The Emerging Scholars Blog

Our Week-in-Review feature has a new format. We know there’s way too much to read out there already, so we’re going to be highlighting the top five articles, books, websites, etc., that we’ve been reading or thinking about the past week. 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.

Academic Nobel News – The Nobel Prizes are being handed out this week, and, as usual, academic researchers did quite well. The prize for Medicine went to Elizabeth H. Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco; Carol W. Greider of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and Jack W. Szostak of Massachusetts General Hospital for research on telomeres. Physics was awarded to Charles Kao (who did his prize-winning work at Britain’s Standard Telephones and Cables) and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith of Bell Labs. Chemistry went to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England; Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University; and Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, for their work on the information structure of ribosomes. The two most famous Nobels – Literature and Peace – went to German poet Herta Müller and Barack Obama respectively. Economics will be awarded on Monday.

Economic Justice and the Spirit of Innovation (Edmund Phelps, First Things, October 2009) discussed by a campus group this past week.

The issue of morality in economics is neither the fairness of income distribution nor the stability of financial systems. It is how human institutions can be shaped to correspond to human nature — to man’s nature as an innovator. … Capitalism is the only economic system thus far discovered that allows human beings to realize their nature to innovate, discover, and take risks. Because human freedom is a good thing, capitalism is in this respect a good system. It is good apart from its instrumental function of presenting opportunities for income and consumption.

America Falling: Longtime Dominance in Education Erodes (Karin Fischer, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2009)

“China, Korea, Singapore—they’re going for broke because they’re hungry. They know they have to do it,” says Mr. Vest, who served on a national panel that produced a widely cited report, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” which warned that America was slipping behind other countries in science and technology. …

Are you hungry to learn how the world works and share that knowledge with others?  What provides the basis for such a passion when competition and survival no longer inspire it?

Numbers on Nones – The excellent blog GetReligion, which covers how the mainstream covers religion, has been looking at the recent American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). ARIS has found that the number of Americans who report “no religion” has been rising steadily and now includes 34 million Americans. ARIS calls these people “Nones,” which the atheist biologist P. Z. Myers mistakenly equates with the “godless” (his term for atheists). ARIS finds that less than 10% of Nones are truly atheists; 35% are agnostics of one sort or another, while 51% believe in some sort of god.

New Book: Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults by Christian Smith and Patricia Snell – Smith’s previous book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (with Melina Lundquist Denton) has greatly influenced Tom and Mike’s thinking about religious education and the role of ministries like InterVarsity. In this sociological study of American teens, sponsored by the National Study of Youth and Religion, Smith and Denton found that almost all American teens believe in a kind of “civil religion” that Smith & Denton called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Now, Smith and his fellow researchers have continued to follow these teens into their 20’s, the time of life that Smith identifies as “emerging adulthood,” and their findings continue to challenge long-held assumptions about religious development. For example, they found that college no longer has a corrosive effect on religious faith. In a webinar with Christianity Today (not yet available for review), Smith explicitly credited campus ministries like InterVarsity and growing numbers of evangelical professors for this striking change. Praise God! [Note: this is an important new book, so I expect we'll be reviewing it soon.]

Naomi Schaefer Riley of the WSJ has reviewed Souls in Transition, and the WSJ has also published an excerpt from Chapter One.

It's the Top 5!

Our Week-in-Review feature has returned, with a new format.  We know there’s way too much to read out there already, so we’re going to be highlighting the top five articles, books, websites, etc., that we’ve been reading or thinking about the past week.  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.

Welcome to Your Quarterlife Crisis – Kevin Offner, who works with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries in Washington, DC, tipped us off to this article from Toronto’s eyeweekly.com.  Are you in your mid- to late-20’s, feeling unfulfilled and insecure in your career or graduate education, wondering what you’re supposed to be “when you grow up”? You might be experiencing a “quarterlife crisis.”

God and Math – At Books & Culture, Timothy Larsen reviews two recent books that explore the long history of connections between theology and mathematics.

Theologians & Economists: The Economic World of the Bible Versus Now – I (Mike) was just recently introduced to Michael Kruse’s series Why Don’t Economists and Theologians Get Along? by Jeff Gissing, InterVarsity GFM staff at Wake Forest. This is, I think, a good example of how other academic disciplines can contribute to theology and Biblical studies.  Understanding the cultural context of Biblical texts goes far beyond knowing your Greek. (Kruse has also just started a series on basic economics at Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog. If you’re like me – mostly ignorant of economics that don’t begin with the word “Freak” – I hope you’ll learn something. If you’re an economist yourself, I hope you’ll keep Kruse honest!)

Academic families – A tribute from an Inside Higher Ed blogger to her husband’s recently deceased PhD advisor. A great example of the role that a good advisor can play in a person’s life, far beyond the professional aspects.

Doubly Marginalized, Part 1 – Blog reader and Assistant Professor of Physics W. Brian Lane has started a series on his blog, Corner Interactions, about the “double marginalization” of Christians in the university. Part 2 is here.

Bonus: Don’t forget to order your copy of George Marsden’s Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (Amazon, Abebooks, B&N, WorldCat).  We’ll be discussing it in October for our 2nd ESN Book Club.

Photo: number five by Hilarywho, via Flickr

Welcome to this week’s Week in Review! If you have your own link or suggestion, please add it to the comments, or email it to Tom or Mike.

From Tom

Historic Bible pages put online (BBC News, July 6, 2009):  Check out “virtual re-unification” about 800 pages of the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript, i.e., the earliest surviving Christian Bible, at www.codexsinaiticus.org. Is it a The rival to the Bible (BBC News, Roger Bolton, October 6, 2008)?

Is Having More Than 2 Children an Unspoken Taboo? (Robin Wilson, Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/10/2009):   The article begins

By academic standards, Rebecca R. Richards-Kortum has it made. She is a full professor of bioengineering at Rice University, runs a thriving cancer-research laboratory, and is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering.

But with four children at home, she sometimes feels like an academic outcast. In fact, Ms. Richards-Kortum says she is most comfortable in her dual roles as professor and mother during the research trips she takes several times a year to southern Africa.

“Here I’m this weird, freaky person because I have four kids,” she says in Houston. “There I can establish rapport and credibility with people because big families are much more common. It’s the only time I feel like it’s a real professional advantage.”

Ms. Richards-Kortum is one of a very small number of academic women with three, four, or more children. In academe, where having even one child can slow down success, trying to manage multiple kids can be a career-stopper.

The article ends with a number of tips on how to manage a big family and a big career. I asked a friend who has four kids and recently served as an adjunct professor at a major university for her thoughts on the topic.  Her comment, “Um, yes.  I don’t personally know anyone in academia with more than two children.”  How about you?  Do you know exceptions and if so, how do they navigate all the pressures and responsibilities of their position?

The Faculty of the Future:  Leaner, Meaner, More Innovative, Less Secure (Forum, Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/10/2009): demands more attention. I asked a business professor to comment on the Forum, below’s a glimpse.  Any first reactions?  More from my friend next week.

I have to agree with the third author (ANTHONY T. GRAFTON), unless there is a significant change in how knowledge is valued and expertise is assessed, the humanities are screwed.  However, it is possible that a collapsed job market will dissuade universities for focusing on “career value” (i.e. incremental salary increase in your next job) as their basis for why people should come to college.  If the focus moves back to education for the sake of being a better person, participant to society, better able to adapt to changes (i.e. long term) then there might be an increase recognition of the value of the humanities [but I wouldn't but your food money on this shift happening quickly].

PETER N. STEARNS says exactly what you would expect someone who has been a Full time Dean/Provost/Department Head for 20+ years to say.  (He was at CMU as Dean of H&SS in the mid-1990s).  The primary issue with his comments is the internal contradiction between saying that academic careers will be more home/family friendly and that there will be less facilities support for faculty (i.e. anyone who has tried to do writing or meetings from home know that this it is very difficult when there are children in the house), greater teaching loads at non-standard times (i.e. working two nights a week teaching an evening class – not so great for  family life), and a significantly greater emphasis on “productivity” (i.e. measurement of outcomes that an individual has only minimal control over – and hence a significant increase in uncertainty and stress – again, not so good for supporting family oriented folks).
Other than this he’s probably right…. :-)

From Mike

So You Want My Job: College Professor – The Art of Manliness continues of a series about (supposedly) dream jobs with an interview of Hunter Baker, Director of Strategic Planning, Assistant Provost, and Adjunct Faculty member at Houston Baptist University. If you are already a faculty member, I don’t think Hunter shares anything you don’t already know, but undergraduates or mid-career professionals who think that academia might be a good career choice might get some useful insight. Hunter has some practical advice about finding a job:

The job prospects differ tremendously based on your field. I think those who get their doctorates in professional fields like business or public administration will typically have a very good opportunity. I also believe the scientific and technical fields have good outlooks. My area, which is in the social sciences or the humanities depending on how you see it, is very competitive. People who study things like political science or history do it because they love it. The one thing that protects you in the job market is that there are lots of people who get as far as the ABD (all but dissertation), but far less who actually grab the brass ring.

If you do it, get your degree from an established institution. I would not recommend getting an online Ph.D. and then trying to find work. That is going to be an uphill battle. The situation may change, but right now it is the reality.

Fast Tracking a PhD – Can you finish a PhD in 3 years? Judy Beth Morris did, with some very careful planning, lots of motivation, and some luck. She admits that it’s not possible in all disciplines, but she shares some good advice about dissertation strategy:

It’s essential to zero in on a dissertation topic as soon in the process as you can. I figured out pretty quickly what I wanted to do with my dissertation; I had the first chapter by the end of my first semester. The professor of the film history class I took that first semester assured me that it was a worthwhile dissertation topic: the “extended adolescence” of Mickey Rooney in the Andy Hardy films and how and why the films resonated with Depression-era audiences. I knew that I would have fun researching this topic, so getting it done was not going to be a problem. Thus, the “dissertation topic” piece fell into place for me.

Another crucial piece of the puzzle involves working on the dissertation as part of your coursework. I was able finish the bulk of the work while I was taking classes because I chose my classes with the end project in mind: my goal was to use class papers as eventual chapters in the dissertation. This worked much better than I could have hoped; I seemed to choose just the right seminar classes with research paper assignments that would allow me to cover the different facets of my topic.

Take a look at the article, and let us know what you think. How realistic is it to finish a PhD in 3 years?

Charity in Truth – Pope Benedict XVI has released a new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, “Charity in Truth,” which offers a Christian perspective on economics and society. Here’s the NY Times’ article about it. I have not read the 144-page document, but I expect that there will many connections that one can make between Christians’ role in society and Christians’ role on campus, particularly in seeking the good of the campus and our local community. One passage jumped out as I skimmed the beginning:

To love someone is to desire that person’s good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good. It is the good of “all of us”, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society. It is a good that is sought not for its own sake, but for the people who belong to the social community and who can only really and effectively pursue their good within it. To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the pólis, or “city”. The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them.

Are there implications for our common life on campus?

Andy Crouch asks a very good question about Christian integration in economics:

David Brooks gets it just right. We are not machines, and neither is our economy. So where, oh where, are the Christian economists whose work is deeply informed by a non-mechanistic view of human nature, and the ‘faith and trust’ that economies require?’

Brooks is writing about the “empirical prison” of economics on both the right and the left. I have some thoughts, but let’s hear yours first. Who are the Christian economists we ought to be listening to? Are Brooks and Crouch on to something, or are they missing an important point?

In Books & Culture, Robert Whaples, professor of economics at Wake Forest, reviews the updated The Making of an Economist (Redux), an examination of the country’s best graduate programs in economics and the process by which they “turn a select group of bright students into the analytical economists that society has come to hate, yet revere.” Whaples notes that the first edition of this book “became must reading for those considering taking the plunge” into an economics graduate program.