I am a member of and participate in the conferences of several national professional organizations, including the American Society of Church History, the Conference on Faith and History, the North American Conference on British Studies (and its regional affiliate, the Western Conference on British Studies), and the North American Victorian Studies Association. Within the ASCH, I most enjoy attending the Women in Theology and Church History Breakfast, WITCH breakfast for short. This gathering for women in my field takes place each time the Society gets together. Female scholars are somewhat outnumbered in the historical profession, and this is even more true in theology and religious history than in other areas (with the possible exception of military history). The breakfast began some thirty years ago to provide an opportunity for this small group of historians and theologians to meet and get to know each other, keep up with each other’s work, and share experience. It is a wonderful and needed event that I have found enormously encouraging. Because I noticed a striking lack of both women and minority scholars at the Conference on Faith and History when I attended in the fall of 2014, I have begun groundwork to establish a similar gathering at future meetings of the CFH, as well.
On a more local level, I serve as faculty sponsor for ACU’s Zeta Beta chapter of the national history honors society, Phi Alpha Theta. In this capacity, I take students to our regional Phi Alpha Theta conference every spring, where I typically serve as session chair and commentator on at least two panels. I chaired and provided comment in 2014 at Texas Woman’s University, in 2012 at Texas A&M – Commerce, and in 2011 here at ACU. (I was on maternity leave in 2013, and in 2015 McMurry University cancelled the conference at the last minute. We made up for this by organizing a mini-conference here at ACU for our students, and I chaired and provided comment for one of those sessions, as well.) I also serve as a paper judge at these conferences, helping to award first, second, and third place rankings to the best graduate and undergraduate papers. This is a fun opportunity to showcase the research of our best students, expose them to conference life, encourage the work of history students at other Texas universities, and to network with other history faculty in our region. See the 2011 Conference Brochure here: PHI ALPHA THETA REGIONAL CONFERENCE_FINAL. It is my hope that ACU will be able to host the regional conference again sometime in the next 4 to 5 years. I know that hosting entails a great deal of work, but it would be really good for our history students to be involved with the profession in this way.
In 2014-15, I had the pleasure of serving on the Editorial Board for The Tenor of the Times, a historical student research publication out of Harding University. One of my old Harding professors Dr. Julie Harris contacted me and asked if I could read the submitted papers and provide commentary and judgment to guide decisions about which papers should be included. I was impressed by the quality of many of the papers and asked Dr. Harris if The Tenor might welcome submissions from our students, as well, for next year. She replied affirmatively, so hopefully some of our students will get the chance to see their research in print in the future. Here is some correspondence related to my service for Tenor: Tenor of Our Times.
I also think it’s important that I incorporate local historical institutions into my courses whenever I can. To this end (and following in Tracy Shilcutt’s footsteps), I had my Historical Methods Students complete fifteen hours of service learning in Milliken Special Collections. I also worked closely with Ms. Judy Deaton, the curator of the Grace Museum, to arrange for my Methods students to visit the Grace, meet the museum staff, and learn about what a career in museum or archival work might look like. (See my correspondence with Ms. Deaton here: ACU Historical Methods class visit.) I also required my Historiography Capstone students to complete an internship at The Grace, Frontier Texas, in the Milliken Special Collections, or at the ACU Museum as part of their coursework.