Every year since 1987, March has been considered Women’s History Month. What started as International Women’s Day in 1911 became National Women’s History Week in 1980 and then a month designated to learning about and celebrating what women have contributed to history. Since we are approaching the end of Women’s History Month, I thought was appropriate to write a few women in science who were, or are, Christians. Officially they are a small group — according to an article published in Christianity Today, only ~7% of biologists and physicists in the US identify as Christian women. Nevertheless, there are a many remarkable women who belong to this group.
[Read more…] about Science Corner: Christian Women in Science
women in the academy
Find Your Voice and Own It: Women and the Academic Life
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
The Well: How open are you about your faith?
I’ve mentioned The Well here on the blog before — it’s a terrific resource put together by our colleagues with InterVarsity’s Women in the Academy and Professions. While their focus is, well, women in the academy and professions, anyone interested in the navigating the intersection between Christianity and the academy ought to be reading The Well.
One of their regular features is Dear Mentor, which poses a question to several experienced mentors from academia and the professional world. This month’s The Well email included a Dear Mentor column that raised a question we’ve dealt on several occasions: how open should you be about your faith? [Read more…] about The Well: How open are you about your faith?
Where did you find your megaphone?
This is the first of four guest posts from Janine Giordano, a graduate student and ESN member from the University of Illinois, on the topic of cultivating your voice and finding your audience while in graduate school. When she is not teaching, she spends most of her time working on her dissertation, Between Religion and Politics: The Working Class Religious Left, 1886-1936. [Read more…] about Where did you find your megaphone?
Week in Review: Behold the Man Edition
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. Christine Sine posted Godspace’s Complete Lenten Series for 2010, including material for Good Friday and Easter. Thank-you to Christine for organizing this great resource for followers of Christ on their Lenten journey.
Photo: “Ecce Homo” (“Behold the Man”) by Antonio Ciseri (1821 – 1891), one of Mike’s favorite depictions of Good Friday. Click for a larger image.
2. Why So Few? (RJS, Jesus Creed, 4/1/2010):Â “There are many reasons why women are underrepresented in a variety of fields – from ministry, theology, and evangelicals and the early church,, to science and engineering. While men and women often have different goals, values and abilities, these factors alone are not enough to account for the differences, or for the hurdles perceived by women who aspire to positions in these fields.” … Join the conversation.
3. For the other gender, check out “What Men Need” (Inside Higher Ed, March 31), a conversation with the presidents of the 4 remaining men-only four-year colleges: Wabash College, Hampden-Sydney College, St. John’s University (MN), and the historically black college, Morehouse. Rev. Richard Koopman, president of St. John’s, a Catholic university, addressed the need for spiritual development among men:
Father Koopmann described two groups he has led. One was largely of “unchurched” students, whom he found all needing to find ways to talk about difficulties they had faced in the past — such as childhood injuries or parental divorce. The other was of Catholic students, and Father Koopman said that there was more ritual with this group, such as his leading mass for these students. But in both groups, he said, “there was a need to build trust” so that the students could talk about the issues that troubled them — something they had difficulty doing.
Interestingly, Patrick White, president of Wabash and former president of Saint Mary’s, a women’s college, observed that both men and women seem more likely to engage deep intellectual topics when the opposite sex is absent.
4. In the sciences? Mark your calendar for the 65th Annual Meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, July 30 – August 2, 2010. The topic will be Science, Faith, and Public Policy. Check out the slide show here.
5. It’s Friday, But Sunday’s Coming: Need some Good Friday inspiration? Tony Campolo’s signature sermon about surrendering to Christ – and changing the world – can be streamed or downloaded from Campolo’s website. (HT: Susan Isaacs via Twitter – Isaacs is also the author of the “snarky but authentic” spiritual memoir, Angry Conversations with God)
Books:
Tom currently can’t put down Brian Godawa’s Word Pictures: Knowing God Through Story & Imagination (InterVarsity Press, 2009). What’s the main point of Word Pictures?
The Bible is not a systematic theology of abstract propositions or a treatise on doctrinal correctness. It is a collection of narratives, poetry, images and metaphors that convey God equally through rationality and imagination. If we want to know God more biblically, as well as be more persuasive to a postmodern world, we must embrace the power and mystery of imagination in our approach to and understanding of God. — Brian, Q&A Author Interview
Note:Â Posts with material from Word Pictures coming … Let Tom know if you’re interested in discussing material from the book.