I am continually amazed at how provincial and specialized contemporary graduate education is. By provincial and specialized, I mean that there is usually little interdisciplinary conversation that takes place within the curricula. Unfortunately, Christianity graduate education, which has reasons to overcome disciplinary silos, fails to counter this culture. In fact, although Christian institutions are supposed…

The world is full of recrimination nowadays. There’s the online marketplace of terror, for one thing: doxxing, death threats, so-called “cancelling,” and just plain old ad hominem bomb throwing. There is the bloodthirsty tribalism that casts one’s opponent as an existential (and almost inhuman) enemy. And there is always, in abundance, that quiet world of “bitching…

The things of the world call to us, and we are drawn to them—each of us to different things, as each is drawn to different friends.Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 105. — Parker Palmer I entered the world of academia several years ago as a complete novice. My love of…

“I will look upon death or upon a comedy with the same expression of countenance.” —Seneca, Of a Happy Life, XX Last week Todd C. Ream and Willem P. Van De Merwe reviewed and analyzed a set of J. Robert Oppenheimer biographies in conjunction with the release of Christopher Nolan’s new film, Oppenheimer. Although this…

I am grateful to the editors of Christian Scholar’s Review for their invitation to guest edit a special issue of the journal, focusing on vocation and higher education. Although vocation is an important theological concept, it has had a complicated historical sojourn; it therefore requires some unpacking. At various times and in various contexts, the…

Is a student demonstrating a skill in the lab enough to consider that student competent? Can the student then demonstrate proficiency in that skill in a clinical setting without the aid of faculty? How much reinforcement is needed to help a student obtain competency? These are just some of the typical questions that float around…

In the first essay in this series, we presented the notion that within interdisciplinary work “we each represent our own discipline, but we are all working for the same Kingdom.” This second essay in this three-part series is presented from the disciplines of education and behavior analysis. The unique gift of the education department is…

For all their economic vulnerabilities, small Christian colleges, and universities might be the ideal environment for fostering interdisciplinary research. Given that the realities of size, scale, scope, and student load can serve to restrict the kind of projects faculty at these institutions can carry out, it makes sense to recognize our strength in this niche…

As recounted in the previous post, Oppenheimer fixated on a rather limited view of the academic vocation. While limited in scope, such a view allowed him to pursue noteworthy excellence. He experienced an especially triumphant phase between the time he accepted his joint appointment at UC Berkeley and Cal Tech and the time he resigned…