The 2012 LFP National Conference:
Incorporating Service

The Lilly Fellows Program National Network of Church Related Colleges and Universities holds its annual National Conference each fall on one of the Network’s member campuses.  Official representatives of all the Network colleges and universities meet to consider a significant issue of faith and learning, exchange ideas and practices regarding their mission, and foster the whole range of Network programs and activities.  The 22nd Annual LFP National Conference,  Incorporating Service, will take place October 19 through 21 at the University of Indianapolis, in Indianapolis, Indiana.  You will be invited to think about how service has been enacted in the history of various church-related colleges and universities as well as to reflect theologically about what it means to embody service and how we can make service more integral to the missions of LFP institutions of higher education.  The three speakers are: Dr. Jeff Bouman, Director of Service Learning at Calvin College, Dr. Samuel Wells, Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, and Dr. Regina Wolfe, Wicklander Senior Fellow in the Institute of Business and Professional Ethics at DePaul University.  In addition, UIndy’s Theatre Department will stage a one-act play during the dinner on the first evening of the conference.  The National Conference also will introduce you to the city of Indianapolis with hotel accommodations at the Omni Severin in downtown Indy.  The First Cohort of Lilly Graduate Fellows, which completed its three-year fellowship last year, will also attend this year’s National Conference.  The Graduate Fellows will attend a Reunion Conference the two days prior to the National Conference.

Workshop for Senior Administrators

Immediately preceding the National Conference will be the Thirteenth Annual Workshop for Senior Administrators on the topic, Christian Higher Education: The Legal and Regulatory Landscape.  The Workshop will be held at the University of Indianapolis in Indianapolis, IN, October 18 and 19, 2012 and will address the challenges posed by contemporary legal and regulatory dynamics to the mission and identity of church-related institutions of higher learning and suggest positive ways to address them. Special attention will be given to hiring practices and labor relations.

Addressing the workshop will be David W. Burcham, the President of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, and John E. Hart, General Counsel at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.  The Workshop is offered at no cost to senior administrators at Lilly Fellows Program National Network member institutions.  Each Institution is eligible to register one senior administrator (president, vice president, academic dean, provost, or equivalent) or, given the topic, a relevant administrator or faculty member.  One participant from each school 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.  Additional participants from member schools will be wait-listed until September 14 and will be enrolled as slots become available.  Registration for this conference opens on May 14, 2012, and the deadline for registration is September 14, 2012.  For more information and to register, click here. 

This year, the Program received 165 complete applications from prospective candidates in humanities and arts disciplines vying for one of two Postdoctoral Fellowships the Program awarded.  A selection committee of six Valparaiso University faculty, with Program Director Joe Creech, winnowed the number of candidates to four finalists who visited the Valparaiso University campus.  We are extremely pleased to announce that the committee’s two choices have each accepted the offer of the Lilly Fellowship.

The 2012-2014 Lilly Postdoctoral Fellows are George David Clark and Anna Stewart.

George David Clark holds a B.A. in English from Union University, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from Texas Tech University.  His dissertation, Reveille, centers on a series of morning songs addressed to a sleeper on the cusp of waking.  That dramatic context allows the poems to investigate the border territory between active and passive imagination as well as that place where the temporal meets the eternal.  Notions of baptism and immolation are of prime concern in this manuscript as they represent experiences in which individuals are figuratively “woken” or “transformed.”  His scholarly interests include Modernist poetry, the intersection of poetry and theology, and contemporary poetry in translation.

Anna Stewart graduated summa cum laude from the honors college at the University of South Carolina, with a B.A. in English and Spanish.  She expects to receive her Ph.D. in English in the summer of 2012 from The University of Texas at Austin, where she also earned her M.A.  Her dissertation, “Beyond Obsolescence: The Reconstruction of Abolitionist Texts,” analyzes abolitionist texts that were revised, adapted, and republished in ways that both reflected and contributed to the dramatic shifts occurring across the social landscape of the United States, from emancipation through the end of Reconstruction (1863 to 1877).  Stewart’s teaching and research interests focus on the relationship between literature, contemporary political debates, and communities of readers as well as how notions of race, gender, and citizenship developed in a culture of reform.

News from Former Lilly Postdoctoral Fellows

This year has been an exciting and productive one for research, publications, awards, and hires among the former Postdoc Fellows.  

Susanna Childress (LF 08-10), Adjunct Assistant Professor in English at Hope College,  announces that she had a new book of poetry published last fall.  It is Entering the House of Awe, New Issues Press (Western Michigan University), October 2011, which recently won the 2012 Award in Poetry of the Society of Midland Authors.  She also had individual poems in The Southern Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Tampa Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and And Know This Place: An Anthology of Indiana Poetry (Indiana Historical Society Press).  Susanna also has new poems forthcoming in The Minnesota Review, The Christian Courier, and New South.  She has also contributed reviews of poetry volumes and anthologies to Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought and Books & Culture.  She has presented an academic paper: "Writing and Researching to Make a Difference: How First-Year Students Can and Do," at Michigan Campus Compact: Service Learning & Civic Engagement Institute, January 2012.  Susanna has also given several poetry lectures, presentations, and readings of her work at Windhover Writer's Festival (University of Mary Hardin-Baylor); Indiana Wesleyan University; Drake University; Grand Valley State University; Festival of Faith and Writing (Calvin College);  and The Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series (Hope College).  She will also give a poetry reading and presentation at the first summer conference of the Fourth Cohort of Lilly Graduate Fellows, held at Hope College at the end of May.

Franklin Harkins (LF 05-07), Assistant Professor of Theology at Fordham University, published two journal articles in 2011: “The Embodiment of Angels: A Debate in Mid-Thirteenth-Century Theology,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 78 (2011): 25-58 and “Primus doctor Iudaeorum: Moses as Theological Master in the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 75 (2011): 65-94.  He is also looking forward to the publication of a co-edited volume with Frans van Liere entitled Interpretation of Scripture: Theory (vol. 3 in Brepols’ Victorine Texts in Translation series) which will appear this Spring.  Among other works on exegetical theory produced at the twelfth-century Abbey of St. Victor, the volume will contain his new translation of the Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor.  Then in September Franklin will attend the Kölner Mediaevistentagung at the University of Cologne, where he will deliver a paper entitled, “Littera et Lex: Scriptural Hermeneutics and the Old Law at the Twelfth-century Parisian Abbey of St. Victor.”   

Paul Harvey (LF 94-96) Professor of History at the University of Colorado Silver Springs, recently published with Edward J. Blum, The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History, (Columbia U. Press, 2012).  He also announces that his Moses, Jesus, and the Trickster in the Evangelical South (University of Georgia Press, 2012) has been published.  Paul dedicates this volume to his teachers at Oklahoma Baptist University and the University of California at Berkeley and his friends and colleagues in the Lilly Fellows Program, Valparaiso University.  Look to October 2012 for another volume from Ed Blum and Paul Harvey entitled, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America with the University of North Carolina Press.

Thomas “Tal” Howard (LF 97-99) Associate Professor of History and Director of the Jerusalem and Athens Forum at Gordon College announces that his book, God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide (Oxford 2011) recently won the Christianity Today Book of the Year award for history.

Pamela Corpron Parker, (LF 94-96) Professor of English at Whitworth University, is currently chair of the British Women Writers Association, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary at the University of Colorado at Boulder in June 2012.  Her most recent publications appeared in The Female Spectator (2012) and in two edited collections, Material Women: Consuming Desires and Collecting Practices (Ashgate 2009) and Literary Tourism and Nineteenth Century Culture (Palgrave 2009).  In August 2010, she gave a keynote address for the Gaskell Bicentenary Celebration at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England.  She recently completed her second sabbatical which included six weeks of travel in Thailand and research fellowships at the Chawton House Library in England and the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.  Her current research focuses on travel writing in the works of Jane Austen and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  In October 2011, she led a course on "Literary Pilgrimage" as part of Whitworth's semester-long Britain-Ireland Study Program, including stays in the Lake District, Haworth, Oxford, Bath, and London.

Caryn Riswold (LF 00-02) Assistant Professor of Religion at Illinois College reports that she has a chapter in the forthcoming volume Sex, Gender and Christianity Jack Levison and Priscilla Pope-Levison, eds. (Wipf and Stock, 2012).   Caryn’s chapter, “Conversations and Intersections: A Third Wave Feminist Approach to Gender, Christianity, and Theology,” and the entire volume is the result of the Lilly Fellows Program Summer Seminar held at Seattle Pacific University in 2010.

Linn Marie Tonstad (LF 09-11) Assistant Professor of Christian Theology at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University recently reported that she will become Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School on July 1, 2012. 

Jeffrey Zalar (LF 02-04) was recently named the Ruth J. and Robert A. Conway Endowed Chair in Catholic Studies at the University of Cincinnati.

The National Network Board of the Lilly Fellows Program met for its semi-annual meeting April 21-22, 2012 in Chicago.  The Board approved four applications for membership in the National Network, which takes the number of universities and colleges in the National Network to 99.  The new members are: Concordia University, Chicago (Chicago, IL), Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA), McMurry University (Abilene, TX), and Milligan College (Milligan College, TN).  Welcome to the National Network!

Update on the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program

This year the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program received seventy-five nominations from thirty-six network schools.  Of the seventy-five nominees, sixty-one applied.  In April, a selection committee interviewed twenty-four candidates for the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Over the course of the two-day interview process, we came to know the remarkable individuals who made it to this final stage of evaluation.  We will be announcing shortly the composition of Fifth Cohort, who will be mentored by Lisa DeBoer (LF 96-98) of  Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA and Michael Patella, OSB of Saint John’s University and Saint John’s Seminary, in Collegeville, MN.  The Fifth Cohort will gather for its Inaugural Conference in Indianapolis in August 2012.

The First Cohort of Lilly Graduate Fellows completed its three-year fellowship last August, 2011, and they, along with mentors Jane Kelley Rodeheffer of Pepperdine University and Michael Beaty of Baylor University, will come together for a Reunion Conference October 17-18, 2012, and will join the Network representatives attending the National Conference at the University of Indianapolis (October 18-21).  The Second Cohort and mentors Susan Felch of Calvin College and William Portier of the University of Dayton, will complete its three-year fellowship this summer with a final summer conference at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, MN, this August.  The Third Cohort with mentors Susan VanZanten of Seattle Pacific University and Patrick Byrne of Boston College will hold its second summer conference in August as well at Boston College.  Finally, the Fourth Cohort will travel to Hope College, the home institution of mentor Caroline Simon, in late May, 2012, to convene its first summer conference.  The fellows will meet next summer for their second conference at Baylor University, the home campus of mentor Thomas S. Hibbs.

Other Dates and Deadlines for Your Calendar

Grants:
The National Network Board invites applications for the Small Grant Program.  The Board decided to renew this grant opportunity and will fund up to eight more small grants of $1,500 to $3,000 to stimulate conversation about church-related higher education and church-related mission on National Network campuses.  Please click here for more information on this new grant opportunity.  The deadline for submission is September 15, 2012.

Other programs that will receive funding are: Mentoring Programs, Network Exchanges (for the 2013-2014 academic year), and Regional Conferences.  Please visit the LFP website for more information on these grant opportunities.  The deadline for submission for all three of these grants is September 15, 2012.

Programs:
The deadline for the Lilly Postdoctoral Fellowship Program at Valparaiso University is November 1, 2012.

The deadline for nominations for the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program is November 13, 2012

Conferences:
The deadline for registration for the National Conference and the Workshop for Senior Administrators is September 14, 2012. 

For more information, visit the LFP website.

From the Network and Colloquium
by Joe Creech

Rather than focusing solely on what we are learning this spring in our Postdoctoral Fellows colloquium, I thought I would start this time by drawing our attention to the recent LFP Network Exchange, held on April 15-18, 2012 at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT.  The purpose of our Network Exchanges is to offer an opportunity for campuses within the LFP National Network to host, with a grant of $25,000, representatives from other Network Schools for several days during which time that host campus showcases a program that works especially well in shaping or strengthening its church-related mission and identity.  In this case, Sacred Heart University highlighted its common core curriculum, The Human Journey.  The Network Exchange had a number of workshops in which attendees, speakers, and members of the Sacred Heart University community—faculty, administrators, and students—shared best practices involved in the creation and implementation of core curricula, honors curricula, etc.  In addition to these workshops, the Network Exchange offered informational and inspirational plenary sessions by Dr. Michael Higgins of Sacred Heart University, Dr. Thomas A. (Tal) Howard of Gordon College, Dr. Thomas Hibbs of Baylor University, and Fr. David Tracy of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago.  We will be posting all of these plenary sessions at our website in the coming weeks, but I commend to you the transcript of Dr. Higgins’ talk entitled “The Life of Faith and the Life of the Mind: An Ambiguous and Nurturing Space for Students,” which urges us as educators to enlarge the list of usual suspects in the Christian Intellectual Tradition to embrace some of the outliers in that tradition as we make our curricular choices.  In particular, Dr. Higgins suggests that we look to those whose sapiential contributions came from unconventional, even prophetic strains of the tradition.  Higgins goes on to list as exemplars in this regard St. Francis of Assisi, Jeanne d'Arc, Christopher Smart, and Oscar Wilde.  You can download the transcript of his talk here.  For further information on the Network Exchange at Sacred Heart, see the LFP website; click here to download course syllabi and other materials from the Network Exchange, and see the Sacred Heart University’s press release about the Network Exchange.  Photos from the Exchange can be found here.

Turning to the Postdoctoral Fellows Colloquium, as I reported in our earlier _LFP Updates_, we have been examining over this year the practices that have shaped us as teachers and scholars, from our undergraduate days (or earlier), through our graduate education, and on to our professional lives.  We have also considered the learning practices our students bring to the classroom.  Earlier entries this year of “From the Colloquium” offer a full list of our readings over both semesters (as does our LFP Website), but I want to highlight one particular question we have wrestled with at some length: what is intellectual “talent?”  We are all aware that the death knell in any academic recommendation letter is the sentence, “so and so is a hard worker”; only more damning is “so and so always meets deadlines.”  The implication in such cases of “damning with praise” is that a particular candidate lacks that all-important element of inborn “talent”—of “raw intellectual horsepower”—that indicates “brilliance” and hence professional productivity in the classroom and guild.  Several readings, but two in particular, problematize this way of thinking: Atul Gewande’s Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science, especially the Introduction and “Education of a Knife,” and Daniel F. Chambliss’s study, “The Mundanity of Excellence."  These readings suggest that intellectual “talent,” if it can be compared to acquiring skill as a surgeon or a world-class swimmer, is less an innate quality but more likely the product of both practice and peer interaction.  While the colloquium never reached a consensus on this question, we certainly understood the implications for our teaching, as our answer to the question shapes how we understand the development of intellectual virtues.  I submit both of these readings for your consideration.