How to Succeed in College—A series in America: The National Catholic Weekly

Raymond A. Schroth, S.J.,  an associate editor at America: The National Catholic Weekly, a Jesuit magazine, is doing an engaging series on “How to Succeed in College.” Here’s some background:

Fr. Schroth has taught or served as dean at five Jesuit colleges and universities and taught at three secular universities since he was ordained in 1967. Among his nine books are Fordham: A History and Memoir, Dante to Dead Man Walking, on books everyone should read, and The American Jesuits: A History. This post on "How To Succeed in College" is the first in a series that will appear every two weeks.

Here are the first four posts:

How to Succeed In College I

How to Succeed in College II: Make Friends

How to Succeed in College III: Studytime Strategies

How to Succeed in College IV: Cardinal Newman

Recommended for students and faculty, and not just those at Catholic institutions.

College modifies policy banning facial veil, now allows veil for religious reasons

Inside Higher Ed does a fine job (here, here, and here) tracing the controversy surrounding a ban on “any head covering that obscures a student’s face…either on campus or at clinical sites” introduced in December by the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. The security policy initially had an exemption only for “medical reasons.” After a federal civil liberties complaint and extensively publicity, the College added a religious exemption.

The second and third posts offer sufficient background and detail to undergird a useful campus conversation. Recommended reading.

In the classroom: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary

My Harvard Divinity School colleague Francis X. Clooney, S. J., has another wonderful post in the online edition of America: The National Catholic Weekly. Clooney describes one of his current lecture courses—“Hindu Goddesses and the Blessed Virgin Mary”—and explains why and how he engages his students in comparative theology.

The comments to the post are worth reading and pondering as well.

Good news is no news

In the last few weeks of mid-semester rush, I have barely had time to do more than pass on the day’s news stories about religion on our campuses. And in my hasty scan of news aggregators for religion (e.g.,  The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life or Religion News Service) or for higher education (e.g., The Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Ed) I have been struck by how seldom religion on campus actually makes the news. And when it does, the story, not surprisingly, is almost always about conflict: controversial bans on “advocating” homosexuality or abortion, disputes over the teaching of evolution, discrimination against religious or secular minorities, alleged violations of “student”  or “faculty” academic freedom.

Perhaps I won’t have been as bothered if I were not trying to have at least one post a day during the work week with at least one or two “positive” and “useful” posts for those interested in thinking through the appropriate role for religious perspectives on their particular campus. After all, how is it news when things are going smoothly? Who wants to read about successful classes where religious perspectives play a pedagogically useful role? Where is the story in a campus that lives out a religious sense of mission while welcoming and successfully supporting students and faculty who believe and practice otherwise? Good news is no news, but no news about good news helps explain why secular faculty associate religion on campus with controversy! And while stories about conflict can spark useful faculty conversations, it helps to have “success stories” and examples of “best practice”  to talk about as well.

I invite my readers to help flesh out a fuller and more useful picture of religion on our campuses. Please consider emailing me:

• “Teachable Moments”: Anecdotes that illustrate the challenges and opportunities that arise when students or faculty bring explicitly religious considerations into the classroom.
• “Conversation Stoppers”: Anecdotes that illustrate the challenges and opportunities that arise when faculty raise explicitly religious considerations in conversations with each other or with administrators.
• Recommended Reading: Books, articles, postings that offer insight into the question of explicitly religious discourse on campus.

Send these to “markuedwards AT gmail DOT com.” I may not be able to post all that is sent, but I will respond to each email.

Combating attempts to “inoculate” against evolutionary theory? Recommended readings

Creationists distributing Darwin’s Origins (with a “special introduction”) and a creationist college sending its students on a carefully prepared field trip to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History—two striking attempts somehow to “inoculate” college students against the overwhelming evidence underlying evolutionary theory.

It is hard to say how successful such attempts are (see Randy Moore, Sehoya Cotner, and Alex Bates, “The Influence of Religion and High School Biology Courses on Students’ Knowledge of Evolution.”). Still it is helpful for faculty members to discuss among themselves how prevalent the problem is on their own campus and how  they might best teach students who have been indoctrinated (or “inoculated”) against evolutionary theory.

The National Center for Science Education is probably the best online resource for faculty seeking insight on the controversy and how to deal responsibly with students who object to evolutionary theory. I also regularly suggest three books that can together orient faculty to the larger controversy:

• The best introduction to the ongoing controversy about the teaching of evolution in the public schools is Eugenie C. Scott, Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction (Greenwood press, 2004). The book is written for a broad lay audience and has good references for further reading. Scott is the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education.
• For the recent historical origins of “young-earth creationism,” see especially Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism (Knopf, 1992).
• Michael Ruse’s The Evolution-Creation Struggle (Harvard University Press, 2005) offers a provocative reading of how the extremes in the controversy—creationists on one side, the more radical neo-Darwinians on the other—need, and in some strange ways, resemble each other.

Creationist college students take field trip to Smithsonian

The Washington Post has a story about a yearly field trip taken by Liberty University students to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The students are enrolled in “Advanced Creation Studies” (CRST 390, Origins) led by Professor David DeWitt who has a PhD in neuroscience from Case Western Reserve.

Reader contributions

This blog aims at fostering conversation among faculty members and others regarding the proper role, if any, of explicitly religious discourse in classrooms or in intra-faculty discussions and deliberations.

Please consider sending in:

• Teachable Moments: Anecdotes that illustrate the challenges and opportunities that arise when students or faculty bring explicitly religious considerations into the classroom.
• Conversation Stoppers: Anecdotes that illustrate the challenges and opportunities that arise when faculty raise explicitly religious considerations in conversations with each other or with administrators.
• Recommended Reading: Books, articles, postings that offer insight into the question of explicitly religious discourse on campus.
• Other: Other matters that have a bearing on this ongoing conversation.

Please send these to “markuedwards AT gmail DOT com.no spam please.” I may not post every suggestion, but I will reply. Thank you!