Thank-you to J. Nathan Matias (@natematias), Research Assistant, MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media, for venturing into and reporting on Women and the Academic Life as part of his Urbana12 series.* We’re looking forward to your responses to this material — any seminar participants with thoughts to add? Note: In addition to ESN’s mentoring resources, be sure to visit The Well – a website designed to support women in graduate and professional schools and women faculty as they seek, in their full and complex lives, to be followers of Christ. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director of ESN.
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This weekend, I’m at Urbana, a gathering of Christian students interested in the work of the church worldwide. Over the last few days, I have been blogging seminars, in which a speaker gives a talk to around 50-60 participants.
What can Christian women expect from an academic life, and how can they flourish despite the challenges they face among families, churches, and university culture itself? Addressing this question is Dr Janet Clark, vice president and dean at Tyndale University College & Seminary in Toronto.
When Janet went to Urbana as a young person, she wondered if she would have to give up her academic interests to be part of God’s mission. And she was willing to do that. After attending Urbana, she moved to Borneo, where she lived and served for a decade. When she moved back to Toronto, she had a chance to reconnect with her love of the academic world.
Janet polls the crowd. About half of the attendees are gradstudents, a third are in gradschool, and a handful are in the middle of PhDs.
“If you have a love for learning, a love to teach, and an academic yearning, if you are being drawn to a missional life, these things are not necessarily incompatible,” Janet says. [Read more…] about Find Your Voice and Own It: Women and the Academic Life