How do we train AI to recognize what is a human? In other words, what is an instance of the human? In my non-technical, lay-person’s understanding, AI makes this distinction by differentiating between semantic segmentation and instance segmentation. In a semantic model, the output would be a silhouette of the whole group against the background.…

At Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana, I asked undergraduate students about the role of human poets in a world where a hand-held poetry camera can take a photograph and print a little receipt-sized poem using artificial intelligence. I asked the same question again when I visited a class at Wheaton College. What is the…

I am grateful for the generous response of the authors to my review. I appreciate their clarification of the book’s overarching aim: to provide “a framework that increases the capacity of all scholars—whether biologists or poets, accountants or artists, nurses or philosophers—to recognize that faith intertwines with every aspect of their intellectual work,” and to…

We appreciate Professor Clair’s impassioned review of Christianity and Intellectual Inquiry: Thinking as Pilgrimage. At the beginning of his piece, he nicely summarizes the book, noting its historical awareness; its sensitivity to Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal perspectives; and its analysis of America’s evolving intellectual ecosystem. Clair identifies the notion of pilgrimage as a central…

In their latest installment chronicling the relationship between religion and American higher education, Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen turn to the constructive task of offering a novel and hopeful model of faith and learning suited to the present moment. Rather than remain entrenched in the enclosed ghettos of polarizing and identity-­constrained thinking, “pilgrim thinking”…

Why should Christian school leaders pursue their PhD (or EdD)? In this blog, having recently completed a PhD in Educational Studies at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, I aim to encourage others who are beginning their doctoral journey, those currently persevering in it, and those who need to be reminded that the PhD is…

When it was first published in 1998, Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, not only became a bestseller but was even selected by Oprah’s Book Club. And it still holds a special place in many people’s lives all these years later. When people are asked which books have meant the most to them, they often…

I sometimes wonder what I want to achieve with my students. When I started teaching in 2000, at the mature age of 23, I primarily taught for the pleasure of teaching. I also did it to help students acquire the knowledge required by the course and subsequent courses. At that time, I taught C++ programming,…

My wife and I recently returned from a visit to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. George Vanderbilt, grandson of the famed shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, envisioned and constructed his family’s palatial Southern Appalachian home in the late nineteenthcentury. Inspired by the Châteauesque architectural style of France and England, the 250-room Biltmore…

In 1840, the composer Robert Schumann wrote a lieder (art song) for his soon-to-be wife, Clara (herself an accomplished musician). He took his lyrics from the poet and linguist Friedrich Rückert. The result was a piece called Widmung (“Dedication”), considered to be one of the most lush and profound love songs ever written. It went…