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.
______ Introducing the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program ______
We are very excited to announce a new initiative of the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts: The Lilly Graduate Fellows Program. The Lilly Graduate Fellows Program will support, during the course of their graduate education, exceptionally well qualified Protestant and Catholic young men and women who have bachelor degrees from LFP Network Schools and who are interested in becoming teacher-scholars at church-related colleges and universities in the United States.
Over the course of five years, three cohorts of 15 graduate students (or 45 total) will be selected, through a competitive application process, as Lilly Graduate Fellows. During their years in the graduate school of their choosing, each cohort of 15 students will participate in a three year program that includes three conferences and a mentoring program as they become part of a network of scholars that extends beyond the boundaries of their particular graduate programs. At the conclusion of three years, fellows will attend the LFP National Conference where they will be introduced to representatives from the LFP National Network. Fellows will also receive a stipend of $3,000 for each of the three years of their fellowships.
LFP Representatives at their individual LFP network schools will be responsible for selecting up to three nominees per year for these fellowships each of the next three years. Once each network school has submitted up to three nominees for these fellowships, a selection committee, along with the LFP staff, will select the fellows from this national pool of nominees. The initial cohort to be interviewed in the spring of 2008 will commence humanities or arts degree programs in fall, 2008.
What do you need to be doing now to prepare for this new initiative? Representatives of LFP National Network Schools, need to determine a plan for selecting up to three nominees for this award. Nominees will be rising seniors or graduates who earned bachelors degrees no earlier than spring, 2006, and who intend to commence their graduate work in fall, 2008. Graduate programs are limited to degrees leading to teaching (Ph.D., Th.D., M.F.A.) in Humanities and the Arts. We will be sending you more information over the next weeks regarding this process, but for now, please be aware that our goal is for you to have a plan to identify nominees by October, 2007. At the LFP National Conference at Mercer University, October 19-21, 2007, we ask that all network representatives bring their nomination plans for a workshop on the Graduate Fellows Program during the conference.
Again, be watching your e-mail and mail box for more information on this exciting new program. Also, for more information, including a more detailed list of eligibility requirements and application procedures, please consult The Lilly Graduate Fellows Program or call 219 464-5317.
______ Notable events of the LFP NNB April Meeting ______
The National Network Board met on April 14-15, 2007 in Chicago. While considering numerous topics concerning the LFP National Network, the board approved membership into the LFP National Network of Schools for Regis University in Denver, CO and Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT.
___ Information regarding the 2006 LFP National Conference and the Administrators Workshop ___
2007 LFP National Conference
If you haven't yet, please mark your calendars for the 2007 LFP National Conference, which will take place October 19-21, 2007, at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. This years conference is titled: Three Mirrors: Reflections on Faithful Living The Legacy of Robert Shaw, Flannery O'Connor, and Martin Luther King, Jr.(PDF) and features presentations by Ann Howard Jones of Boston University, Andrew Manis of Macon State College, and Christina Bieber Lake of Wheaton College. There is no registration fee or cost for lodging or food for LFP Network representatives to attend. For more information, click here.
2007 LFP Workshop for Senior Administrators
Immediately preceding the National Conference will be the Eighth Annual Workshop for Senior Administrators on the topic, Mentoring Faculty for Mission. The Workshop will be held at Mercer University, October 18 and 19. Addressing the workshop will be Denise Doyle, Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs at University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, Texas, and Caroline Simon, Department of Philosophy at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and author of Mentoring for Mission: Nurturing New Faculty at Church-Related Colleges. The Workshop is offered at no cost to senior administrators at Lilly Fellows Program National Network member institutions. Participants will be reimbursed for travel costs up to $600. Meals and hotel accommodations will also be paid for by the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts. For more information, click here.
___ The Cresset wins major awards ___
The Cresset, Valparaiso University's journal of literature, the arts, and public affairs, has historically worked closely with the LFP, most notably by producing its annual special issue on the LFP, which includes the plenary presentations from the LFP National Conference and Administrators Workshop along with articles and book reviews related to the mission of the LFP. The current LFP special edition of The Cresset (Easter, 2007) is available at The Cresset, and contains the presentations by Douglas and Rhonda Jacobsen, David O'Brien, and Walker Gollar from the 2006 LFP National Conference at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, Jill Baumgaertner's address to the 2006 Workshop for Senior Administrators, also held at Xavier University in Cincinnati, and reviews of the winner and finalists of the inaugural LFP Book Award.
We are pleased to announce that this year The Cresset won seven awards in the annual "Best of the Christian Press" competition sponsored by the Associated Church Press. For the third consecutive year, The Cresset earned the second place Award of Merit in the Best of Class category for the nation's best Christian journal. In honoring The Cresset, judges noted the "thoughtful, engaging content" of the journal. "The departments are well defined; much of the poetry is exceptional," judges commented. "The publication is true to its mission of interpreting the world to the church, and the church to the world."
The Cresset also won first place awards for two articles. Winning first place in the Devotional Inspirational: Long Format category was the essay "Stigm(at)a: Facing the Mirror of the Wounds of Christ" by former Lilly Fellow Lisa Deam (LF 01-02). The Cresset also took top honors in the Theological or Scholarly Article category for the essay "Tradition and Traditioning in Judaism" by Alan J. Avery-Peck. In their comments on Deam's essay, judges noted that "The generosity of the author in revealing her own journey rather than simply relying on art and literature (however well used) to make the point makes this essay deeply moving."
The Cresset is published five times each year. Information about The Cresset, including a list of current articles, is available online at The Cresset. Regular annual subscriptions are $20, students and senior citizens may subscribe for $10. To subscribe, call (219) 464-6809, fax (219) 464-5511 or e-mail cresset@valpo.edu.
____ Upcoming Research Conference ____
Please mark your calendars to reserve March 27-29 for the 2008 LFP National Research Conference, Convivencia: Religious Identities in the New World, to be held at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.
The title, Convivencia, or shared existence, is a concept from the "old world" of mediaeval Spain, when Christians, Muslims and Jews lived in mutual tolerance and relative peace. The conference will examine the concept of Convivencia from a variety of disciplines as it might speak to our "new world" which seems defined by tensions between religion and secularism and scarred by religious and ethnic violence. Los Angeles, where America imagines itself and where forces of globalization and fragmentation intersect, will provide a living backdrop for the conference.
The conference will open with a reception on the evening of Thursday, March 27, 2008, followed by a concert by the Yuval Ron Ensemble. The conference will begin with a keynote address on Friday, March 28, by Marķa Rosa Menocal, and the conference will feature plenary speakers in dialogue with each other. These speakers include Ahmet Karamustafa, Ebrahim Moosa, Peter Phan, Robert Orsi, Linda Komaroff, Arnold Eisen, Thomas Tweed, Diane Winston, Timothy Matovina, and Ann Taves.
For more information, click here.
______ Other dates and deadlines for your calendar ______
The next series of programs that will receive funding are: Mentoring Programs, Network Exchange Programs, and Regional Conferences. Proposals are due September 15, 2007.
The deadline for applications for the 2008-2010 Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowships in Humanities and the Arts has been set for Tuesday, December 18, 2007.
For more information, visit the LFP website.
______ From the Colloquium ______
Late in the spring semester, the Lilly Fellows Colloquium took up an excerpt of Robert Inchausti's The Spitwad Sutras. If you don't know this wonderful book about teaching, we recommend it highly for summer reading. Inchausti, a very engaging and delightful writer, tells stories from his years teaching the ninth grade at St. Vincent's Boys Preparatory Academy in central California. As he learned to teach, he was blessed to have a very wise and practical mentor named Brother Blake. In the last portion of the excerpt (published in Mark Schwehn's anthology Everyone a Teacher, Inchausti conveys "Maxims, Aphorism, Insights, and Reflections on the Art of Classroom Teaching," by Brother Blake. Any one of the more than fifty of these sutras might make for a good hour's conversation on the art of teaching. Here are a few of our favorites:
- Nothing happens until somebody comes along. A teacher is somebody who comes along.
- A teacher has not started teaching until she can rise above the narrow concerns of her particular class and curriculum to the broader issues of her discipline and its relation to her times.
- So often, teachers confuse getting depressed with achieving humility, but real humility comes from seeing how little it is that you actually know and then proceeding to do something about it.
- I find it often takes two days to teach a single lesson: one day to mis-teach it, another to correct and transform the original misconception. Beginning teachers don't know this. They always want to do everything right the first time, and it just doesn't work that way. Often, the very best lessons are born of second thoughts, revisions, qualification.
- Teachers must not be afraid of being philosophers, or they will forfeit their functions as prophets and fools.
Best wishes for a refreshing summer.
--John Steven Paul
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