Archives for October 2014

As I followed the #FergusonSyllabus twitter conversation just before this semester began, I considered ways to address race in a new way in my pastoral care course.  Unmasking structures of suffering and developing anti-racist pastoral care practices are already important to both my research and my pedagogy.  What is different ...

I remember meeting Griffin Huber on the first day of the Fall 2012 semester in my undergraduate New Testament Intro class. Like many students, he took the class both because he was eager to study the Bible and because it fulfilled a general education requirement. He would successfully finish my course ...

“The asceticism of teaching is the willingness to teach the students you have rather than the students you wish you had.” The rigor and conviction of Patricia O’Connell Killen’s claim about teaching as a practice has impacted my approach to the classroom more than anything else in the ...

Due to the racial and religious homogeneity of my institution, which is predominantly white and Christian (the University of Findlay, in rural Ohio), I have unconsciously focused on issues of greatest concern to my students, especially in the beginning of my teaching career – and this has not included race. This ...

Today, theological school deans are under greater pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theological curriculum offered by their schools. Pity the new dean who needs to learn the esoteric language of higher education that is now embedded in theological education. Deans must be conversant with (if not also demonstrate ...