About two years ago I was invited to give a talk to our faculty in recognition of having been awarded Bethel’s 2009 Faculty Excellence Award for Teaching. I chose to reflect on my experiments with academic podcasting as elements of two courses I teach. Today I’ll post the first (slightly updated) section of my talk; … More A Different Significance: Online vs. F2F Education (part 1)
I don’t think my wife reads this blog all that often. But once we get past some self-analysis and a quick review of a terrible chapter in history, know that this post is ultimately a tribute to her and others like her who work with children with developmental delays. I cry pretty easily. At funerals, … More There’s No Crying in History: Teaching the Holocaust
During my Thanksgiving hiatus I’m reprising some older posts: one each from June/July, August, September, and October. This one was originally posted on August 18: as the summer neared its end, I reflected on conversations with former students. If you like what you see, please consider nominating this blog at the Cliopatria Awards, recognizing excellence … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: In Celebration of Alumni
I’ve mentioned once or twice before that my employer, Bethel University, is in the middle of developing its next master plan. We’ve seen a couple of scenarios from the consultants, and both anticipate a substantial expansion and renovation of our facilities: new buildings, sprucing up of old ones… It’s all very exciting, especially in this … More College Architecture and Christian Simplicity
I just started reading Carolyn Weber‘s Surprised by Oxford. Subtitled simply “A Memoir,” it’s more specifically a spiritual autobiography, one more in that long line descended from Augustine’s Confessions that has included C.S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy (its title clearly evoked by Weber’s) and Lauren Winner’s Girl Meets God. Like those two, Surprised by Oxford … More Surprised by Oxford
Here at The Pietist Schoolman This Week in History included the birthdays of an anthropologist and a singer-songwriter, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and two low moments in Italian military history: the sack of Rome in 410, and Brazil’s declaration of war in 1942! Wrapping up eight posts on The Pietist Impulse in … More That Was the Week That Was
The other day I mentioned that I was in the middle of writing my syllabus for HIS354 Modern Europe, one of the staples of my courseload at Bethel University. As any teacher reading this knows, offering the same class year in and year out can be the bane of one’s existence. It can become numbing … More The Blessings of Teaching the Same Course Again and Again
We’re less than a week away from Bethel’s faculty retreat, which means that the summer is rapidly coming to a close, along with all of my plans for how I’d spend it. One of the many things I’ll miss most about this summer, as every summer, is that it’s the time I reconnect with former … More In Celebration of Alumni
It’s been a pretty tough summer for us Minnesota Twins fans. We got spoiled just enough to start complaining that the team was only winning divisions, not getting deep into the playoffs. Expectations thus raised, we naturally got hit with a season in which there were so many injuries that half the time it felt … More 600 and 3000
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