The Emerging Scholars Blog

What a blessing to have heard from Nathan Foster, Assistant Professor of Social Work, Spring Arbor University, Spring Arbor, MI, over the the past several weeks.  To wrap up the series I leave you with

• Belated “Happy Fathers Day!”
• Few quotes for inspiration
• Encouragement to pick up a copy of Wisdom Chaser: Finding My Father at 14,000 Feet (Nathan Foster. InterVarsity Press. 2010) for your summer vacation or reading group.

Much Loved Nothing

The implications of being loved just as I am are staggering.  It was becoming clear that if I really understood that I was loved by God, I would have no need for pride or the crushing desire for others approval.  Knowing I was loved was liberation from myself and from my silly ambitions.  I was becoming a little child, free to explore the world with zero to prove (p.58). …

I would not rise from this experience to fight another battle the same way.  The memory of this defeat would squelch my pride.  Instead of retreating to the old lies about myself, however, I opted to let the ideas I learned on Longs sink deep into by consciousness. Read the rest of this entry »

Returning to our series with Nathan Foster, Assistant Professor of Social Work, Spring Arbor University, Spring Arbor, MI.  As you may remember, the first post focused upon how a private person, such as Nathan, wrote such an open book about his life, struggles, family, and vocation.  In the second post, we explored becoming a wisdom chaser in higher education, strained family relationships, and discerning the call to higher education.

Today, we’ll consider

1. power in the classroom from the perspective of the teacher
2. taking the first steps in teaching
3. how InterVarsity Christian Fellowship can journey with academics

And in case you were wondering, Nathan’s keeping an eye on the series and would love to respond to your comments. So please, take advantage of the opportunity!

Thomas B. Grosh IV:  I heard Andy Crouch speak at Biblical Seminary on Playing God: Christian Reflections on the Use and Misuse of Power.  He spent a fair amount of time talking about the power he had being on stage behind a podium, with a microphone in a crowded room giving a presentation.  How do you deal with power in the classroom situation, as you refer to earlier, the students desire to come and learn from someone with the “answers?”  How do you use power creatively, “rightly”?

What a great topic for a presentation. That’s great that Andy acknowledged his power.  Sometimes I think we ignore the idea of us having power because it makes us uncomfortable, so we say we’re not powerful. But we’re extremely powerful in teaching, also in writing and speaking.  Not to mention the other social privileges our society rewards people based on gender, race, age, income and sexuality.  I’m a straight white male, the world is controlled by people similar to me, that gives me power.  So I would say acknowledge it’s there, acknowledge we have power.  Don’t deny it.  Power can be used for good, but we can’t use it for good if we’re denying it.  The way I use that in the classroom is realizing that I have the power to bless people, but I also have the power to destroy people. You remember this don’t you?  When we have a professor who criticizes us, it stings.  But, it’s also thought provoking.  Whether we realize it or not, comments that professors make hold a lot of power.  Here’s how I use it in social work.  I try and see students most of the time as better than they see themselves and intentionally call out their strengths.  If I see a student who has a lot of gifts and they’re unaware of it, I call that out.  “You have an incredible ability to do this or that.  Here are some things that you can work on.”  I wrote about this in the chapter on expectations [Chapter 13: “Rising and Falling to Assumptions”]. 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. Faith and Freedom (Inside Higher Ed, June 9): Our brothers and sisters to the north are facing an interesting debate. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (the largest Canadian faculty association) has begun a campaign to “investigate” colleges and universities that require faculty to sign statements of faith, claiming that statements of faith are inherently inconsistent with academic freedom. Christian Higher Education Canada, an association of 33 Christian institutions (including Mike’s graduate alma mater) has responded with a call to discuss exactly what is meant by “academic freedom.”  CAUT’s position is clear:

“Nothing that calls itself a university should have a faith test. That’s just not acceptable.”

As we’ve seen in the CLS v. Martinez case, conflicts between secular and religious visions for education are here to stay for a while.

2.  Faculty Burnout Has Both External and Internal Sources, Scholar Says (Audrey Williams June, Chronicle, 6/9/2010).  Tom: I agree with the comment that more research is needed in this area.  I’d like to see a copy of Janie Crosmer’s paper. A short quote from her interview:

Q. What are the key things that contribute to faculty burnout?

A. Lack of time, poorly prepared students, cumbersome bureaucratic rules, high self expectations, unclear institutional expectations, and low salary. Research shows that the sources of stress have remained unchanged for 25 years. We know about the problem, but we’re not doing anything about it.

Any thoughts on whether academic burnout is unique?

Photo: Lego recreation of Diego Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God” goal from the 1986 World Cup. From a series of Lego versions of famous photos by Balakov on Flickr. HT: Alan Jacobs.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the last of four interviews I conducted at February’s Jubilee conference. Alissa Wilkinson has a professional life that probably looks like a lot of ESN members: in addition to editing The Curator for International Arts Movement, she also teaches writing at The King’s College and serves as Associate Editor for Comment, not to mention her various columns and articles in other publications. I spoke with Alissa about vocation, balance, and life as a writer, editor, and teacher.

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Micheal Hickerson: One of the reasons I wanted to interview you because of all the different things that you are doing that relate to the same general vocation and calling. I think that’s a pretty common thing among ESN members and among people in academic or cultural fields, and it’s becoming more common. First of all, I wanted to ask you about the publications that you are connected with. You were the founding editor for the Curator, which is published by International Arts Movement. There is also Comment, where you are the —

Alissa Wilkinson: I am the associate editor.

MH: Let’s talk about the Curator. Why did you decide to start that magazine and what was the origin story for it?

AW: I’ve been connected with the International Arts Movement in different capacities pretty much since I’ve moved to the city, which was about four and half years ago. I had been going to their head morning meetings in Tribeca, and we had a discussion group. Several of my good friends who are now on staff with me were also going to that group, and we got to talking about how good it would be for IAM to be putting something out there into the cultural sphere that was an example of promoting good work, which was where the idea of the Curator came in.

One morning over breakfast we just had this idea, “Hey, we should do an online magazine. I mean how hard can that be?” We decided the point of it should be to curate culture in such a way that we are looking to promote good culture that might otherwise be overlooked, because magazines like, on one hand, The New Yorker and The Atlantic tend to be very good at writing good cultural criticism and then on the other hand, there are Christian publications that do the same thing. They mainly focus on what’s broader in culture — either pop culture or high culture — but things that people are already talking about. The idea was let’s also write about things that people might not be talking about.

Photo credit: Anna L Conti via Flickr

In that way, it fit with the idea of IAM as a local movement more than just something that was from New York. I have writers all over the country — actually all over the world — and I encourage them to seek out what is interesting in their area, like a small band that they love, or their friends’ work, or something like that. Maybe they find a book in the library that was published 25 years ago and think, “I can’t believe nobody has read this book.” The concept was to publish culture essays that had a personal bend that would help uncover good culture.

I started recruiting some writers, and Kevin Gosa who works here at IAM with me started recruiting some writers he knew, and between the two of us we got up quite a list. We launched on August 29, 2008. Since then we’ve published three essays continually every week, and we’ve added a lot of writers. We are hatching plans of maybe some blogs, I am not sure yet, but it’s been a good experience. I’ve been handling most of the work on that end. I am trying to get some coworkers to come on and help with some of the scheduling and I have an assisting editor who helps me proofread.

Everyone volunteered their time up until about this time last year and now we get to pay them a little. It’s been good and we’ve gotten a lot of buzz. Actually, I was surprised we’ve gotten links from Book Forum and from Kottke, which is pretty well known. People seem to be resonating with the idea. Read the rest of this entry »

Related to our series on Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective (Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis, InterVarsity Press, 2009),* below is an email I received regarding the purpose of education.  Agree/disagree?  Thoughts/reactions?

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.

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. New online journal for student research: The Chronicle reports on Student Pulse, a new online journal for student research. Some good points from the Chronicle’s commenters about copyright and usage issues, but still an interesting and inspiring idea for sharing early academic work.

2.  Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally (Natalie Angier, NY Times, February 1, 2010).  Leaning forward with anticipation regarding what we might learn from the immensely popular field called embodied cognition or reclining (even if only a little bit) and giving it a quizzical look?

3.   Educators Mull How to Motivate Professors to Improve Teaching (David Glenn, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 24, 2010). Any suggestions or encouraging case studies to share?

4.  Teaching Matters: Rethinking the Hybrid Course (Steve Fox, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 31, 2010).  What do you think of Fox’s suggestions regarding Hybrid courses?  Have you taken or taught any Hybrid courses?  What recommendations would you add, in particular with regard to the management of a classroom blog?  Any encouraging case studies to share?

Books

5. “The most important person in the world”: I (Mike) was not familiar with the HeLa cell line until I read Dwight Garner’s NYTimes review of the new book by Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Ms. Lacks, an uneducated, African American Virginia tobacco farmer who died of cervical cancer at the age of 31, contributed the famously immortal cells that have

helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization,” Ms. Skloot writes. HeLa cells were used to learn how nuclear bombs affect humans, and to study herpes, leukemia, Parkinson’s disease and AIDS. They were sent up in the first space missions, to see what becomes of human cells in zero gravity.

The problem? Ms. Lacks never gave permission for her cells to be used for scientific experiments, and researchers continued to draw samples from her descendants without explaining why, one part of the tragic legacy of American medical treatment of African Americans. From Garner’s review:

As one of Mrs. Lacks’s sons says: “She’s the most important person in the world, and her family living in poverty. If our mother so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance?”

This looks like an important – and discussion-provoking – book.

In How We Got to Sesame Street; Art on Screen (The Chronicle of Higher Education. January 16, 2009), Evan R. Goldstein treats us to some of the history of Sesame Street, which celebrated 40 years on November 10.

In 1966 a group of friends gathered for a dinner party in Manhattan. As the evening was winding down, one of the guests, Lloyd N. Morrisett, a vice president at the Carnegie Corporation, turned to his host, a television executive named Joan Ganz Cooney, and asked a seemingly innocuous question: Can television educate young children? …

Almost four years after the Cooney dinner party, on November 10, 1969, Sesame Street showed up on public television across the country. The series was greeted with a torrent of gushing reviews. “The show moves, seduces, diverts, dazzles, amuses, and infects,” raved a writer at Variety. “Learning seems almost a byproduct of fun,” noted another critic. Children’s television would never be the same.”

It’s hard not to concede that education begins in the context of where one grows up and TV viewing is almost universal among the kids in our culture.  As such, would you credit Sesame Street or similar TV shows for your early childhood education (or at least some of it)?  Does Sesame Street Turns 40, But It Doesn’t Look a Day Over 25 resonate with you?

In the last 40 years, Sesame Street taught us to celebrate our differences, to bask in our own individuality and has continuously redefined “normal” to fit us all. Sesame Street taught us to read, to write, and yes, to count. It opened our eyes to cultures beyond our cul-de-sac and taught us global thinking. Sesame Street made us believe that we could be anything and that anything was possible. Sesame Street taught us to love music and laughter and learning.

A couple more questions to ponder/discuss:

1. How much emphasis should parents or the educational system as a whole place on educational TV for kids, youth, young adults, adults?
2. What has the educational experiment shown us about what kids can/do learn from TV?  Do they learn/absorb more than the basics, e.g., values, perspective on the real world?
3. Would you agree with the Robert Smith’s 40 Years Of Lessons On ‘Sesame Street’, which ran on NPR yesterday (11/10/2009)?  E.g., Children Are Adaptable. Keep It Simple.  The Children are always right (Note: Bonus on audio).
4. As one involved in higher education, do you have any recommendations for the next decade of Sesame Street as it seeks to educate kids across the spectrum or for parents as they seek to evaluate it’s role in the overall educational toolkit?  Note:  Sesame Street provides a peek of it’s future direction at It’s all new and better than ever as Sesame Street turns 40!

P.S.  Street Gang:  The Complete History of Sesame Street (Michael Davis. Viking. 2008) looks like a good read.  I found an excerpt posted here.

Here’s the top five articles, books, websites, etc., that we’ve been reading or thinking about the past week. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them.  In addition, 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.  Duncan Urges ‘Revolutionary Change’ in Nation’s Teacher-Training Programs (Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 2009):  Do you agree with the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan who recently called attention to the nation’s colleges of education for

doing a “mediocre job” of preparing teachers for “the realities of the 21st-century classroom” and need “revolutionary change—not evolutionary tinkering” … [and being]  the “neglected stepchild” of higher education.

2. Beam Me to the Faculty Senate:  Videoconferencing proves useful on campuses (Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 18, 2009).  So we’re moving in the direction of less and less real presence, not just in the classroom (where increasing numbers of large lectures can be downloaded at some non-virtual campuses) but also among those who lead educational institutions.  Tom has observed a lot of road time from  campuses in the Penn State University educational system to State College.  Yes, he’s wondered about the necessities of these trips.  But what happens when people only get to know one-another or receive training/supervision through videoconferencing, even if it is virtual face-to-face?  Of course, it’s better than no communication or only older forms of communication such as written or teleconferencing, isn’t it?

3.  For Decades, Puzzling People With Mathematics (John Tierney, NY Times, October 19, 2009): How many of you have enjoyed the recreational mathematics of Martin Gardner, who turned 95 on October 21?  Did you know that in 1956, when Gardner at the age of 42 started a monthly column on recreational mathematics for Scientific American, he had never taken a math course beyond high school and that he’s made his trade by researching/re-publishing puzzles developed by others?

According to Ronald Graham, a mathematician at the University of California, San Diego,“Many have tried to emulate him; no one has succeeded. … Martin has turned thousands of children into mathematicians, and thousands of mathematicians into children.”

Where does Gardner believe the pleasure of recreational mathematics come from?  “Evolution has developed the brain’s ability to solve puzzles, and at the same time has produced in our brain a pleasure of solving problems.”

4.  Remember the tossing around of mild dementia in relationship to Francis Collins? For those interested in learning more about dementia, take some to read/consider Treating Dementia, but Overlooking Its Physical Toll (Tara Parker-Pope, NY Times, October 20, 2009). The article begins:

Dementia is often viewed as a disease of the mind, an illness that erases treasured memories but leaves the body intact.

But dementia is a physical illness, too — a progressive, terminal disease that shuts down the body as it attacks the brain. Although the early stages can last for years, the life expectancy of a patient with advanced dementia is similar to that of a patient with advanced cancer. …

5.  On Wednesday night, I [Tom] started reading Anne Rice’s Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008).  I have desired to learn about Rice’s spiritual journal, so the numerous comments regarding education come as an unexpected bonus feature.  Below’s an excerpt of Rice’s reflections on elementary education and learning how to read.  More of her comments on education in another post.  Anyone have a similar experience or fear of education?

When I went to school and began to read, I lost an immense world of image, color, and intricate connections, but undoubtedly I retained more than I lost.I gained in school a poor understanding of things through written text.  School was when excruciating boredom and anger and frustration really began for me.  The mystery and calm of the early years were destroyed by school.  School was torture.  School was like being in jail.  It was captivity and torment and failure.

But what remained forever, what continued, was the sense of God and His Presence, of His embracing awareness of all we said and did and wanted and failed to do, and of His love.  School couldn’t destroy that faith.  And alongside it, I retained the sense that the world was an interesting creative place, especially if one could get out of school (p.30).

Since 2003, I’ve volunteered as a teacher at my church. I’m currently teaching two series for adults – an introduction to the Bible (its nature, history, and content, the process of canonization and translation, basics of inductive Bible study) and a course on Christian “rituals and traditions” (the Lord’s Supper, baptism, Easter, Christmas, and Advent practices). My experience with teaching has always been positive, and my students (usually adults age 30 to 70) are genuinely curious about the Bible, Christianity, and the Gospel, but often don’t know where to start or how to find reliable sources of information. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a lot of shady information about religion on the Internet.

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)?

Norman Borlaug’s Nobel Prize Lecture – The death of Borlaug, one of the founders of the Green Revolution, sparked numerous tributes (NY Times, WSJ, Guardian). Gregg Easterbrook in the WSJ estimates that Borlaug’s agricultural work has saved more than 1 billion lives and counting. Leave it to GetReligion, however, to highlight the link between his Lutheran roots and his agricultural work. In his 1970 Nobel Prize lecture, Borlaug cites Genesis 41, Isaiah 8 and Isa. 35, Joel 1, and Amos 4 as justification for both his work and his hope in its success. [It reminds me of Walter Bradley's work that won the Bosscher-Hammond Prize at Following Christ. ~ Mike]

The Game of Ghost Writing – Doug Lederman at Inside Higher Ed reviews a couple of new studies that examine the practice of scientific “ghost writing”: journal articles written by pharmaceutical companies or other corporate interests but published under the names of academics who had little to nothing to do with the research. (Mike’s note: I agree with the commenter who observes that “ghost writing” is hardly the term for this practice.)

Maimonides on Trustworthy Sources (Harper’s) – Reader David O’Hara sent us this great quote from Jewish medieval philosopher Maimonides.

More on the challenge of humility.  What does it mean “to serve” and “put the interest of others” ahead of one’s own in the context of higher education?  Bearing the Burden reviews some recent posts on how

the service burdens are unfairly distributed, falling mainly on academic do-gooders, “who work hardest for the institution” yet “reap the fewest material benefits because they publish at a slower pace.” … academic do-gooders need to learn to just say no. … “those of us who overwork are covering up for and enabling those who under perform. Most universities have no mechanism for forcing tenured people teach better, teach more, show up at office hours, give students responsible advice about their program of study, or do the committee work they have been assigned” – Gabriela Montell, Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/18/2009.

Lots of provoking material in Academic Bait-and-Switch, Part 2 (Henry Adams, Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/15/2009).

1. Freshman disinterested in reading, mastering the basics of writing sentences, and earning their grades as the “interesting distinctions between the worldviews of freshmen and graduate students at Elite National U.”
2. A summary of the graduate student’s encounter with a parent over the “F” he had awarded their son.
3. The final sentence of the essay reads, “If the Blunts didn’t want their son taught by a TA, I wondered why they sent him to Elite National U, but I thought it wise to keep that to myself.”