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Your Work Matters. And it Doesn’t. Be Glad.

I sit in an empty computer lab, surrounded by the sleek machinery of digital existence, propped in the curvature of an adjustable office chair. I have been here all day, all week, working hard, even harder than usual, spurred on by participation in a writing cooperative. There are others in neighboring rooms, secreting words onto…
August 12, 2025
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Malleability in World Language Departments: One Case Study

The study of foreign languages in the United States has experienced a significant decline over the past few decades. According to the Modern Language Association (MLA), enrollment in college-level foreign-language courses dropped 9.2 percent from 2013 to 2016.Julian Wyllie, “Enrollment in Most Foreign-Language Programs Continues to Fall,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 7, 2018.…
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Cultivating Honest and Courageous Researchers: Teaching Statistics Through a Christian Virtue Lens

In recent years, the social sciences have faced a “replication crisis,” raising questions about how we conduct, report, and interpret research findings. A large-scale replication project in 2015 tried to recreate nearly 100 studies from recent publications and found only about 40% of attempts successfully replicated. This finding sent shock waves through the psychology community.…
August 7, 2025
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The In-between of the Faculty Summer

The faculty summer. You all know what I mean when I say that it’s a complicated phenomenon, right? I mean, think about it; we just completed a crazy spring semester (after getting through a crazy fall semester). As the end of the semester approaches, we start to slow down with the committees and other university…
August 6, 2025
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What the Secular School Has Rediscovered

In recent years, trauma-informed pedagogy has become a widely embraced framework in American education. Teachers and administrators are being trained to recognize signs of emotional dysregulation, respond with empathy rather than punishment, and prioritize safety and trust in classroom relationships. Terms like “fight or flight,” “toxic stress,” and “emotional regulation” have become common in professional…
August 5, 2025

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The V.A.L.U.E. of Vulnerability with Students

“Suffering doesn’t automatically or naturally lead to growth or good outcomes. It must be handled properly.” - Tim KellerTim Keller, Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering, (Dutton, NY: Riverhead Books,  2015). “Our fruitfulness comes out of our vulnerability and not just out of our power. It comes out of our powerlessness.” - Henri NouwenHenri…
September 30, 2022
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In Defense of Committee Meetings

My institution “has a proud tradition of faculty governance,” as a colleague once euphemistically summarized the heavy committee load professors carry here. Both descriptions are true. It is a proud tradition and a heavy load. Most full-time faculty here serve on at least two campus-wide committees. Then in addition to these are departmental committees, search…
September 29, 2022
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Teaching the Ted Lasso Way

My academic inspiration this summer came from an unlikely source: Apple TV’s Ted Lasso. I know, curveball, right? But I can explain. Two years ago, my husband David and I had just settled into our new home in Houston. We were both assuming new positions at a new school and, like everyone else, navigating the…
September 27, 2022
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What the U.S. Equity Market Can Teach Us About the Church

The stock market looks at the world through a peculiar lens, one that people outside the market don’t always understand. Oddly enough, it is similar to the lens through which the Bible views the world, particularly how it views Christians and the church. The church has come under consistent criticism, sometimes well earned, and yet…
September 26, 2022
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A Wrestling Match Between Play and Sport

On June 29, 2021, a camera at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, captured video footage of Jacob deGrom playfully engaging a teammate in a wrestling match in the outfield as other players stretched and prepared for that night’s game. After several seconds deGrom successfully pinned his opponent as a third teammate slid…
September 23, 2022
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Motes, Beams, and Stories about Students

While browsing through some past Faith Animating Learning blog articles, I came across a helpful piece by Louis Markos on “Teaching in a Post-COVID world.” Part of the piece offers cautions regarding the effects of social media consumption on teaching: Although the algorithms are generally driven by a consumerist agenda that privileges advertising over politics,…
September 22, 2022
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The Two Scandals of Christianity

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This…
September 20, 2022
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A Liberal Non-Christian and a Conservative Christian Scholar in Civil Dialogue: Part 2

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Hank Reichman and Karen Swallow Prior’s dialogue originally printed in the Academe Blog (an AAUP publication).  We have reprinted a portion of it with permission.  HR: In my Understanding Academic Freedom (p. 102-03), I discussed a professor’s refusal to write a letter of reference for a student seeking to study…
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The Beauty of Losing Control of Your Teaching

Seven years ago, I took a teaching sabbatical in Burundi. When I set foot on U.S. soil again, I had the exact opposite of a sense of accomplishment. This ambivalence would continue. In fact, I’m still processing it now. Just this month, a faculty workshop reminded me of this when slides warned of the inevitable…
September 15, 2022