One end of semester day during my own PhD study years, I went down to my local coffee shop and ordered a latte. The barista took one look at me and said, “An extra shot, then?”Read more…
How Did You Do It? Faith and My Dissertation
Last fall, I defended my Ph.D. dissertation, and in May I attended my graduation at Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus. My studies were challenging, especially since I was changing my discipline, from engineering to Science and Technology Studies (STS), which is built around a core of history, sociology, and philosophy.Read more…
Scheduling for our Souls (Scholar’s Compass)
I’m not sure where you are on your academic path, but as a freshly graduated Ph.D., I am excited as I start a job as an Assistant Professor this year. It means I get to learn how to create my life schedule amongst a bunch of newness: new city, new home, new church, new university, new community (including new coffee shops!), new university, new colleagues, new students, and honestly, a new me.Read more…
Processing your PhD: on next-ness
As a young faculty person, with all the anxieties that are part of that identity, that quiet does tend to bring in some of its own challenges, however. It might even go to waste, slipping away into the voracious demands of the calendar. There’s a refrain of next-ness, for lack of a better phrase. What’s next, indeed?Read more…
Returning to Mapping Your Academic Career
Summary: Traces the career trajectory of a college professor, identifying the factors that mark the successful passage from one “cohort” to the next, the risks to be negotiated in each season of work, and key resources for career development.Read more…
Processing your PhD: a further meditation on done-ness
My friend Nate recently asked me what I’d do next. “What do you mean, ‘next’?” I replied.Read more…
Summer Snapshot: Research, Teaching, Missions
While many picture summer as a time of beaches, pools and binge watching the latest drama, God’s plans for me this summer involve a juggle of research, teaching, and coordinating mission teams coming to New Orleans.Read more…
Processing your PhD: on teaching
Almost by their nature, large research universities don’t necessarily prime their PhD students and candidates for a teaching-oriented academic career. Read more…
Processing your PhD: the first of a short series on life after graduate school
You stand in the Quad, surrounded by empty chairs and the sound guys talking down the stage. It’s an early June day in Seattle at the University of Washington. A cool wind is blowing paper programs lazily through the air.Read more…
If I Had to Do It Again: the Graduate School and Early Professor Years Edition (Scholar’s Compass)
What if I had it to do again? Would I change anything or not?
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Campus Carry, Civic Conversations, and Public Intellectuals
It is my expert opinion as a Christian who has lived through three mostly disastrous decades of Christian engagement with politics that we do not best convert people through political issues when we seek to pronounce the Christian position on it, when we use politics as medium for the gospel. Second, it is my opinion as an emerging scholar in rhetoric that my field speaks to all people and also has deep ties to Christianity. And as a “public scholar” I note those two facts while urging a collective, democratic approach to issues at hand.Read more…
Scholar’s Call: The Student Who Walked Away
I do not claim to be a great teacher today, though I’d like to think I am getting better. When I first started teaching I was woefully inadequate to the task. Research and writing came naturally to me. Standing in front of a room full of people and commanding respect did not.Read more…
Flaky Mind, Undivided Heart (Scholar’s Compass)
Many of us academics invest an inordinate amount of time organizing and goal-setting in order to achieve certain objectives and earn favorable evaluations from students and supervisors. We want to earn positive labels and avoid negative descriptions like “flaky.”Read more…
The Missional Professor in Universities Outside North America
Keith challenges us, saying that evangelicals should be commended for ministering well at the periphery of the University; however, now is the time to move to the heart of the university – the podium. There has been a clarion cry to do this in the United States and now there should be a cry to do this globally.Read more…
Scholar’s Compass: Making God’s Glory Known
It is an abdication of scholarship when Christians do academic work with little reference to God. If all the universe and everything in it exist by the design of an infinite, personal God, to make his manifold glory known andRead more…
Scholar’s Compass: Building Thanksgiving
World Changers New Orleans, 2014. Lower Ninth Ward Crew of Students working on a house. Summer Staffers Sarah Horton and Megan Tilman (Navy WC Tees on left). And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the nameRead more…
Scholar’s Compass Navigating Beginnings: Overcoming Fear and Anxiety
I remember well that fall when I started graduate school–the excitement, the anticipation of starting something new. Orientation activities and faculty seminars inviting students to something big, something interesting, something important. Read more…
Navigating Beginnings: Glory-Seeking Ministry in the Academic Life (Scholar’s Compass)
Physics Professor W. Brian Lane on how he came to see teaching physics as a way of seeking God’s glory. Read more…
Evaluating Christian professors
The Marks of a Christian Scholar: A Vocational Description (Part Four)[1] Mark Eckel, ThM PhD, Professor of Leadership, Education & Discipleship Capital Seminary & Graduate School, Washington, D.C. By what means will I be evaluated? What will someone identify toRead more…
Devotions: Wisdom – Applicability
“My son, do not lose sight of these—keep sound wisdom and discretion, and they will be life for your soul and adornment for your neck. Then you will walk on your way securely, and your foot will not stumble.” (ProverbsRead more…
Faculty Testimony: Chemistry
The updated InterVarsity Graduate & Faculty Ministry website is “live”. As a teaser, below is the InterVarsity twentyonehundred productions video of Dr. Terry Gustafson, Professor of Chemistry, Ohio State University. In this piece, we hear a story about how the real integrationRead more…
Candidate for What? — InterVarsity staff
Introduction Thank-you to Dwight Schwartz, Ph.D., for sharing a glimpse of his academic/vocational journey through Candidate for What? A few questions for the reader as we wrap up the series with Part 5 (Click here for Part 1 on Pre-collegiate chemistry, here forRead more…
A missionary calling to Africa for Christian academics: Part 1
Editor’s note: I had the privilege of meeting G. Randall Bond, M.D. at Urbana12. Randy was one of a number of people who visited the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) booth to share not only a vision for, but also a commitment to next stepsRead more…
The Future of ESN
This is my final post on the Emerging Scholars Blog. Well, my final planned post, anyway. Tom insisted that I leave the door open for guest posts in the future, but I won’t be writing here every Tuesday as I haveRead more…