Let me start by admitting that I was once that lost student, pursuing all the worldliness of college life and running from true freedom and joy found in Christ. I doubt my professors then would have guessed that their sleepy, always-forgetting-something student would be in their position one day. I was an adjunct lecturer teaching […]
My husband and I have completely different careers—he crunches numbers and I punch out prose—I’m an English professor. The demands of our careers and our family sometimes get the best of us, and we end up offering each other our worst—our depleted selves sans empathy, sans affection, sans patience. We’ve been married long enough to know that those difficult times […]
I hate to admit it, but I have often been like many apologists: too quick to give answers and too slow to ask questions. Solomon calls that the approach of a fool: “A fool does not delight in understanding, But only in revealing his own mind.” (Proverbs 18:2) Anxious to win arguments Like many […]
For several years, God has burdened my heart to use my platform as a professor to share the love of Christ with the academic community of Latin America. I am so blessed and thankful for the wonderful opportunity God provided to be part of the Faculty Commons outreach to Quito, Ecuador in the summers of […]
After reading A Grander Story: An Invitation to Christian Professors by Rick Hove and Heather Holleman in a Faculty Commons small group Bible study, I was inspired to integrate my research with my faith rather than keeping my work and faith neatly compartmentalized into separate boxes.. As a music professor, I recorded an album entitled Solace specifically focused […]
God inspired me to enter teaching before I knew Him. Initially, I decided to follow my father’s footsteps and enter corporate America. However, halfway through my MBA program, I realized I could get paid for doing what I loved: learning, teaching what I’d learned, and writing. Even though I may not be as bright as most professors, […]
I had been wanting to step out of my comfort zone and serve a population that was completely different from my own, so when my church scheduled a trip to serve refugees in Clarkston, Georgia, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. I spent a week learning about the difficult plight of refugees, most of whom […]
“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, […]
On the 10th day of our little girl Elizabeth’s life, she was rushed by ambulance to Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital after she stopped breathing several times. Watching a team of doctors and nurses work to insert IVs into her tiny body, eventually by drilling into her little legs, brought me to tears (and still does as […]
Have you ever questioned why you work in academia? I have. In a particularly challenging part of the 2023-2024 academic year, I questioned my place in academia. I confided in a sister in Christ and shared that ‘endless emails and zoom calls’ certainly couldn’t be my calling. Her simple response gave me pause. She said, […]
