Part of Our Scholar’s Compass Discussion Guide
Unit Introduction: What kind of person are you becoming in your work? Can traits that help you become a good citizen of your field also help you in your relationship with God? Are there traits you cultivate because of your faith that also help you in your field? One way to think about faith and work connections is to look at virtues that are helpful both in academic work and in following Christ. For example, patience is a virtue celebrated in the Bible. It’s also a very helpful trait if you are analyzing data, doing experiments, or studying a complicated image in a poem. In this unit, we’ll explore 3 reflections as examples of what it means to cultivate virtues in the academic life. We’ll also discuss how those virtues connect to your spiritual experience.
This group discussion guide is designed to be flexible, so some groups will be doing all four units and others may only be exploring one. We have provided short notes on: 1) How the unit fits into the overall discussion guide 2) How the unit functions individually.
How This Unit Fits Into Overall Discussion Guide: In Unit 1, we explored some ways to love your neighbor through your academic work. Unit 2 is about developing the virtues that help you become someone who consistently shows love for God and neighbor, and someone who is a good citizen of your field. We’ll explore several examples that can help you think about which virtues you are developing, and how to grow them through your work.
How This Unit Functions Individually: In this unit, 3 different scholars invite you to think about different ways to grow in virtue in your field. One explores how the very common experience of submitting academic work can help you grow, another encourages humility through a story about a well known Christian scholar from history, and the last gives an example of learning a virtue from a literary text. After 3 sessions, we hope you’ll have 1-3 ideas for cultivating virtues that you can explore further in your thought and work.
Session 1: Growing in Virtue Through Common Academic Activities
Reading: On Submitting Academic Work, by Anna Moseley Gissing
Can academic activities most of us have to do help you grow? Anna Moseley Gissing reflects on how submitting academic work can help us recognize ways to grow in virtue. Then she suggests some steps toward cultivating that growth.
Small Group Discussion Guide:
Here’s a quick guide to exploring in small groups. If you’re having a fantastic discussion of one point, feel free to spend longer on it even if you don’t get to everything.
Introductions: Each person please share your name, field area, and a favorite snack.
Reading: Take 5 minutes to read the Scholar’s Compass entry silently & write a few personal notes on what stood out to you.
Discussion Questions:
- Each person please share: What is one thing that stood out to you as you read?
- Anna talks about how both faith and research writing require practice. What regular practices have you found most helpful in your faith? Examples might include reading Scripture, prayer, or communal worship. Do you see any parallels between how you grow spiritually in these practices and how you grow academically through the practices of your field?
- What is one common academic activity you do often right now? Examples could include submitting academic work, grading, or teaching. Can you see any ways doing that could help you grow as a person? Is that work shaping any virtues or fruits of the Spirit in you?
- Who are some people whose examples encourage you? Share a story from Scripture, history, or life about someone whose growth encourages your own.
- Next Steps: Take 5 minutes to write down 1-3 ideas on a virtue you could practice in your academic tasks this week, and how you might start thinking about it in your work. Close with each member of the group sharing one idea.
Session 2: Growing in Humility
Reading: James Clerk Maxwell’s Accidental Invention of the Color Photograph: Humility in Research and Life, by J. Nathan Matias
In the previous reading, Anna Moseley Gissing encourages scholars to look at the stories of others as we cultivate virtues. Here, J. Nathan Matias does exactly that. He explores a moment from the work of prominent physicist James Clerk Maxwell that reminds us to cultivate the virtue of humility in our lives and work.
Small Group Discussion Guide:
Here’s a quick guide to exploring in small groups. If you’re having a fantastic discussion of one point, feel free to spend longer on it even if you don’t get to everything.
Introductions: Each person please share your name, field area, and a scholar you admire. Examples could include a scholar currently working in your field, an important mentor, a scholar from history, etc.
Reading: Take 5 minutes to read the Scholar’s Compass entry silently & write a few personal notes on what stood out to you.
Discussion Questions:
- Each person please share: What is one thing that stood out to you as you read?
- There is much to admire in Maxwell’s life and faith. Think of a scholar you admire. It could be the person you talked about in the introductions or someone else you respect. As you think about that person, can you identify any virtues you see in that person? How might you cultivate one of these virtues in your academic work this week?
- Nathan writes about a time Maxwell, though an amazing scholar, made a mistake. Maxwell thought he had achieved photography in color, but in fact it was later realized that his photograph was colorful due to a coincidence, not to a repeatable technique. Strangely, the mistake wound up encouraging other scientists to develop techniques that actually worked. Can you think of any similar examples in your work, where you made a mistake, but God brought something good out of it? Does reflecting on that make the practice of humility seem more joyful?
- Maxwell encouraged people to find wonder in the natural world, an experience that often brings a sense of humility with it. In the poem Nathan uses as the closing prayer, Maxwell connects these ideas to seeing God face to face in eternity. What are some moments in your own work where you experience wonder or amazement? Do they help you hope more fully for what God will do over time, and what it will be like to experience God in eternity?
- Next Steps: Take 5 minutes to write down a few short reflections on what you noticed while practicing the virtue you chose to integrate into your academic work last week. Or, if you prefer, write down 1-3 ideas on how to practice humility in your academic tasks this week. Close with each member of the group sharing one idea.
Session 3: Growing in Hospitality
Reading: Learning Scholarly Virtues from the Iliad, by Bethany Hebbard
So far in this unit, we have explored growing in virtue in 2 ways: 1) growing in virtues through common academic activities like submitting written work and 2) Growing in humility by learning from others. In our last reading for this unit, Bethany Hebbard talks about how teaching a core text in her field of literature helps her cultivate scholarly virtues. Many literature professors will teach the Iliad over and over during their careers, since so much of English literature references this early Greek epic poem about the Greek armies who besieged the city of Troy. Bethany talks about how teaching this text helps her learn and apply virtues in her work. You certainly don’t need to have read the Iliad recently to connect with Bethany’s reflections here. We hope reading her reflections helps you discover opportunities to grow in virtues in your own field.
Small Group Discussion Guide:
Here’s a quick guide to exploring in small groups. If you’re having a fantastic discussion of one point, feel free to spend longer on it even if you don’t get to everything.
Introductions: Each person please say your name, field area, and one way someone showed hospitality to you.
Reading: Take 5 minutes to read the Scholar’s Compass entry silently & write a few personal notes on what stood out to you.
Discussion Questions:
- Each person please share: What is one thing from the reading you would like to discuss with the group, today or at another time?
- We often think of hospitality as a virtue that mainly has to do with welcoming people to a home or a meal. Those are deeply important ways to practice hospitality. Bethany also invites us to think about how the concept can be even broader than that. If xenia or hospitality is welcoming the stranger in a multitude of ways, how might that apply in our academic work?
- As you think about Matthew 25 and the idea that Christ might come to us in the form of a stranger in need of welcome, how might that change your approach to the people around you in your work?
- As you seek to practice the virtue of hospitality, what are some concrete ways you might be able to practice it in your academic life and work? Bethany gives the example of welcoming new students into academia.
- Next Steps: Since this is the end of a unit, this is a great time to reflect briefly on the whole unit. Take 5 minutes to A) Write down 1-3 ideas for practicing hospitality in your work and B) review some of your previous ideas for cultivating virtues. Close by inviting each person to share 1-2 ideas you would like to think more about and perhaps start practicing soon.
Unit Conclusion & Next Unit
On the journey of connecting faith and work, this unit focused on cultivating virtues in your work as a scholar. There are many ways to cultivate virtues through your work. Here we focused on 3: 1) finding ways to grow in virtue through common academic activities 2) growing in humility through your academic work and 3) growing in hospitality in your academic work.
The virtues that help us grow in our connection to God overlap with the virtues that help us to be good citizens of our academic fields. As you practice these virtues, may God grant you wisdom to see more and more of the connections between virtue in faith and virtue in academic work.
Next Unit: Explore Unit 3
While each unit can stand on its own, those wishing to explore further can go on to Unit 3.