The Emerging Scholars Blog

The Center for Christian Studies in Charlottesville, VA, adjacent to the University of Virginia, is conducting a search for a new Executive Director. Here is a brief excerpt from the full listing:

The candidate must have a heart for the gospel and the university, be committed to Christian ministry in an academic setting, and have demonstrated skills managing a professional team, administering a thriving organization, fundraising, and teaching the Bible. The candidate must also be able to represent the vision and ministries of CCS through speaking, teaching and writing. Ultimately, all activities must be grounded in an unwavering faith in Jesus Christ and a commitment to biblical truth.

If that sounds like you or someone you know, here is a PDF of the full position description.

Christianity Today has launched a new podcasting series featuring “editorials, news and books commentaries” (iTunes link). I just subscribed, and noticed that it looks like ESN partner Books & Culture will be featured regularly. There are already two podcasts with B&C editor John Wilson, discussing recent books by Rodney Stark and Christopher Buckley.

Personally, I enjoy listening to John Piper’s sermon podcasts and Mars Hill Audio’s Audition, as well as my guilty pleasure, ESPN’s BS Report with Bill Simmons. What are some of your favorite podcasts?

Just a quick reminder:

• The early-bird discount for Following Christ 2008 ends tomorrow, October 31.
• For any undergrads interested in attending the ESN Day Ahead, we have scholarships available.

Also, if you are a faculty member interested in serving as an ESN mentor, but would like to see what we’re all about first by attending the ESN Day Ahead, contact me.

Here’s a good opportunity to help you finish your Ph.D.: The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. From their website:

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships are designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner. In addition to topics in religious studies or in ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the Newcombe Fellowship competition might explore the ethical implications of foreign policy, the values influencing political decisions, the moral codes of other cultures, and religious or ethical issues reflected in history or literature.

Each one-year fellowship is worth $24,000, and you must be planning to submit your Ph.D. or Th.D. by summer 2010. The deadline is November 14, so you need to apply soon.

Link: Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (HT: Gail Neal at Biola, via Stan Wallace)

Jim Sire’s pointers on being a book editor can now be found on-line!  A special thank-you to InterVarsity Press‘ Andrew T. Le Peau.

As Emerging Scholars, you’re probably not surprised that Jim starts with education:

The bad news is that there is no particular education that prepares you to be an editor. The good news is that there is no particular education that prepares you to be an editor. Almost any education — and the more the better — will function quite well. …

Finally, an encouragement for more education in general to share with those in your circle. If you desire to explore book editing, take a few minutes to read the post for insights on the various skills involved.

Inside Higher Ed today has a report from this weekend’s Compact for Faculty Diversity’s Institute on Teaching and Mentoring, asking what it means to be a mentor. Here’s a quote:

“I used to think that you didn’t have to have a close relationship with the student to be a mentor,” [Javier] Cuevas, an associate professor of molecular pharmacology and physiology at South Florida’s College of Medicine, said at the session at the Compact for Faculty Diversity’s Institute on Teaching and Mentoring here. “But I’ve come to believe that there’s a huge difference between an adviser, who may only be concerned about the student’s performance on a particular project, and someone who has truly taken on the role of mentor. To me, friendship is an essential component of being a true mentor.”

This was a major question throughout the Mentoring Institute’s conference that I attend last week. A great deal of discussion was given to the question of whether a mentor and an advisor were the same thing, whether being a “mentor” implied some sort of special relationship, and how much of a “cheerleader” a mentor should be for mentees.

Brad Johnson, for example, noted that affirmation was the singlemost important thing that a mentor could do, and that mentors served an important role in opening doors for their proteges. Lewis Schlosser raised the tension between serving as a supporter of one’s protege, while simultaneously serving as a gatekeeper for one’s profession. Izzy Justice, meanwhile, took a completely different stance on mentoring, through his company’s service of anonymous mentoring (which completely removes any possibilities of opening doors or becoming real friends). Several speakers raised the question of whether you could be assigned a mentor, or if being a mentor was something you could only determine in retrospect.

What do you see as the differences between being a mentor and being an adviser? Does mentoring require friendship?

Last week, I had the good fortune attend the inaugural mentoring conference, put on by the University of New Mexico Mentoring Institute. Mark Smith of the Institute had invited me out there, and it was an excellent time of learning for me. I now have many ideas about how to improve ESN’s Mentoring Program (and many leads to follow up on, and not enough time to do it!).

A few highlights:

• Brad Johnson of the U.S. Naval Academy and Johns Hopkins, speaking on the necessary traits of good mentors. (Johnson is also the co-author of The Elements of Mentoring)
• Lewis Schlosser of Seton Hall, speaking on multicultural and cross-cultural mentoring.
• Izzy Justice of EQmentor, Inc., an online mentoring system designed for businesses and middle managers. Justice’s “big ideas” are 1) anonymous mentoring and 2) “network” mentoring, in which a mentee receives one-on-mentoring, peer mentoring from a community, and access to a knowledge base.
• Florence Hamrick of Iowa State, who led a roundtable discussion on mentoring for institutional transformation. (More on this soon, too.)
• Mark Searby of Beeson Divinity School, who led a breakout session on “Leaders Who Last,” about identifying why leaders in academic, business, and the pastorate fail and what can be done to prevent failure.
• MaryJane McReynolds of Central New Mexico Community College, who lead a breakout on best practices for mentoring professional and graduate students, from the perspective of leading mentoring programs in two vastly different contexts: business managers enrolled at DeVry Institute, and MD/PhD students at UNM.
• Though I wasn’t able to make her session, I had an excellent lunch conversation with Lani Gunawardena of UNM about her experience in designing an e-mentoring program that matched faculty in Sri Lanka with graduate students at UNM, using the open source program Moodle.
• A burrito platter from the Frontier Restaurant across the street from UNM. Yum!

I was also pleased to see a couple of my “neighbors” from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, who presented a poster on Children’s mentoring program for African American employees.

There is much more to say and process, and I’ll be writing about some of what I learning in the coming days.

Following Christ 2008 is approaching quickly, and so is the early bird discount for registering. But don’t take my word for it:

FC08: The Director’s Videos #8 from Graduate & Faculty Ministries on Vimeo.

As you may remember, the Chronicle Careers piece What am I doing? Shouldn’t seven years of graduate school have helped me avoid taking a job just to have a job? raised the question How do you explain the academic culture to ‘outsiders?’ In addition to the several comments on the post, I’ve received direct feedback which expresses even stronger frustration with the task. My prayers are with those such as the 5th year post-doc, who have found their academic context peopled with many small people:

Small in that underneath their facades of arrogance, superior intellect, etc., they are actually very insecure and fearful. Thus, they hide behind masks in order to hide their perceived inadequacies. They then act ’small, which I see as trying to get power and popularity through movement up in faculty position, through advancing their agendas, by dominating their students, and by criticizing everyone and everything. It’s pretty sad, really. I’m not sure this is what you were asking, but it was my immediate reaction to the question. – anonymous Read the rest of this entry »

Messiah College Historian of Science Ted Davis just passed along the below announcement. As one who has had the opportunity to read some of Robin Collins’ work and to hear some of his thoughts in the context of the Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science, I commend his work for your consideration.

I apologize for the late notice, but I only just learned about this.

Messiah College philosopher Robin Collins will appear in an interview on the PBS program “Closer to the Truth,” hosted by Robert Kuhn. This program will play throughout the United States and in some places oversees. It plays locally at 1:00 pm this Thursday, October 23, on WITF-HD, PBS channel 33.3. The program’s title and description are “Why a Fine-Tuned Universe? (HD, TVG) The many seemingly random occurrences that led to human existence are discussed.”

The “Closer to the Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future” website is at:
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/closertotruth/

A blogspot for “Closer to the Truth” is at:
http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.blogspot.com/