Scotty McLennan's research has been at the interface of religion,ethics, and the professions. He coauthored, with Laura Nash, Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life (Jossey-Bass, 2001). He teaches a second-year elective course entitled "The Business World: Moral and Spiritual Inquiry Through Literature." He is currently collecting interviews of individuals who have found novels, plays, and short stories with business characters helpful in examining moral and spiritual issues in their own business careers.

William L. (Scotty) McLennan, Jr. is the Dean for Religious Life at Stanford. He was the University Chaplain at Tufts University from 1984-2000 and Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School for ten of those years. His duties at Stanford include providing spiritual, moral, and ethical leadership for the university as a whole, teaching, encouraging a wide spectrum of religious traditions on campus; serving as the minister of Memorial Church; and engaging in public service.

Dean McLennan received a BA from Yale University in 1970 as a Scholar of the House working in the area of computers and the mind). He received MDiv and JD degrees from Harvard Divinity and Law Schools in 1975. In 1975 he was ordained to the ministry (Unitarian Universalist) and admitted to the Massachusetts Bar as an attorney.

From 1975 to 1984 Dean McLennan practiced church-sponsored poverty law in the Dorchester area of Boston. He represented low-income people in the general practice of law, including consumer, landlord-tenant, government benefits, immigration, family, and criminal law. In the early 1980s he developed and directed the Unitarian Universalist Legal Ministry, which used largely non-adversary means of dispute resolution, attempted to see clients’ legal problems in relation to their whole life situation, and sought reconciliation with other parties.

At Stanford, Dean McLennan has taught undergraduate courses through the Ethics in Society Program ("Ethics and the Professions" and "The Meaning of Life"); Urban Studies, with the associate deans for religious life ("Spirituality and Nonviolent Social Transformation"); and the Graduate School of Business ("The Business World: Moral and Spiritual Inquiry Through Literature"). His primary research interests are in the interface of religion, ethics, and the professions.

Dean McLennan is the author of Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost Its Meaning (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999) and coauthor with Laura Nash of Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values With Business Life (Jossey-Bass, 2001). He lives on campus with his wife, Ellen; they are the parents of a Stanford graduate, Will, and a Stanford senior, Dan.