The Emerging Scholars Blog

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

A typical St. Olaf classroom...featuring a gigantic blackboard build for the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man

Mike here. Tom has spent the week in an intensive theology course, so I’m tackling the Week in Review solo. This is a great opportunity to clean out my “guilt file” – articles that I’ve had bookmarked for weeks and haven’t had a chance to write about yet. Enjoy!

1. How does a Christian college remain distinctively Christian? The usual answer has to do with defining who can be a faculty member or student. At Duke Divinity’s Call & Response blog, Jason Byassee ponders St. Olaf College, which has taken a different path.

A school can make Christianity a robust possibility, but not a mandate. It can offer top-flight worship. It can ask faculty across the board to respect the historic Christian mission of the school. And in that way, it can create room for possibility, hopefully to lure, woo, entice students and faculty into more faithful Christian life.

2. Homosexuality and the Moral Failure of Higher Education (R. R. Reno, First Things, Aug. 5) Wow – some title, eh? We linked to a column by R. R. Reno last week, and we’re a little late to this one (which, as you might imagine, has generated considerable online discussion). Reno, of course, is writing about the cases of Kenneth Howell at Illinois and Jennifer Keeton at Augusta State, but Reno expands the point to cover all of higher education. It’s difficult to select or summarize a single point from Reno’s argument, though this is a good quote:

Sexual liberation seems to have become the great moral cause. It is true that American schools expect ideological homogeneity on all manner of topics, and being pro-life or a person of faith—or even a Republican—can get you in trouble. But homosexuality alone seems to call forth the full repressive power of educational institutions.

3. Is the Husband Going to Be a Problem? (NY Times, August 12) Carolyn Bicks (English, Boston College) shares the experience of her husband and herself as they faced a problem common to many academic couples: a long-distance marriage. To “normal” people, the obstacles they overcame to pursue their dream of academic careers seem both heroic and insane:

When the hiring season was over, we’d landed two good tenure-track jobs in two good cities with two airlines that flew directly between them. I dismissed the nagging concerns the process had raised for me and threw myself into divvying up the wedding platters. We pooled our moving allowances, packed up a Ryder truck in California, dropped half of our stuff in my new Midwestern city, then drove to his East Coast city and dropped off the other half. We had our car on a trailer behind the truck. This made backing up a treacherous proposition. For the whole 3,000 miles, one of us would jump out to scope the turnaround prospects whenever we were about to pull off. The literature scholar in me loved the metaphor: There was no going back.

Bicks even manages to time the birth of their first child to fit into a 10-week research break. There are still more twists (they eventually join each other in the same city, only for her husband’s tenure bid to rejected). In case you have family who wonder what the academic life is like, this could be a good essay to share.

Photo credit: John McNab via Flickr

Bad academic advising and the strange lives of 20-somethings, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

Annie Savoy: "...there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball." Except, of course, that there aren't 108 beads in a rosary.

1. Mary and the Modern University (First Things): In light of the false perception that religion has little to do with thought, R. R. Reno (Theology, Creighton) asks:

What, then, does Christianity add to academic life? What should make teachers and students at Catholic colleges and universities–and other Christian institutions of higher education–confident in the intellectual integrity of their enterprise?

Reno offers the surprising suggestion that we look to Mary’s response to the Annunciation:

When the Angel of the Lord comes to Mary, she is told a truth–the truth of human destiny–that she cannot understand. Her response: “Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

Good stuff. (HT: Kenny Benge)

Photo credit: B Tal via Flickr

2.  Vocational concerns in higher education. In addition to the material covered in The End of Philosophy? – check out the Sociology The Satisfaction Gap (Scott Jaschik. Inside Higher Ed.  8/17/2010). The article comes face-to-face with the question of how to prepare students for graduate school.  In particular, student formation along with appreciation of student (possibly faculty) fancies/interest doesn’t bring to the attention of students how much research stats comprise the work of Sociology.  Comment from Tom:  Maybe it also indicates some loss of direction of taking some the bigger picture into consideration when engaged in Sociological research and interpretation. I’ll survey my friends in Sociology. Feel free to also post your thoughts.

Lou Gehrig, international admissions, and Richard Mouw on praying in class after the jump.

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What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

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1.  Ever struggle with the The Morality of Sleep (The Chronicle of Higher Education. 8/11/2010)?   Hope this research helps encourage the driven (including myself) to remember to take a day of rest, develop margin, and step into helpful habits/rhythms of life in order to be a blessing to those who the Lord brings along their path.  A learning community which is committed to such a perspective provides a great context for mature relationships which bless others, without it the counter-cultural nature of seeking sleep/rest can cause conflict in and of itself.

2.  Yale’s New ‘Jewish Lives’ Series seeks to address the provoking question of what it means to be Jewish. Why do the editors start the series with a biography of Sarah Bernhardt?

A: We launched with Bernhardt because her life raises so many powerful questions about what it means to be Jewish. Though she converted to Catholicism, she felt deeply identified as a Jew throughout her life. Then there is the sheer fascination of her life, especially through the eyes of Bob Gottlieb; and her enduring legacy as the greatest actress who ever lived. — Sarah Bernhardt Premieres in Yale’s New ‘Jewish Lives’ Series (The Chronicle of Higher Education. 8/11/2010).

3.  Brainstorm: Justification by Faith:  Michael Ruse is repelled by some Christian believers’ eager anticipation of a deathbed conversion from Christopher Hitchens, the cancer-stricken writer and atheist. (The Chronicle of Higher Education. 8/10/2010). Well worth a read, consideration, and response in your campus discussion group.  Would love for someone to start a conversation on the article before I have opportunity to return to it.

Photo credit: Easter afternoon nap with sleep dog by Mark Stosberg via Flickr

More in Christians in the academy and some talk about poetry after the jump.  Read the rest of this entry »

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

The future is almost here!

1.  The Future of Evangelicals in Academia. Who else to address this question than Mark Noll, historian and author of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Lots of good material in this interview, including some of his impressions of James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World and Andy Crouch’s review of the book.   Note:  If you have thoughts to share regarding the ideas in Hunter’s book, then please comment at Micheal Hickerson’s ESN blog post Changing the World with James Davison Hunter.

The last question of the interview is “What are some of the most encouraging trends you see today in evangelical intellectual circles, be they projects or institutions or ministries?” He mentions several projects, institutions, and ministries including InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry. Thank-you for the encouragement. To God be the glory!

2. Philosophy and Faith (Gary Gutting. NY Times Opinion. 9/1/2010.)  Interested in studying philosophy at Notre Dame or tracking with some of the discussion which occurs on campus (and on-line) regarding material such as  Alvin Plantinga’s modal-logic formulation of St. Anselm’s ontological argument or William Rowe’s complex version of a probabilistic argument from evil, then visit this NY Times Opinion piece.

3.  Keeping up with the Amish? Just in case you haven’t seen one of the many articles on Amish growth, here’s a link to how it ran on NPR, APNewsBreak: Study Says Amish Expanding Westward (AP, 7/28/2010).   Thank-you to Donald Kraybill for his focused research, for more visit Elizabethtown College Amish Studies. Read the rest of this entry »

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1. No Christianity Please, We’re Academics: In Inside Higher Ed, Wheaton professor Timothy Larsen calls for universities and faculty to confront bias against Christians in higher education. Though there are some studies to back up his claims, he focuses on a couple of personal examples of bias and ignorance faced by himself and an undergraduate student.

[After getting a "F" for a paper defending traditional marriage,] John could never get better than a C for papers without any marked errors or corrections. When he asked for a reason why yet another grade was so poor he was told that it was inappropriate to quote C. S. Lewis in work for an English class because he was “a pastor.” (Lewis, of course, was actually an English professor at Cambridge University. Perhaps it was wrong to quote Lewis simply because he had said something recognizably Christian.) Eventually John complained to the department chair, who said curtly that he could do nothing until the course was over. John took this to mean that the chair would do nothing and just accepted the bad grade.

Larsen also cites some comments rejecting his proposal for a scholarly book of essays on T. S. Eliot’s Idea of a Christian Society, which largely focused on the truth/relevance of Christianity as a belief system, rather than the importance of Eliot’s book or the quality of the proposal.

As you might imagine, the comments on the article have gotten pretty heated.

2. How private will public higher education institutions become and how does that not only affect cost, but the vision for what receives attention on campus?  Tom recently visited Penn State University — State College.  He was once again impressed by the roar of this inspirational flagship campus, particularly in contrast to what is happening just to the north.

TWO things define the State University of New York. It’s huge. And compared to its public peers, it’s weird.

[Response]:  “My belief is that to move an organization forward you have to have a common, comprehensive and ambitious agenda,” Dr. Zimpher said. “It has to be aspirational. It has to move you. I think the full manifestation of SUNY is underexposed and underexploited. If people really knew and understood the difference these campuses make in their communities they would be amazed.” …

“The strategic plan doesn’t talk about educational missions, it doesn’t talk about affordability or accessibility, there’s very little about undergraduate education and keeping it affordable and accessible,” said Phillip H. Smith, president of the powerful United University Professions union, which represents more than 34,000 academic and professional faculty members. “It reflects an attempt to corporatize the university.” — The Accidental Giant of Higher Education (Peter Applebome. NY Times. 7/19/2010)

PS. For more on the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act, read Stop Raiding the Ivory Tower — a 7/27/2010 NY Times Op-Ed by Peter D. Salins (a former provost of the State University of New York, is a professor of political science at the State University at Stony Brook).

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What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1. “Look at your grades. Now look at mine.” The Old Spice Man has gone from a series of hilarious television commercials to a full-fledged Internet meme. BYU, however, decided to parody the absurd body wash marketing campaign by marketing…libraries.

If you’re not sick and tired of him, be sure to weigh in on Culture Making’s Five Questions about Old Spice Man.

2. Bias against White Christians at Elite Universities? Ross Douthat, writing in the NY Times, thinks there is.

The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they’re working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions. Inevitably, the same underrepresentation persists in the elite professional ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts.

In a letter to the editor, Miami University education professor Julie Park thinks Douthat might be

confound[ing] two issues: the underrepresentation of low-income white students in elite universities and the low number of white Christian students at these same institutions. This association is puzzling considering that evangelical Christianity is enjoying somewhat of a renaissance in elite institutions (see “The Holy and the Ivy,” published in Christianity Today in 2005).

On her personal blog, Julie goes into much more detail about factors that affect college admissions for lower-income white students and trends among evangelical Christians at elite universities.

3.  Confessions of a (Sometimes) Helicopter Parent (Patti K. See. Inside Higher Ed. 07/16/2010).  How are you maturing?  If you are in a classroom situation as a TA/lab aid, lecturer, professor, etc., how do you interact with students and/or their parents?  If you are a member of the faculty/administration, married and with children, how are you raising your children?  How do you understand responsibility, maturation, being a ‘lifeline’ to your children.  As I [Tom] read the article, I wondered what college prep and adulthood means in our culture today. Reminds me how I graduated last century in the midst of a shift in not only in the lines of communication (yes, I was 1 phone call a month right before the coming of high usage of the email and cell phones), but also those of adulthood (which had previously been pushed back, unless one happens to be raised in contexts which demand early adulthood, e.g., youth caring for families, youth forced to make it on their own early in life, Amish entering/leaving Rumspringa).

At a recent meeting our provost told a story about receiving a midmorning call from a mother asking if her son was in class.

“I always give my son a wakeup call,” the mother explained, “but he’s not answering.” Our provost — a dean at the time of this experience — told this concerned mother she cannot inform parents if their adult students are in class.

“Student?” the mother exclaimed. “No, he’s teaching the class.”

My colleagues and I groaned. This story could be part of “helicopter parent” legend.

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What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1.  How hard can an adjunct push? Would reading a piece such as Six Ways to Make Adjuncting More Effective and Fulfilling (Brian Croxall. Chronicle of Higher Education. 7/15/2010) been helpful for Kenneth Howell, who up until recently had an adjunct position at U. of Illinois where he was teaching about his Roman Catholic faith?  Check out how Teaching or Preaching (Scott Jaschik. Inside Higher Ed. 7/15/2010) and The Politics Of The Classroom: Is It Homophobic To Teach About The Scriptural Basis For Homophobia? (Tenured Radical.  7/13/2010), discuss Howell’s firing.   While reading, don’t miss how our guest blogger Janine Giordano Drake (advanced graduate student in the University of Illinois Department of History) enters the conversation with the Tenured Radical.  Note:  the Alliance Defense Fund has picked up Howell’s cause.

2. The Real Challenge for Higher Education. Do you think higher education receives significant challenge from the wider American culture.  If so, Why?  How would you (do you) seek to address concerns and implement change in your context?

To better understand America’s lack of a pervasive education culture, consider the fact that as a nation we generally don’t greatly value educated people and don’t seem to believe that being educated contributes to quality of life beyond that offered by greater economic success. — Garrison Walters. The Real Challenge for Higher Education. Inside Higher Ed. 7/15/2010.

3.  How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others (Russell K. Nieli. Minding the Campus: Reforming the Universities. 7/12/2010). HT:  David.  He comments, “Later down in the particle they talk about how universities actually count points against students who come from farming (i.e. poor white) backgrounds, taking off points for 4H, FFA, etc.”

4. More on Miracles: Over at Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog, regular blogger and university scientist RJS picks up on the same BioLogos’ series on miracles that Tom wrote about.

If miracles are arbitrary acts of imaginative supernatural showmanship the incredulity of Martin is understandable. But they are not.  And this connects with the essay by Pete Enns, looking at the incidents in the ministry of Jesus where he rebuked or calmed the sea. These were not arbitrary acts, magic tricks, or acts of convenience to make life easier. These were miracles with a purpose – where the impact could not be missed.

5. Improv for Change: Evangelical Christians have tried every other strategy for changing culture, so why not improvisational comedy? In the WSJ, Penn law professor David Skeel writes about an unusual training session – Veritas Riff – organized by some pretty big names in the next generation of evangelical leaders: Curtis Chang, Andy Crouch, Michael Lindsey, and Dan Cho of the Veritas Forum, who sponsored the event. Last month in Cambridge, MA, a small group of “evangelical thought-leaders” were trained in media relations, interviewing, and, yes, improv:

Then came our theatrical training, led by Marianne Savell, the director of Actors Co-op Theatre Company in Hollywood. It started tamely enough, with a game called zip-zap-zop. (One fellow pointed to another and said “zip,” the other pointed to a third and said “zap;” those who spoke before pointing or said the wrong word were ousted from the circle).

Sounds like fun! This being the 21st century, you can see a Flickr collection of photos from the Veritas Riff mini-conference.

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1. Continuing conflict over Creation: At the recent Ligonier Ministries national conference, Tough Questions Christians Face,Southen Baptist Seminary president Albert Mohler addressed the question, “Why does the Earth look so old?” (video) He challenged the position of Francis Collins, Karl Giberson, and the BioLogos Foundation that the Earth is billions of years old, which generated a series of responses from BioLogos, Glberson, and Peter Enns.

2. Looking for advise regarding the year after you’ve wrapped up your dissertation?  Here’s some tips/reflections on My First Year (Stephanie M. Foote. Inside Higher Ed. 7/2/2010). Foote is now the director of the Academic Success Center and First-Year Experience at the University of South Carolina at Aiken.

3. Undergraduates are WEIRD: Are we getting closer to our understanding of human nature or further away from it when behavioral-science research focus upon undergraduates?  That is the topic of Chronicle of Higher Education Perculator piece Why We’re All WEIRD ( 7/2/2010).  Anyone willing to make an assertion?

4. In his personal blog Corner Interactions, physics professor W. Brian Lane asks a good question: what should a church leader believe about your discipline? What are the applications of those beliefs, and what should remain open issues?

5. PhDs and Myers-Briggs: Tim Keel shares a great quote from NT Wright about the effect of your Myer-Briggs type on the ease/difficulty of getting a PhD:

In Myers-Briggs terms, it’s much, much easier to get a PhD in biblical studies if you’re a ISTJ. You’ll never do it if you’re an ENFP because you’ll never finish it. You’ll be having too much fun. But we need, we need, we need “N”s in this business as well as “S”s because we need big-picture hypotheses. It’s very difficult to do that at PhD level because your supervisors and examiners will want you to nail down all the details (and you have to do that) but we need these big hypotheses.

It’s a very interesting post, so be sure to read the whole thing.

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1.  What is conversation like in your department? Do you have ‘unruly’ colleagues and not know how to respond (or wonder what to suggest when you have the opportunity), then check out To Rein In Unruly Faculty Members, Chairs Suggest a Department ‘Covenant’ (Sophia Li. Chronicle of Higher Education. 6/30/2010.) and the Sample Code of Conduct (From Department of Kinesiology and Leisure Studies: Beliefs at Washington State University).  Comment from Tom:  Also, don’t forget to prayerfully seek to live Christ-like lives which overflow with the fruit of the Spirit, courage/boldness of Daniel and friends (who are an amazing example of salt and light), and humility (Note: In this context, Matthew 7:1-5 first came to mind).

2.  Review of Harvard Scholar’s Arrest Cites Failure to Communicate (Kelly Truong. Chronicle of Higher Education. 6/30/2010.) brings to mind the public image of the interaction between African Americans (not to mention cutting edge African American academics such as Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor of Black Studies at Harvard University) and white policemen?  What does it mean to have our ideas heard through words and actions?  How do those with power in different contexts address fear and cross cultures/cultural understandings when interacting in the gritty moments of real life?  Who in the end had more power … the one who knows the President of the United States?

In many instances, the new report reads like a therapy manual, calling the case a “textbook example” of a police officer and community member failing to cooperate “toward the common goal of a positive encounter.” The review committee suggests that the event escalated when the two men, who both later said they were afraid at the time, were unable to articulate their positions. — Kelly Truong. Review of Harvard Scholar’s Arrest Cites Failure to Communicate. Chronicle of Higher Education. 6/30/2010.

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What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1. Who pays for higher education, in the U.S. and around the world? Scott Jaschik interviews (by email) the authors of Financing Higher Education Worldwide (D. Bruce Johnstone & Pamela N. Marcucci. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) in Financing Higher Education Worldwide (Inside Higher Ed. 6/24/2010).

2. Who pays for continuing education in the medical community? The question being explored in this article extends beyond the medical community and various related research fields. What does it mean to be truly free from [industry] bias? How does someone in a field which involves the application of research in real world contexts avoid flirting with becoming a mouthpiece of industry? Do you agree with Dr. Francis S. Collins, N.I.H director,” who criticized the move as a “breathtaking sweep to squash something that is really important to us, which is the science that’s going on in the private sector.”

Dr. James O. Woolliscroft, dean of Michigan’s medical school, said leading faculty members “wanted education to be free from bias, to be based on the best evidence and a balanced view of the topic under discussion.”

While the financing in question amounts to as much as $1 million a year at Michigan, commercial payments for industry speakers and courses nationwide come to about $1 billion, nearly half the total expenditure for such courses.

The debate over whether the medical profession should develop an industry-free model of postgraduate education is a delicate one. A conference at Georgetown University on Friday, called “Prescription for Conflict,” will highlight the arguments on both sides through presentations by federal health officials, professors from leading medical schools, hospital executives and a Senate investigator. — Natasha Singer & Duff Wilson. Debate Over Industry Role in Educating Doctors. NY Times. 6/23/2010.

3. What is the cost of For-Profit Education? New Grilling of For-Profits Could Turn Up the Heat for All of Higher Education (Paul Basken. Chronicle of Higher Education. 6/22/2010). Interesting case. Worth following the discussion Washington, D.C. How do Emerging Scholars intersect with the changing field of higher education?

Click “Read more” to read about Wendell Berry, social media, and UK basketball.  Read the rest of this entry »