A major appeal of working at ACU for me is the collegial atmosphere and our shared sense of mission. Even when I have points of disagreement with others on my faculty or in the university, I still feel that we are a part of the same team and we are stronger for our diversity views rather than in spite of them.

Most of my collegial activities are pretty mundane. Whenever there’s a GST faculty lunch in the Bean, I show up. I’ve always been actively involved in Graduate Chapel. I frequently grab lunch or coffee with colleagues and staff, and I often find myself talking to colleagues about theological education in the hallways or someone’s office. I enjoy working with this great team of people. Sometimes enthusiastic hallway conversations have led to collaborative projects; even when these schemes don’t pan out, the process of discussing and planning them together has been valuable in its own right. If I have an idea about teaching, advising, or other ways to enhance the experience of our students, my colleagues are willing to let me talk it out, and their feedback and questions have been so helpful. Increasingly, my colleagues have questions for me about teaching and my research, and I feel that I’ve been able to contribute positively to their work too.

In formal settings, such as faculty meetings, I often listen more than I speak. I was frankly a bit timid during my first year on faculty—I wanted to get a feel for the interpersonal dynamics and diversity of viewpoints in the room. My colleagues often present perspectives on an issue that cause me to reevaluate my own approach, and I like to let these things “percolate” for a while. In recent years, I have been intentional about contributing to these conversations, and the more I have contributed, the easier it has been to do so. Even now, I tend to contribute toward the end of a discussion rather than at the beginning, but I’ve become much more confident in articulating my views.

There is also more tangible evidence of collegiality that I’d like to offer: administration, guest lectures, and collaboration with others. I’ve also appended a card (unsolicited) and a two letters of support (solicited) from members of the GST faculty as additional evidence of my collegiality.

Administration

When our long-time associate dean, Tim Sensing, decided to step down from his associate dean role and return to full-time teaching, we did quite a bit of restructuring. For the whole transition to work smoothly, someone needed to pick up institutional effectiveness. We needed a dedicated person to keep track of various annual measures and records for our accreditation with SACS and ATS (Association of Theological Schools). When our new dean of the seminary, Carson Reed, asked me to consider taking on this responsibility, I agreed. I’m not naturally inclined to take up this kind of administrative role, but I know that it is an essential task that contributes to the healthy functioning of the whole faculty. I do receive a 3-hour course release for this work, but I think it’s still evidence of my desire to be a team player. As the GST’s “Director of Institutional Effectiveness,” I will serve on the newly created GST Leadership Team.

Guest lectures

One concrete way that I have practiced collegiality is by giving guest lectures for other professors in my college and in other departments. In the fall of 2015, Dr. Sonny Guild invited me to lecture on the Syriac-speaking Church of the East in his History of Missions course. The Church of the East sponsored extensive missions along the Silk Road into Western China, Tibet, and Mongolia in the 8th century. I enjoyed having the opportunity to link up two areas that I find fascinating, global Christian missions and the history of the Syriac churches, and share them with undergraduate students.

I have also been able to make a few forays into the History and Global Studies department. I guest-lectured on the Middle Eastern Christian perspectives of Western Crusaders in one of Dr. Ron Morgan’s history classes. I also taught one class period of Dr. Ian Gibson’s Global Studies class. (Yes, the same Ian that I’m married to.) They’d been comparing Christianity and Islam as global religions, and I introduced them to some aspects of modern Muslim-Christian dialogue. It’s refreshing to teach on topics that I normally engage with from a theological-historical perspective and to ask a different set of questions about them.

Collaboration with Others

The first two semesters that I taught BCOR, I had the privilege to work two different co-teachers. Matt Roberson and I took a “divide and conquer” approach: one of us would teach a unit while the other did the grading, and then we’d switch. It was an efficient way to do things, and I was glad to be relieved of teaching the Transhumanism part of the curriculum, of which I had no prior knowledge, but I think that semester can only loosely be called “collaborative.” One thing I most enjoyed about that semester was that my co-teacher’s specialization was in music history, and I valued the interplay between theology and music in a class devoted to asking questions about what makes life meaningful and good.

My second co-teacher for BCOR was Amy McLaughlin-Sheasby, and this experience was completely different. We met in her office for about an hour twice a week to plan our class periods, and we each took turns leading different parts of the same class period. Amy had recently finished her MDiv and taught for the DBMM for a couple of years before beginning her Ph.D. I learned so much from her natural talent for helping college students see how the course material connects to the things that matter most in life, which is what BCOR was meant to be about. When BCOR ceased to be a required part of the core curriculum, and there was no longer a budget to have co-teachers, I still sought out Amy as a conversation partner. I’m deeply thankful for the continued friendship that grew out of our collaboration, and I’m glad she’s finished with her Ph.D. now and has joined the DBMM faculty permanently. For Amy’s perspective on this partnership, please see her letter of support.

Finally, I have also been able to deepen my collaboration with adjunct professors who work regularly for the GST online. In particular, I have been working closely with Dr. Tera Harmon, who teaches History of Christianity I, along with other classes, on a fairly regular basis. I’d heard from faculty and students alike that Tera is an effective teacher in an online context, so I knew I had valuable things to learn from her about online pedagogy! As I was revamping my own History of Christianity I class, I wanted to hear what assignments and readings were working well and to bounce ideas off of another expert in the field. During the fall of 2019, while we were both teaching sections of the History of Christianity I, we emailed each other about once a week, checking in on how things are going and reflecting together on our online pedagogy “experiments.” One of the ways that online classes is transforming higher education is by making us more dependent on adjunct teachers. I consider our regular adjuncts as important parts of our team. There are things that I can’t control in this market-driven trend, such as fair pay for adjuncts, but I can try to advocate for them, treat them as I would any other colleague, and make their work more rewarding. In the process, it has made my work more rewarding too.

For further evidence of my collegiality, please see this card from my former colleague Dr. Mindi Thompson, this solicited letter of support from Dr. Tim Sensing, and another from Dr. Mark Hamilton.

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