“Now I am ready to visit you for the third time, and I will not be a burden to you, because what I want is not your possessions but you. After all, children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.” 2 Corinthians 12:14 (NIV) Earlier this month, the…
In an age of political polarization and civil unrest, many have lost faith in universities as promoters of positive engagement in the public square. With only 36 percent of Americans confident in universities, public trust in higher education has fallen to historic lows. As protests rage, chancellors defend free speech while grasping in vain for…
As a psychologist trained in the United States, I tend to view the expression of emotions as a good thing. So, the flipside of the expression of emotion – restraint of feelings, or emotional self-control – is sometimes viewed as an unhealthy practice, or at least a corollary of unfavorable health and mental health outcomes….
This blog post explores the intersection of faith and business education by incorporating “spiritual assignments” within the framework of a modern business school curriculum. I aim to share the possible connection between these two realms and shed light on educators’ invaluable assistance in fostering students’ comprehension of this connection. In this post I will prompt…
It is the time of year when those of us who serve as teachers, from college to Kindergarten, are ramping up our preparation for the upcoming term. In my home university, new faculty are arriving on campus this week for onboarding, next week will be devoted to faculty meetings at the university and college level,…
The contemporary concept of strategy is problematic when viewed from ethical and theological perspectives. This concept arose historically from the political-military context of conflicting interests and maneuvers to gain power. When transferred to the realm of business, the concept retained the assumption of conflicting interests expressed in moves and countermoves attempting to achieve advantages over…
For my own part, I know I must keep alive in myself what I have once known and grown into. —Thomas Merton My wide-ranging but low-built apartment complex, constructed before I was born, values its old maples and oaks, though time has reduced their coverage. Staking a personal claim on my small yard, I planted…
With the ability to captivate our hearts, awaken imaginations and paint pictures of what it means to be a good person, stories help form (and malform) character and influence behavior. In our work as educators, we must take great care in both choosing the stories we tell and in being aware of those we unwittingly convey….
Since most faculty are trained in thoroughly secular universities and disciplines, it can take some work to figure out what difference Christian faith can have in the practice of your discipline. I have noticed that there is a particular difficulty of this kind for economists. In this blog post, I describe the background for that…
Wisdom often feels like a vague, shadowy concept—something we all want but do not really understand. Sometimes we equate wisdom with intelligence, but it certainly is not guaranteed by a high IQ. Sometimes we talk about wisdom as if it were a synonym for inner peace or an automatic characteristic gained from old age or…
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,…
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. All the course descriptions look just like any other secular…
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.). Since this year Ascension Sunday falls on the same date as Mother’s Day, I would like to sketch the doctrine’s…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
University students often face a challenging number of life-changing choices during their brief time on campus. I often joke with my incoming freshmen that during my time as a college student, I decided on which university I would attend (twice), what major I would pursue (again twice), where I would live (three times), where I…
Geoffrey Galt Harpham has argued that conversation about crisis is fundamental to the humanities in the United States, an insight I extend to the liberal arts more generally. Certainly, crisis-talk has spanned my own career. From internal academic anxiety over the wrecking ball of poststructuralism, to the cognate cultural wars of the eighties and nineties,…
