• connect with ESN members (such as seminar leader Jimmy Lin, see Interview: Jimmy Lin, Medical and Scientific Doxologist)
• enjoy amazing opportunities, such as touring the NASA: Goddard Space Flight Center with Jennifer Wiseman, Chief of the Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics
• interview plenary speakers (hope Francis Collins, Geneticist and Author of Language of God: : A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, and others have a few minutes to spare in a packed schedule)
• invite participants to become involved with InterVarsity’s various ministries through a display table and a Graduate & Faculty Ministry Reception (Sunday, August 1, 8:30 PM, Atrium) with my colleagues Terry Morrison and Dwight Schwartz
• wrestle with how ESN might host/contribute to discussions on Science, Faith, & Public Policy.

Ted Davis

Here’s what my friend Edward B. (“Ted”) Davis, Distinguished Professor of the History of Science at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, and president of the ASA has to say with regard to the benefits members of ESN will receive not only from participation in the 65^th Annual Meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation, but more broadly by becoming a member of ASA.**  Note:  If you’ve never explored History of Science, I’d highly recommend you check out his webpage and take in some of his sessions at the ASA Mtgs.

The American Scientific Affiliation (www.asa3.org) is the premier science/faith organization in the Western Hemisphere.  We publish a refereed quarterly journal, “Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith,” a bi-monthly newsletter, and host a blog only for members.  I joined the ASA more than 30 years ago, and it has proved to be the most important professional decision I ever made.  Through the ASA (including the years when I was a student) I have met dozens of world-class scientists and scholars who share my Christian faith; through the ASA I learned about most of the best books and article on science & Christianity; and in the ASA I have found wonderful fellowship with believers who understand and appreciate all of the main fields of pure and applied science.  The annual meeting is always stimulating, well organized, and just plain fun to attend.  Students are especially urged to come, at least to visit for a day, to get a sense of who we are and what we do.  If you are a Christian in one of the sciences, this is an organization you want to be part of.

*Registration:  $75 student rate, $30 for 1 day student rate; plus room & board.  Be sure to visit the on-line registration page before June 30.

**Student member and student associate dues are $20/year. Full membership for others is half-off until June 30, i.e., only $35. Wow! To learn more about joining ASA registration click here.

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Read part 1 of the series, “Where Did You Find Your Megaphone?”

I was surprised, though maybe I shouldn’t be, at the nature of responses to my last post. I expected to hear a variety of answers about where each of us of first found our voice and discovered our efficacy. Was it in your favorite class in college, or in your relationship with a younger sibling? Was it on a Church board, in a Parent-Teacher organization, or on a missions trip? Where did you first feel heard and validated, and see your work invested as time well spent? I was concerned with some kind of defining moment in your path from regular person to learned academic. Ultimately, I wanted to know why you chose the academy—if you chose the academy—as the place for you to pursue your work? I was surprised, though maybe I shouldn’t be, that the piece I shared of my own quest to find my academic voice was taken instead as a complaint about the glass ceilings for women in ministry. It indeed hurts me deeply to see how much women have been hampered from Christian ministry for generations, but I was trying to stress the positive: many of us have found other ways to compensate for this challenge. How did you, male or female, arrive at your perch of authority? What microphone do you use as you make your way to the megaphone?

Our discussions of the integration of faith and learning these days so often assume that we are already creatures of authority in our academic field. We assume that all of us, by virtue of our association with the academy and our dabbling in even a bit of higher education, are already knowledgeable within a particular terrain of thought or culture, and have some degree of authority within a particular body of knowledge. We are encouraged that we need to be careful how we use our perch of authority, for our stewardship of our gifts has more of an impact on the world than what we might expect. I imagine that many of us found the Emerging Scholars Network because we wanted to further discuss this encouraging message. I certainly did.

However, I wanted to complicate the way we frame this calling, especially with regard to graduate students who are still trying to find our voices within a particular field. What can seem like an exciting challenge to academics who already have perches of authority (read- some kind of teaching or research gig where you feel visible), can be equally discouraging to those of us who are still yearning, searching and struggling to find an audience to hear us. So much of graduate school is about building an audience: an advisor you trust; a cohort of other graduate students and faculty you trust, and ultimately an intellectual community who believe that the final results of your research matter to them and the larger community they fit into. Therefore, even if your research challenges particular assumptions within your field, you are not actually supposed to challenge anyone to the point that they wonder if you fit into their intellectual community. At least not that significantly, or anyone you know, personally. Qualifying exams, preliminary exams and oral defenses, the landmarks in time of your graduate school experience, are all moments specially designed to make sure that you fit into the intellectual community that you are already supposed to be participating in. Your life is not about using a perch of authority wisely; it’s about continually defending how and why you belong. It’s about making others comfortable with you. Like any other hazing experience, it’s about doing what it takes, within reason, to prove that you deserve that perch of membership. Otherwise, you know you will never win that perch of authority.

I have wondered frequently why Christians interested in discussing the “integration of faith and learning” have not spent more time discussing what, and who, is lost this hazing process. Sure, have discussed the loss of our humility, the loss of our identity as a regular person, and sometimes even the loss of our childbearing years. However, many do not see enough wrong with the graduate school hazing process–a process that culminates in the roulette of finding a job–to see a need for it to be redeemed. Many see sets of testable knowledge as virtually objective, and see themselves as authority figures in their own areas of expertise simply by virtue of their successful passing through the hazing process. And perhaps sometimes this is true. However, my own experiences in graduate school have made quite obvious the fact that sets of testable knowledge are really just as subjective as any set of book reviews given by two professors. Preliminary exam questions upon this set of testable knowledge again do nothing but express what the examiners find important. And, as I have learned the hard way, if you don’t tell professors what they want to hear the first time they ask, they will ask you again, expecting that next time your answer will be different.

What do you think is gained and lost in this academic hazing process?

Read part 3 of the series, “Dig Where You Stand.”

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When the young François-Marie Arouet was a student at the Jesuit collège Louis-le-Grand in 18th-century Paris, he spent many of his classroom hours studying Latin, along with a little ancient Greek. Had he ventured over to the nearby Collège Royal, today the Collège de France, he could have also taken lessons in Hebrew, Arabic, or Syriac. During a subsequent two-year stay in England, Arouet made it a priority to learn English; he would later pick up Italian. Upon his return, he published the Letters Concerning the English Nation (subsequently renamed the Lettres philosophiques), a founding text of the French Enlightenment, which established its author’s reputation as the philosophe called Voltaire.

Of course, Voltaire is hardly the only great thinker with a command of multiple languages. A quick survey of important Christian writers in English of the 20th century reads like a mini-MLA convention:

• C. S. Lewis – Medievalist who studied Latin and Greek as a boy and wrote criticism on French and Italian literature
• J. R. R. Tolkien – Philologist who translated works of Old and Middle English and Anglo-Saxon, learned Latin, French, and German as a boy, and, if his Wikipedia entry is to be believer, knew at least 21 other languages, not counting those he invented
• Dorothy Sayers – Translated works of Italian and French
• T. S. Eliot – Learned Latin, Greek, French and German in grade school, and later studied Sanskrit at Harvard, of all things

These writers have lots in common, but is there something important to be gained — by Christians, not just in general — from the study of languages? Is there something beyond the many other benefits of learning other languages that awaits Christians who make the effort? And, conversely, is there something that American Christians are in danger of losing because of our country’s infamous lack of language training?

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David Naugle

David Naugle: I think it’s the genuine fulfillment of human nature rooted in a relationship with God, whose mercy and grace demonstrated in the person and work of Jesus Christ enables us to love God and the creation well, in a rightly-ordered manner. That’s the definition in short. It has to do with the love of God and the love of one’s neighbor, rightly-ordered.

MH: This morning, I was thinking about how that would apply with my work with emerging scholars and Christian faculty. Academics often complain about the stress, the low pay and long hours and the high entry requirements of their profession. Yet at the same time, they sacrifice quite a bit of time, energy, and money in order to become an academic. Academic professions are typically ranked near the top as one of the most fulfilling jobs. Maybe this is too big of a question, but what do you see as the state of happiness in the academy, among faculty?

DN: Well I think that is maybe an impossible question to answer, actually. Obviously it would depend on each individual faculty member and where they’re coming from. My guess is that the happiness quotient among university faculty, broadly speaking, is probably roughly about the same as the happiness quotient of American society generally, if we’re thinking in terms of North American society, the U.S. and Canada. I don’t know if there’s anything that’s uniquely happiness-giving to being a university professor.

Reordered Love, Reordered Lives by David Naugle

As a matter of fact, depending on the discipline, there are some cases in which professors would probably be tempted toward cynicism, skepticism, and despair unless there is a foundation of faith underneath all that. It’s pretty easy to get lost in the labyrinth of knowledge and to see no way out. An,d more or less, you pursue your job as anyone would pursue their job, as a source of livelihood, perhaps as a way to make a name for oneself, to scale the career heights in the academy, that kind of thing. Faculty are looking for something that fulfills and brings meaning, but perhaps struggling to find it, just like anybody else would. So I don’t necessarily put faculty members in any kind of particular special happiness category, by any stretch of the imagination.

As far as the profession itself is concerned, I think it’s the best job on the planet. I think that for a number of reasons. [Number] one, especially as a Christian professor, that if you’ve learned through the grace of God to love God and to love your neighbor as you love yourself, and to love all things in creation and culture, in a rightly or re-ordered way, in light of your love for God and love for neighbor, and that’s the framework or context within which you’re pursuing your academic discipline, then that is happiness giving.

Number two, it makes the academic enterprise seem to me profoundly meaningful. There’s a way of contributing to the academy, to the discipline, to the guild of your discipline, in a unique way, from a Christian perspective. And you get to have a ministry, which I think is really what the classroom actually is: a place of ministry in the lives of young, impressionable students. It’s a ministry that has a lasting impact. In that sense, if you put all of that together, I think that’s why it’s the greatest job on the planet.

Plus, you get to read, if you like to read, you get to read for a living; if you like to write, you get to write for a living; if you like to think, you could think for a living; if you like to teach, you can teach for a living; if you like to hang out with students or have good collegial relationships with other faculty members, then you are obviously finding a lot of fulfillment in all of those activities, all of those pursuits.

MH: At Urbana, I gave a seminar on serving Christ as a professor. Ken Elzinga, from the University of Virginia, was in the room. Someone asked if there were any Christian professors who could say a few words. I was praying he would stand up, and he did. He spoke about the deep joy he experiences as a faculty member.

DN: I would concur and certainly second that. I have found, in my own life personally, tremendous fulfillment. My wife and I together, actually. My wife is the associate provost at the university, so even though we don’t work in the same areas on campus, nonetheless we are at the same institution. Which has really helped me a lot, I don’t know how much I’ve helped her, but I know she’s really helped me a lot. Together, and also independently, I feel a tremendous reward from the teaching process, from entering into the lives of students as appropriate, as a professor, befriending them, having a kind of incarnational philosophy of teaching and working with students, where you walk alongside them in the education, where you have the opportunity to have some input in their lives. A lot of these students, even on Christian college campuses, have come from pretty rough and tumble backgrounds, some difficult family situations. I found myself, in other words, serving in the role of father figure for a fair number of students, not all, but for a fair number of students — or at least another father figure alongside a decent father figure, so there is that component to it as well.

My wife and I have frequently talked about how our best friends are really college kids. We do have adult friends that we do things with, but often times when we are thinking about who we would like to get together with on a Friday or Saturday night to do something, often times its our students who come to mind first. They are intellectually engaged, spiritually alive, and just in general fun, so we really thrive on hanging out with them and they are over at our house all the time.

We have a lot of events in our home for students as well as things we have organized on campus. This is all in addition to the regular day-in-day-out activities of teaching classes and so on. The Christian university, the academy from within the context of faith, provides opportunities like that, which are not impossible to pursue elsewhere, but are made a little bit easier by the ability to be open about faith and cultivating relationships with students that’s probably a little tougher on a state university campus.

MH: One of the issues we have been tracking for awhile in ESN is the state of the humanities, especially the job market and job prospects for students who get PhDs in humanities. We had some responses given. There have been articles in the Chronicle several, strongly advising students not to go into a PhD program. Alan Jacobs [professor of English at Wheaton College] has, also, written an essay about his default advice: “If you are thinking about a graduate school in humanities, don’t go.” [Editor's note: After this interview, I reviewed Jacobs' essay, and my summary is far from adequate. Be sure to read it straight from the source. ~ Mike] This advice is often tied to issues of job prospects and marketability —

DN: Economics.

MH: — yes, economics. Do you have any advice that you usually give to students who came to you thinking about grad school.

DN: Great question. My advice is if they feel called to be a Christian scholar, then that’s what they ought to pursue regardless of the economic forces that play in the process. I have found in my own life, and also in the life of a fair number of students who have come through the undergraduate system, gone onto graduate school, gotten PhDs and good jobs at, maybe not Ivy League schools, maybe not Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Chicago, John’s Hopkins or Stanford, but at good schools, both Christian and non-Christian schools. God can open up opportunities for you, if you have a real sense of calling along those lines.

So I tend to shy away from discouraging advice. I have met Alan Jacobs. I don’t know him personally, but I would give probably diametrically opposite advice to students. Those are things to keep in mind in some sense at a certain level, but I don’t think they are the largest concerns for young, bright, very intelligent Christian college students who want to pursue a calling the academy as a Christian scholar. I am going to be the last person to discourage them from that option. So I would be very supportive if they were along those lines, and by the grace of God, we have a fair number of students who have done pretty well after they have left Dallas Baptist University and gone off to places like Princeton, Notre Dame, etc., and are excelling in their scholarship and are becoming the next generation of Christian scholars. I say thanks to God for that.

MH: And speaking of bright, young students at Christian colleges, could you tell us a little bit about the The Paideia College Society that you have at Dallas Baptist?

DN: It’s the heir of a component of the Pew Younger Scholars program which was called the Pew College Society. Back in 1996 or ’97, they had an iteration for applying for grants to get a small amount of money from the Pew younger scholars program which is headquartered at Notre Dame, the start of Pew College Society.

There were 29 applications for this iteration. There were 6 grants available and somehow my application was accepted, for a grant of $3,000. After three years, it was renewed for $4,000. By the end of that 6-year period, we had received a grand total of $7,000. And I sought funds from a couple of other sources to supplement some of the activities.

Once those funds dried up from the Pew Younger Scholars program, I just turned to our president of the university and asked him if we could continue the program through internal funding. He didn’t bat an eye: he said absolutely yes.

It’s an organization that has been devoted primarily to trying to discover Christian academic talent to set for the division of going to graduate school, earning PhDs at good universities and becoming a part of the next generation of Christian scholars and academics, so I am training essentially my replacements. Our program is pretty active. In the past when it was the Pew College Society, we had a Latin motto — Pietas et doctrine, piety and learning. We are trying to unite the life of the mind with the life of the spirit, or spirituality in scholarship or faith and reason, however you want to put it.

We had two graduate level seminars, in both of those areas, one on the Western and Christian spiritual tradition, and one on the Western and Christian intellectual tradition. Students who were involved in the Pew Younger Scholars program at our school had the opportunity to take a Fall study retreat. We had a thing called “Books and Coffee” where we went to used book stores. Everybody who went had to buy a book and then we went to a cafe afterwards and everybody introduced themselves and talked about the books that they bought. We had end of semester parties, and an annual Spring academic conference for students. Our thirteenth conference one is coming up. [We also had] a thing called “Cinematic Confabulations” which is a fancy phrase for movie night. At the Fall retreat, either we would have some special readings, or bring in a speaker, and it was devoted to discussion. We had some fun and games as well, but for the most part it was for a serious purpose, for a week away.

Out of that has come a remarkable group of young people who are trying to wed together their spiritual lives and the life of the mind, the love for God and the love of learning. Oftentimes, those are kept in separate compartments, but our goal was to bring those together into a unified, coherent, singular human personality of a student who could think like a Christian of all life and do well as an academician in a particular field. I am very grateful for that.

MH: Very good. This will be my last question. What are some of the spiritual practices that sustain you in your life as a faculty member?

DN: Well, a number of things. Certainly the involvement in the church, which I think is really critical. We feel like that that is very formative for us, especially as a married couple. For me, the scriptures obviously. I’ve changed over the years a little bit of my approach to scripture from intensive inductive Bible study to more of a lectio divina approach to reading the Bible — not so much an intensive exegetical work in scriptural text, but reading the scriptures, focusing on words, phrases, sentences and meditating on their content. That’s definitely been helpful.

[I also practice] daily prayer and a little bit of fasting, to have some connection with those around the world who aren’t as blessed as I am. My wife asked me the other day “Are you seeking something?” and I said, “No, not really, I just feel like this is a good spiritual discipline to practice.”

In my prayer life, there have been a number of things I have prayed for on a regular basis and still continue. The content of those prayers has shifted a little bit, especially from when I was a single man to being a married man, but I would pray that God would enable me to fulfill my purpose in life, which was to walk with God on a daily basis, to integrate my faith in Him in all areas of life; that I would be faithful and fruitful in my calling as an academician, as a scholar, as a professor, as a writer, teacher, and speaker. Now that I am married, I pray that I might love my wife, as Christ loves the church, and as I love my own body. Not that I do that with a whole lot of success.

MH: [laughs]

DN: But I pray about it. I ask for protection from my enemies, which are Satan, flesh, and the devil, on the basis of the victory of the Kingdom of God over those enemies. I ask that God would help foster and nurture within me virtues, like faith, hope and love, courage, justice, temperance and prudence. Vis a vis the vices, especially the seven deadly sins that I talked about in the presentation today, of pride, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. I see those as always lurking around the corner ready to attack.

I ask God to help make me a better thinker, lover, and doer. I combine all three of those elements to have a desire, discipline, and diligence to be in God’s word regularly, and to be a man of prayer. I pray that he would give me courage, boldness and wisdom, and humility, and the capacity to serve, love and give. Those are my prayers, for myself, and I’ve taken that model and actually written about it in Reordered Love. I tell my own story about myself and the disciplines and how I’ve tried to maintain as best as possible a life of reordered love, because I know how influential that is going to be on everything else. So those are prayers that have served me well, and in the end I have discovered that that’s a pretty good way to pray for other people as well. It seems a little selfish at first to say, “Here’s how I pray for me,” when in fact I can take that model and pretty much apply it to almost anyone.

MH: Thank you! I really appreciate your time.

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The purpose of education is to learn how to learn, some say. … I’d say, to learn how to teach yourself. … The teacher is a coach to assist in the process. …”Dead Poets Society” and other movies picture the teacher as this mother bird throwing out worms to hungry little mouths, taking in the teacher’s great knowledge. … That’s ridiculous. …  At high school I had to learn to teach myself. … I can’t learn from someone talking to me, unless I can dialog with them, and ask a thousand questions. … I have a German type mind, until I see how all the pieces fit together, I don’t understand. … When I teach a new topic, I often have to meditate on the concepts for many weeks before it’s internalized, and I have almost a mental picture and feeling for the totality of the topic. … Then I’m ready to move around, answer questions, give analogies, examples. … and feel comfortable. … Poor math teachers just stand there and give procedures: do this, then this, then this. … Don’t ask any questions. … Just do it. … It’s terrible…

Comment:  I must confess it’s hard for me to knock Dead Poets Society (1989), a film of my high school years which depicted what I lacked for a stretch of my education, but found in a significant form during my years at Grove City College.  Upon further reflection, I think that at Grove City College I entered some classes (by accident and others by intentional deliberation) of self-motivated students coached/taught well by self-motivated, inspirational faculty who served as excellent mentors in/out of the classroom.  Furthermore, this experienced Mathematics Professor describes my mode of learning/teaching.  Still processing and very much interested in your comments.

*In order to return to the series, I will probably give it a particular day in the week so Wednesdays can have another topic of consideration.  Stay tuned.

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As you journey through Lent, join me in meditating upon living out the Greatest Commandment by taking some time to

• consider how loving your neighbor fits in relationship to being/following Jesus the Christ in one’s vocation/discipline.
• acknowledge, confess, and release when/where/how you have fallen short … Note: we are not perfect.   We will err at times in our inter-personal interactions, spelling, presentations, research, articles, web posts/comments, patient care, advice, etc.  But when we purposefully hide mistakes to our own benefit, point fingers at others to avoid the consequences, or turn frustration with our self into agitation with others, we encounter sin and the evil one coming forth to destroy all it can.
• seek reconciliation in broken relationships.
• be intentional about blessing those whom you’ve been called to serve through the resurrection power of Jesus the Christ.

Would enjoy reading some comments from those outside of the Medical profession as to how you might translate these thoughts from a Medical professor to your place in higher education (Note: the below section is just an excerpt from a larger presentation which included much more material).  Also would you have any resources to recommend in addressing mistakes and/or offering apologies?  From those within the Medical profession, any points to add?

When we are at risk of committing errors

• Tired:  know your limits
• Under the influence (eg., alcohol, drugs, over the counter drugs)
• Competing demands
  • Work stresses
  • Family stresses (Note to those married:  open communication between family members is very important)
• Practicing outside the usual scope of practice/expertise or attempting a procedure after it’s been awhile since one’s regular practice of it

Personal feelings associated with errors

• Guilt
• Shame
• Fear of loss of reputation
• Vulnerability
• Fear of criticism

These events can leave emotional scars.  How to deal with a mistake

• Acknowledge a mistake has been made
• Find an open heart/mind to discuss the situation in confidence (e.g., mentor, attending physician, colleague, administrator, pastor, counselor)

Steps to address an error/mistake

1. Acknowledge
2. Explain
3. Express Remorse
   1. Pray for patient and their family
   2. Ask Forgiveness
4. Reparation

Minimizing our risks for errors

• Pray each day for wisdom, understanding, and caring as we serve our patients.
• Avoid situations that will degrade our performance
  • Lack of sleep
  • Alcohol, drugs, over the counter drugs
  • Don’t work when impaired with illness
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help, assistance, advise
  • The only dumb question is the one you didn’t ask.
• Be wary — we are human, and will err.

Resources for those in the Medical community:

• Apology in Medical Practice: An Emerging Clinical Skill, Aaron Lazare, JAMA, 9/20/2006, Vol. 296, No. 11, 1401. Note: Extract, i.e., first 150 words, available free at the above link.
• The Art of Apology: When and How to Seek Forgiveness, Family Practice Management, July/August 2007, 44-49. Note: Text available free at the above link.
• Medical Mistakes:  A Workshop on Personal Perspectives, The Oncologist, Vol. 6, No. 1, 92-99, February 2001. Note: PDF available free at the above link.

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1. The research says Professor Is a Label That Leans to the Left (Patricia Cohen, NY Times, January 17, 2010). What do you think? HT: Miller. Note:  The article references Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University, mentioned in Week in Review: The Valiant Return Edition and the subject of an upcoming ESN quote series.
2. Annual Poll of Freshmen Shows Effect of Recession (By Kate Zernike, NY Times, January 21, 2010):  “The recession hit this year’s college freshmen hard, affecting how they chose a school as well as their ability to pay for it, according to an annual nationwide survey released Thursday. …”  Related:  The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2009 (pdf)
3. Can Religion Coexist with…Medicine? Faculty at the (independent) Baylor College of Medicine protest a planned merger with (Baptist-affiliated)

Baylor University (Chronicle, Katherine Mangan). Their petition states, in part,

The religious ideologies that permeate throughout BU’s academic policies may adversely affect both scientific progress and the culture at BCM, particularly in relation to issues such as evolution, embryonic stem cells, and sexual orientation.

This week, the Chronicle also reported that the Baylor College of Medicine faces NIH sanctions over conflicts of interest (Chronicle, Paul Basken).

4. Twitter at the MLA: ProfHacker.com offers a variety of perspectives on the use of Twitter at the recent MLA convention. They range from the scary (a job-seeker whose interview was derailed after a member of the interview committee found a tweet of his to be “spurious”) to the very cool (several twitterers who made important face-to-face connections after “meeting” fellow MLA members on Twitter).
5. The Book of the Decade: Byron Borger of Hearts and Minds Books named Steven Garber’s Fabric of Faithfulness (affiliate link) as its “Book of the Decade”. We’ve had it on our ESN Core Bibliography for several years, so we think Byron has great taste!

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1. In Search of Education Leaders, by Bob Herbert, NY Times Op-Ed, December 4, 2009
2. The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal, by Louis Menand, Harvard Magazine, November-December 2009.  HT: Miller.

Anyone willing to take a stab at why the educational system is so leaky and how we find/develop educational leaders which serve their department, discipline, campus, education in the United States/beyond?

Questions which come to mind with the Harvard degree program, topic of In Search of Education Leaders, “Will this program include the philosophy, purpose, and joy of education? Or are these unable to be expressed in the pragmatic, secular context of trying to keep up because we need to?”  With regard to ‘residency’ models, these already exist in education, e.g., the undergraduate student teacher model. Stronger cross-grade & inter-generational mentoring with the potential for long term relationships would profit the whole educational system.

HT:  Nick who responded to my Facebook musings by referring to Diane Rehm’s discussion of Women in Science with

1. Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, Morris Hertzein Professor of Biology and Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Blackburn was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Carol Greider and Jack W. Szostak.
2. Dr. Carol Greider, Daniel Nathans Professor of Molecular Biology & Genetics at The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Greider was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak.
3. Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and special assistant to President Obama

Yes, higher education is leaky pipeline for women in the sciences.  Any responses by those part of the system?

According to Louis Menand in The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal, the educational system is leaky in quite another way for the Humanities, but with a particular internal end in mind. Can/should higher education in the Humanities add practical skills and develop a specific graduation time line?  What about those who went through the system? Will they allow such changes (Note: Reminds me of the reduction of hours in medical training)?  Will the motivation for students in the Humanities become the pursuit and exploration of knowledge for the rich or those seeking direction later in life?  Even though the article seems focused upon the Humanities, especially English, does the article apply to all (or let’s say most) of higher education?

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On the other hand, if your full-time job involves classroom teaching and research, you might like something different on the weekend – something like, I don’t know, seeing your family or doing something more active. I’ve noticed very few elementary school teachers volunteering in our children’s wing.

Do you teach at your church? If yes, what has been your experience? If not, can you share your reasons and how they’ve been received? Do you feel free to make that choice at your church, or do you feel pressured one way or the other (either to teach or not to teach)?

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Ultimately, with a plan and a vision the undoing of Middle America is not preordained. The rural crisis has been ignored for far too long, but, we believe, it isn’t too late to start paying attention. The residents of rural America must embrace the fact that to survive, the world they knew and cherished must change. And, on a national level, rural development must be more closely linked to national economic growth priorities, and policies must be created to help these communities prepare for a future that is already here.

The article is drawn from material in their soon to be published Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America.  As a resident of the rapidly developing (or should I say over-developed) Lancaster County, PA, I intend to place Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America on my to read list and see what insights might be transferrable to my context. 

Rural Road in Lancaster County, PA

Below are a few brief thoughts which I would be interested in discussing further.  Any takers? 

1. Although rural and small town America overlap, they are not the same.  
2. Pennsylvania, in contrast to some large stretches of Middle America, has a high number of regional state universities and liberal arts colleges which bring the educated back into small towns.  Pennsylvania even boasts a large state university intentionally built in a rural location several hours away from the distractions of urban life, i.e., Penn State University.  Note:  Some faculty on small town campuses commute from metro-areas, so that their families can take advantage of more opportunities.  In addition, many campuses find it difficult to serve/partner with their local communities even though quite a few started with that intention. 
3. I wonder how much the larger brain drain is a societal lack of interest in the value of education itself. I find the idealized desire for learning in films such as Music Man, referenced by the article, a rare commodity.  That’s why inspirational producations such as Music Man return year after year in small town/rural communities, but seldom become part of the lived fabric of the community. 
4. Simplicity.  Any interest in returning to living off the land as part of extended families or tightknit communities?  I hear and read about this as an ideal desired by many, but are the authors saying this is impossible?  Note:  Our family continues to seek to move more and more in this direction.
5. Local congregations have much to contribute in the discernment of vocation/calling, intentional commitment to one’s community, and the life of the mind.  Do you have positive illustrations and/or visions of possibilities to be offered in rural/small town settings?

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