The Wabash Center's Dialogue On Teaching

Dr. Steed Davidson is the Executive Director of the Society of Biblical Literature. Data show that the kinds of persons we bring into doctoral programs and hire onto faculty remain relatively unchanged. In what ways can directors of graduate divisions of religion attend to atrophying doctoral programs? What is the future of religious scholarship if our formation pipelines are stagnant?

Roger S. Nam is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program at Emory University Candler School of Theology. When at the dawn of your career, how do you learn the institutional power dynamics, the unspoken social and professional obligations, the ways conflict is resolved or left open? How do you acquire agency, get accurate information, and gain the trust of colleagues? Who do you approach? How do you ask for help when you are an inexperienced beginner and need support?

Dr. Steed Davidson is the Executive Director of the Society of Biblical Literature. What does it mean to examen the influences of the bible upon contemporary society? In what ways can classrooms encourage understandings of the bible's complex roles in culture, now and into the future?

Phillis Sheppard is E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Religion, Psychology, Culture and Womanist Thought, and Executive Director of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements at Vanderbilt University. Our careers will have disappointments, injustices, events which are unfair and, even shaming. How do we avoid boundary crossing, blaming, isolation, and personal ruin? What are communal and personal habits of coping, survival and collegiality in moments of unexpected professional grief and unmanageable career debacles?

Roger S. Nam is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program at Emory University Candler School of Theology. What makes for mediocre, good, and exceptional administrators? Who should consider administration as an occupation, and who should remain on faculty? How do you balance the call for transparency in communication and the need for confidentiality? What kinds of assistance might be beneficial to those in administrative duties?

Dr. Steed Davidson is the Executive Director of the Society of Biblical Literature. In what ways do faculty positions prepare you for administrative jobs? What kind of professional formation is needed to be an administrator? How important is your team to achieving an organizational vision? What if imagination is the best skill of an administrator?

Phillis Sheppard is E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Religion, Psychology, Culture and Womanist Thought, and Executive Director of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements at Vanderbilt University. Life is a series of transitions. Transitions of an academic career can leave one feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or agitated and angry. How might life transitions be negotiated for wellness, mental health, and thriving?

Philip Butler is Assistant Professor of Theology and Black Post-Human Artificial Intelligence Systems at Iliff School of Theology. What if teaching had the audacity to pose questions which disrupts reality? What if the disruption was generative, imaginative, and healing? This conversation grapples with what it means to teach at the intersection of neuroscience, technology, spirituality, and Blackness to prepare futures and reimagine leaders.

Phillis Sheppard is E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Religion, Psychology, Culture and Womanist Thought, and Executive Director of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements at Vanderbilt University. When adult learners have learning styles and processes which are not expected, what is the role of the Academic Dean, the role of the faculty person, the role of the student? What pedagogical innovations are needed to support learning? When you receive an "accommodation letter" - what should be done?

Angela Parker, PhD is Associate Professor of New Testament and Greek with Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology. Adult students sometimes feel confronted or disrespected when their personal faith is disrupted in bible and theological courses. In what ways does a professor prepare students for deeper learning? How do professors cope with belligerent students? What does it take to build trust between teacher and students? What happens when no trust is to be found?

Richelle White, PhD is Professor of Youth Ministry and Director of Field Practicum and Internships and Kuyper College. Questioning as a tool of teaching is a skill to be developed and honed. Facilitating dialogue with provocative, poignant, even powerful questions takes consideration and practice. Connecting students with the right questions, especially about turbulent issues and during challenging experiences, can be the precursor to insights and more caring communities.

Angela Parker, PhD is Associate Professor of New Testament and Greek with Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology. People in the public are curious about, and hungry for, conversations on bible and religion. What if scholars intentionally created public-facing scholarship on, of all places, social media? What if public policy and national discourse could be impacted through teaching the bible on TikTok?

Sarah Farmer is Associate Director of the Wabash Center. What happens when scholarship is the work of passion and social change? What happens when learning mobilizes persons for liberation? What if theological education focused upon who we are to become - what then, would that curriculum look like?

Sarah Farmer is Associate Director of the Wabash Center. A conversation on Dr. Farmer's latest book pointing toward the ways hope is life giving. Hope is not sanitized - not a luxury. Hope is about possibility, survival, creativity and resilience. Learning from and with incarcerated women is life changing.

Emily O. Gravett is the Assistant Director of the Teaching Area in the Center for Faculty Innovation and Associate Professor of Religion at James Madison University. The power dynamics of classrooms are as varied as the teachers and the learners. Building classroom communities means being attentive to and curious about students, while allowing students the space to be eager, afraid, anxious, disagreeable, and sometimes, tired. Approaching students as real, whole people, who themselves possess considerable classroom power, must be considered and critically reflected upon.

Rev. Dr. Aizaiah G. Yong is Assistant Professor of Spirituality at Claremont School of Theology. What does it take to create a classroom experience where the relational ethos among diverse learners is that we belong to one another? Learner-centered pedagogies become especially complex when learners are from a wide range of backgrounds, theologies, communities, and also possess a wide variety of aspirations and intents. What does it mean to take seriously the ways diversity of learners challenges, enriches, and creates risk in a classroom? What if teaching in diversity means humility is a primary pedagogical practice? What is the finitude of our teaching and what are our personal limits while teaching in all-kinds diversity?

The Rev. Dr. Luke Powery is Dean of Duke University Chapel and Professor of Homiletics and African and African American Studies at Duke Divinity School. In this conversation, hear stories of what happened when teaching spirituals in a federal prison, and the ways prisoners became teachers and "outside" teachers and students became learners. Hear how the Spirit can move in a classroom and make such spaces sites of Divine Encounter. What if the remedy for oppression is unleashing the power of teaching as theopathy in classrooms?

Dr. Kenneth Ngwa is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of Religion and Global Health Forum at Drew University Theological School. Dreams are states of the awake and the asleep. Dreaming is a pedagogical space for vibrancy, nurturing, healing, new knowledges, creativity, and protection and should be centered inside the development of new pedagogies. Pedagogical austerity and bankruptcy can be helped with pedagogies that heal and repair through dreaming. Dreams help humanity understand existence, reality, and freedom. Such notions as the necessity of co-dreamers, risk-sharing, and reigniting a sense of mystery are explored.

Dr. Ted A. Smith is Associate Dean of Faculty and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Divinity. What could happen if several scholars, writing in community, grappled with the shifting of theological education then made their learnings accessible? The book series Theological Education Between the Times, is just that. Hear one of the series' editors discuss the generative, challenging, and joyful process of writing in community. He also discusses his own book and his hope for the future of theological education.

Sophfronia Scott is Director of the Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Alma College in Alma, MI and author a numerous books including Wild Beautiful and Free and The Seeker and the Monk. Teaching scholars to write better undoubtedly fosters better teaching. What does it take to pivot away from the stale conventions of scholarly writing, and move toward writing that expresses genuine and needed ideas? How do we learn to write what we are thinking and challenged by?