to Karen (Heitz) Ellison, and they have four grown children who live in Alaska, Minnesota, Maryland and Pennsylvania.