Monthly Newsletter of Christian Scholars Review - Issue #16

What are Christian administrators doing to help faculty fulfill the Christian mission of their university? I and two colleagues undertook a national study to learn. You’ll find the answers in our recently released study, “Faculty Development for Christian Mission: The State of the Field.”

Due to the helpful work of one of our recently graduated student workers, Makenzie Stine, we now have copies of older CSR content stretching back to 2008 available online. We encourage you to check out this archival treasure of resources.

In the study mentioned in the introduction, my co-authors and I concluded that we clearly need more and better resources to help with Christian faculty development. Fortunately, one of our Christ Animated Learning blog contributors, David I. Smith, is helping lead the way to supply them. Please check out the new faculty development resources from Reflecting Faith: Resources for Christians in the Academy

Through my social science research in various contexts, one of my striking realizations is how deficient we are at mentorship in both the church and the Christian academy. We observed this in our study of faculty development at Christian colleges. Most of these programs are for first-year professors or professors in years one to three. Little faculty development involved older scholars, and we found few administrative programs through which senior faculty were encouraged to mentor younger faculty in their field. Thus, we mentioned in the concluding part of our article, “imagine how robust senior mentorship might be if institutions actually provided incentives for senior faculty to engage in these kinds of mentoring relationships.” Christ-animated administration still has a long way to go.

In light of this need, we encourage you to consider attending the “Mentoring Matters” conference this September 22-23. We also suggest you check out the edited volume with editing or contributions from three CSR editors, Margaret Diddams, Jerry Pattengale and Todd Ream, Cultivating Mentors: Sharing Wisdom in Christian Higher Education.