Here… • Joy, expectation, and Easter Monday. • The plan to take over all media is working out nicely: catch up with our department webisodes as we visit Europe and talk faith and history; and get a sneak preview of the new Pietist Schoolman Podcast. • Forget would-be “Protestant Notre Dames”… Just what makes Notre Dame … More That Was The Week That Was
In the past week or so, I’ve seen a fair amount of new traffic for a two-year old series I ran on the history of colleges and universities closing. Perhaps interest was stimulated by the news that the board of directors of Sweet Briar College voted to close the school at the end of this academic year, … More When Colleges Close: Sweet Briar
One of the ablest defenders of the liberal arts, in a time when many question their value, is Wesleyan University president Michael Roth. Indeed, before becoming an administrator, Roth was trained as an intellectual historian, and he still finds time to teach in that field. Last month he wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal probing his students’ hesitation whenever he … More Am I “Making Religious Believers” Out of My Students? (part 1)
Last Thursday the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California Los Angeles released “The American Freshman,” a report based on a fall 2014 survey of over 150,000 first-time, full-time students at 227 four-year colleges and universities (out of 1.6 million nationwide). What did HERI learn? Its executive summary highlighted a few findings: More students opt … More The American Freshman: A Survey of New College Students
While I wasn’t blogging during my three-week trip to Europe, I did try to keep up with my Feedly, Twitter, and other online reading sources, bookmarking a variety of posts and articles. Enough that I’ll end January with three separate month-wide links wraps, one for each of the three main themes of this blog. We’ll start … More That Was The Month That Was: Education
What is the purpose of Christian higher education? There is, of course, no single answer to the question. In any college, or any of its departments or programs, or of their required or elective courses and the individual class sessions that compose them, there are multiple objectives. But running through all of them, in our Pietist vision of Christian higher education, … More Pietist Vision Previews: Education as Conversion
Here… • Veterans Day took on a new poignancy for me this year… • Also on the 11th, I helped the local newsmedia celebrate the G.I. Bill. • What does your name say about your politics? • The Pew Forum found further evidence that Latin American Christianity is becoming less (Roman) Catholic and more Protestant. … More That Was The Week That Was
In the 3+ years of this blog, I’ve written often about the value of the liberal arts — particularly as an integral component of Christian higher education. While I’ve occasionally pointed to the instrumental benefits of such an education (provides a marketable skill set, prepares learners who can pick up new skills and thrive in grad/professional schools), I’ve … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Metaphors for Christian Liberal Arts
Here… • How diverse are Christian colleges and universities? • Does history teach lessons? • Is it helpful to argue from historical analogy, or a sense of historical inevitability? • Where can you find the newest issue of the Baptist Pietist Clarion? • And where am I this morning? …There and Everywhere • As we closed the … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • Beware the fearmongering of higher ed pundits… • …and find some hope in the opportunity of educating a “spiritual, but not religious” generation. • We probably came up with about fifteen C’s of institutional history at our Conference on Faith and History panel on the subject, but I narrowed it down to six. …There and Everywhere … More That Was The Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 