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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…

“We Can’t Go On Together with Suspicious Minds”                         --Elvis Ever since the Fall, we have experienced gender division and alienation. Whether throughout human history we have improved or are going backward in this area, depends upon what one views as the end or…

I nearly plowed down a first-year college student as I raced to a much-needed bathroom. The large cup of hotel coffee combined with a 4-hour bus ride meant that my usual concern with professionalism around students had been replaced by a nearly frantic need to reach the travel stop’s restroom. This episode during a short-term…

“Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.”Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Vintage Books, 2012), 82 (italics in original). The present essay will not attempt to describe the circuitous path that led Haidt to this somewhat disturbing conclusion, except to say that his experiments are varied…

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against…

Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art provides a valuable Christian framework to traditional art critical practice. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt combines an established framework, repeated themes, and a wide range of examples, resulting in content that is accessible to all readers, including novice art viewers. In her introduction, she proposes…

As the subtitle suggests, Shirley Mullen’s new book, Claiming the Courageous Middle, invites believers to dare “to live and work together for a more hopeful future.” This applies to all areas of life, from family to church membership, and to jobs as well, even that of professor. I don’t refer to professors as daring; I’d…

We face yet another presidential election season, and in the fall, college campuses across the country will host seminars, roundtables, and talks to help students prepare for what’s to come. One question that certainly will arise has to do with Christianity’s relationship to political power, a question that’s hard to escape when former President (and…

American confidence in the “value” of higher education is plummeting. In 2015, 57% of Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, but in 2023 that number fell to a mere 36%.Megan Brenan, “Americans’ Confidence in Higher Education Down Sharply,” Gallup. 2023 July 11, https://news.gallup.com/poll/508352/americans-confidence-higher-education-down-sharply.aspx?version=print. What role might academics…

As a member of Generation X, I have visual memories of the discrete, physical sources through which I was expected to access information as a child and young adult. There were physical books—novels, informational texts, and monographs; encyclopedias, dictionaries, and almanacs; as well as newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. In school I was taught how…

How do two utterly dissimilar things come together? How can they be reconciled? By rising. As the phrase goes, attributed to the Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and popularized by the novelist Flanner O’Connor, “everything that rises must converge.” And it converges upon a lofty, shared Object, the source and end of our desire,…

Near the end of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, the youngest brother, Alyosha, makes a curious claim, one that has reframed the way I think about education. Alyosha has gathered around him the schoolboys he befriended on the very day of their friend Ilyusha’s funeral. Addressing the boys alternately as “gentlemen” and “my…

This virtue is not on any of the lists of character qualities for character education in public schools. One will also not find it on lists of virtues compiled by positive psychology scholars. Yet, it is perhaps one of the most important missing virtues among North American college students today. For example, Christian Smith found…

It seems that we have never had so much free time and so little idea how to use it. As is often the case, contemporary music articulates our pathologies: The progressive rock band, Styx, in their song, “Too Much Time On My Hands” confess, “I’ve got nothing to do / and all day long to…

In the previous post we offered some foundational considerations for a Christ-animated FYE classroom, including ways to weave in a biblical worldview and help students push back against the common lies influencing their identity. These two strategies, though more ideological in nature, help FYE instructors ensure their classrooms are not merely adding Jesus to the…

The first-year experience (FYE) is a decades-old programmatic initiative aimed at introducing students to campus culture, improving transitions, and promoting retention, often through a course or classroom seminar. Research shows that FYE courses are valuable for students in general, as well as in specific subpopulations (e.g., international, first-gen, etc.) typically in need of additional support…

Teachers, have you ever cried in front of your students? With your students? I have not. I have come close a few times. When I stood in front of my class shortly after a campus shooting, I felt the heaviness of the collectively traumatic experience. When I asked my students to join me in prayer…

This virtue is not on any of the lists of character qualities for character education in public schools. One will also not find it on lists of virtues compiled by positive psychology scholars. Yet, it is perhaps one of the most important missing virtues among North American college students today. For example, Christian Smith found…