Blog

Developing a theologically-informed vision of excellence about any topic, such as Christian higher education, requires not only serious theological and empirical study but also two other important things: 1. Studying the topic’s history; 2. Making international comparisons. Regarding the latter, one of the wonderful things about doing international research in Christian higher education is that…

I can still recall my nervousness as I taught my first classes at a Christian college. I was well-educated in electrical engineering at a large secular university, which is to say I was not well-educated in anything else. I had spent many years being catechized to think like an engineer, but faith remained largely peripheral…

When I was a boy growing up in Hong Kong, both my parents were professors. They worked some long days during the long semesters and sometimes brought papers home to grade on the kitchen table after dinner. At the same time, they never seemed to be working deep into the night, and summers were a…

It was February in Chicago, so I told my students it’s time to learn about… our local plants… Wait… What?  Why are we learning about plants in the middle of winter in the Midwest?  That’s probably what my students were thinking this “spring” semester as we entered into a unit on plants and plant diversity.…

“I don’t understand why Christians have to be so intolerant of others.” I had just finished a moderated discussion on religious pluralism with an articulate professor from another university who argued that all religions and forms of spirituality are equally valid options in today’s diverse world. I agreed that different religions and spiritual practices could…

As sure as April showers bring May flowers, the end of the semester—spring or fall—brings some version of this request from students: “Sorry to email this to you so late, but when I uploaded my final exam, it was not double-spaced. I’ve attached a properly spaced one. I hope I can have some grace. Thank…

When I was a doctoral student, one mentor secretly sent their friend (another professor) to my poster at a professional conference to ask the most difficult methodological and statistical questions about my research content. I think my mentor viewed this as an initiation of some kind to the academic presentation experience. Suffice it to say,…

Recently, thanks to a collaboration with fellow CCCU school Gordon College, I was able to spend a month in Italy teaching art history to a wonderful group of Christian students. This was, of course, a priceless opportunity for an art historian. Italy abounds in stellar museums and archaeological sites, and over the years, I have…

I have been teaching social work at Grove City College since 2018. During my tenure, I’ve been fortunate to teach courses that align well with my knowledge and areas of expertise. That changed last fall, and like many professors, I had to quickly become a subject matter expert where I was truly only a generalist.…

Since it is an election year, I wondered if I could find evidence that Christian universities help their students contemplate excellent Christian citizenship. As mentioned in an earlier post, my research team examined the general education requirements at 231 Protestant colleges requiring at least one Bible or theology course. We chose these institutions because they showed…

Public speaking is one of the most common courses that one will find in the general education curriculum. Yet, we recently discovered that every Protestant university but six does not use a bit of Christian rhetoric when describing what they teach for that required class.In cases where the institution used a distribution model and allowed…

*This is part 3 of a three-part series. Part 1 utilized a salient real-world example to demonstrate the theological dangers brought about by the tendency for athletic performance to supersede Christian, moral excellence within the context of sports. Part 2 expands upon the bodily consequences of a misaligned allegiance to sports, which subvert the holistic…

*This is part 2 of a three-part series. Part 1 utilized a salient real-world example to demonstrate the theological dangers brought about by the tendency for athletic performance to supersede Christian, moral excellence within the context of sports. Part 2 expands upon the bodily consequences of a misaligned allegiance to sports, which subvert the holistic…

*This is part 1 of a three-part series. Part 2 expands upon the bodily consequences of a misaligned allegiance to sports, which subvert the holistic well-being of participants, thus warping the imago Dei in both the enactors of recipients of physical injustice. Part 3 offers theological insights into how orthodoxy and orthopraxy related to the…

The ascension of Jesus Christ to heaven may be in the creed and on the church calendar, but compared to Christmas, Easter, or even Pentecost, it doesn’t get much airtime (My apologies for the pun.).It has received growing attention from Christian scholars over the past century. The first study came out of Oxford’s circle of…

If your Christian university does not require a substantive class on nourishing an excellent Christian marriage, it is not engaged in a key factor behind upward economic mobility. Why do I say that? The social science evidence. As Melisa Kearney, a University of Maryland economist, and author of Two-Parent Privilege, shared on a recent podcast,…

One of the possible functions of Christian beliefs and practices in teaching and learning contexts is to act as framing devices. When concern for student wellbeing is named as pastoral care, when environmental responsibility is connected to stewardship or creation care, or when language learning is understood as a way of welcoming strangers, theological and…

Can I make human heart proteins in a mouse? Or, restated: Can I make a mouse that produces a human heart protein? The first question is clearly a technical question that focuses on our ability to express human genes in a new context. The second gives clarity to what it is that I am actually…

In this cultural moment in higher education, when everything appears to be up for grabs, perhaps it’s time to think more deeply about how grades might hamper holistic student development. Although education scholars have been sounding concerns about the value of grades for almost 100 years, I personally never gave the need for them much…