__LFP Update__1.3

Welcome to the _LFP Update_, an e-publication from the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts to keep LFP representatives and others informed about the activities of 1) LFP National Network institutions, 2) present and former Lilly Fellows and, 3) the LFP office at Valparaiso University.  

 OFFICE CLOSING : Please note the LFP main office will be closed for two weeks    beginning Tuesday, May 23. Normal office hours will resume on Tuesday, June 6.

____ Notable events of the LFP NNB April meeting____

The National Network Board met on April 1-2, 2006 in Chicago.

The Board considered proposals for the next Summer Seminar and National Research Conference. All of the proposals were well-conceived and in keeping with the LFP mission, but only one proposal in each category was chosen for funding:
The 2007 LFP Summer Seminar for College Teachers was awarded to Calvin College. The Seminar will be on “Biblical Studies Across the Curriculum: Discerning Scripture for the Disciplines," and led by Dr. James K.A. Smith. The Seminar's tentative dates are June 9-27, 2007.
The Seventh Annual LFP National Research Conference was awarded to Loyola Marymount University. The conference will be coordinated by Professor Amir Hussain and is entitled, “Convivencia: Religious Identities in the New World.” The date will be announced.

Pat Byrne replaces Dean de la Motte on the National Network Board  The NNB bade farewell to Dean de la Motte, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Belmont Abbey College near Charlotte, N.C.  Dean will be leaving that position to become vice president for academic affairs and professor of French and comparative literature at Salve Regina University in Newport Rhode Island. For the time being, at least, Salve Regina is not a member of the Lilly Fellows National Network, and so Dean is ineligible to serve on the Board. To complete Dean’s term through 2008, the NNB named former board member Patrick Byrne, Professor of Philosophy and chair of the department at Boston College. Thanks, Dean, and welcome back, Pat!

____ The 2006 LFP National Conference____

If you haven’t already, please mark your calendar for the fall Lilly Fellows Program National Conference, A Blessed Heritage: The Contributions of American Church-Related Higher Education, hosted byXavier University in Cincinnati, on October 13-15, 2006.

____ The 2006 Administrators Workshop____

Immediately preceding the National Conference will be the seventh annual Administrators Workshop on the topic Hiring Faculty for Mission. Addressing the workshop will be Jill Baumgaertner, Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies at Wheaton College and Dean de la Motte, newly-named Vice President for Academic Affairs at Salve Regina University. All workshop expenses are paid for administrators at Network Schools, but attendance is capped at 40 participants. Please make your administrators aware of this excellent opportunity.

___ Other dates and deadlines for your calendar___

Joe Creech, Assistant Program Director Designate and the Coordinator of the 2006 Inaugural LFP Book Award, would like to remind everyone that nominations are due May 31, 2006. The response thus far has been very positive.

The next series of Programs that will receive funding are: Mentoring Programs, Network Exchange Programs, and Regional Conferences. Proposals are due September 15, 2006.

The deadline for applications for the 2007-2009 Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowships in Humanities and the Arts has been set for Tuesday, December 19, 2006.   

___ Upcoming LFP Publications___

The special Lilly issue of the Cresset is now available. This issue contains a myriad of subjects pertaining to the Program, including the plenary addresses from our national conference. You should be receiving your copy in the mail soon. If you would like additional copies, please contact the LFP main office.
Although we have found this electronic newsletter an efficient way to communicate Program events and happenings, we also have noted the substantive value of continuing to publish the network Communiqué, the printed LFP newsletter. Watch your mailbox for a summer issue of this informative publication. We will resume the _LFP Update_ with the start of the academic year.

____ From the Lilly Fellows Colloquium ____

We have now suspended the weekly conversation of the Lilly Fellows Colloquium for the summer months. In the last several sessions the Fellows have presented brief essays on “The Relationship between Christianity and the Academic Vocation and How This Relationship Affects or is Manifested in My Teaching.” It is a surprisingly challenging assignment, one that has often yielded good fruit. Here is a brief excerpt from Joanne Myers’ essay:

In the classroom I must seek to know my reader, whatever goes on must create the warrant (the principle of relation) for what we’re doing. I cannot go with warrants in hand, as I do not bring Christianity into the classroom like a broad-sword, like one tool among others, as if being in the classroom is not trying to be Christian, another form of motion against a background field of energy. The warrants are being created through acts of gesture and acknowledgement: they are made in, to return to [Iris] Murdoch, the “elaboration of a common vocabulary” in the presence of “common objects of attention,” for “we develop language in the context of looking.”

I wish you a refreshing summer with just the right combination of community activity and solitude to renew in you the zest for living out your calling. - JSP