{"id":176,"date":"2019-09-05T15:44:58","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T20:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kelligibson\/?page_id=176"},"modified":"2022-09-09T21:01:48","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T02:01:48","slug":"advising-and-mentoring-students","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kelligibson\/teaching\/advising-and-mentoring-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Advising and Mentoring Students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Undergraduate Mentoring<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have enjoyed mentoring three undergraduate students through honors contracts or senior theses. In the fall of 2017, Lindsie Lawson did an honors contract on Muslim-Christian relations for my BCOR class; she was planning to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship in a predominantly Muslim country. We have kept up with each other and I’ve enjoyed hearing occasional updates on her experiences abroad. Tad Kile also did an honors contract for one of my BCOR classes, in which he put a work of New Testament scholarship<\/a> in conversation with a recent sci-fi novel<\/a>. It was a fascinating project that taught us both new things.

I also served on Cecily Powell Tolleson’s senior honors thesis committee in the spring of 2022; I provided historical and theological feedback for her thesis on medieval feminine sexuality in Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Flowing Light of the Godhead.<\/em> Her first draft was mostly descriptive, detailing how Mechthild used sexual imagery to communicate the experience of union with God in prayer, and in my extensive feedback, I urged her to consider why<\/em> Mechthild chose such imagery to describe her experiences and how it functioned<\/em> to support her claim of authority as a spiritual teacher. I noted the extensive influence of the Song of Songs on Mechthild’s work and other medieval writers, men and women alike. I also encouraged her to consider what all this communicates about God, who is the main focus and subject of Mechthild’s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graduate Advising & Mentoring<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mentor Group
<\/em><\/strong>All GST professors lead a small mentor group of about 5-8 GST students. Full-time residential students are required to participate in mentor groups for 2-3 years, depending on the length of their degree. Meeting weekly with my mentor groups during the semester has been one of the highlights of my time with the GST. I’ve had some groups that gelled right away, and even after we’d stopped being an official mentor group, we still got together for reunions. Other groups have been more work\u2014I could sense that they expected something more from me, but they also did not contribute much to our conversations. I’ve tried some experiments to make mentor group more focused and meaningful. Last year, my group committed to practice daily silent prayer. When we gathered together once a week, we practiced silent prayer together, read aloud from a spiritual text, discussed our practice and the text together, and prayed for each other. It was a good experience, and I would be interested to try it again. Our contextual education director, Dr. Mason Lee, is working to redesign mentor groups, and I’ll be happy to participate in his future plans and to contribute whatever I can to our efforts to enhance mentoring across the GST.

MDiv Advising
<\/strong><\/em>I am the academic advisor for residential and international Master of Divinity students. I currently have 45-50 students on my advising list; the actual number fluctuates depending on how many are active in a given semester or academic year. (I’ve also mentioned this briefly in my “Service to the Department<\/a>” section.) I don’t receive a course release for my academic advising.

I always try to meet with my residential advisees face-to-face or in real-time on Zoom for advising. This requires a significant time commitment in the middle of the fall and spring semesters, but it gives me a chance to follow developments in my students’ vocational discernment and tailor my academic advice accordingly. It’s also a good time to check in about the less tangible aspects of ministerial formation: service in the church, habits of prayer\/spiritual formation, general well-being, doubt, struggle, etc. There are many essential elements of ministerial formation that are hard to measure in a classroom, and I try to use advising time to check in with students about these things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

MA Thesis Committees
<\/strong><\/em>It has been a pleasure to serve as a reader for several MA students’ theses. Some of our MA Ancient and Oriental Christianity students have been working with Jeff Childers to edit and translate Syriac texts that have never been published before. I’ve enjoyed providing a second pair of eyes for their prospectuses, editions, translations, and chapters. In the process, we’ve also had a lot of conversations about Ph.D. programs, life in the academy, and academic service to the church. I have participated in the thesis defenses of Ethan Laster, Laura Estes, Daniel Marolf, Jordan Turney, and Penny Biddy. These are bright students who would have succeeded without me, but I was glad to contribute to their training during their time at ACU. Ethan and Laura went on to do Ph.D. programs; Laura recently graduated and now has a tenure-track position at Pepperdine University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doctor of Ministry Teaching & Project Thesis Committees
<\/em><\/strong>While I don’t have regular responsibilities for the Doctor of Ministry program, I have taught a 4-hour period during their first-year residential intensives for the last several years. I have been a reader on four DMin project thesis defense committees: Joshua Marcum, Shannon Clarkson Raines, Heather Heflin Hodges, and Jana Unruh. I am currently the second on a thesis committee for Johnnie Birks, whose project is to write a Jerusalem pilgrimage guide for her non-profit organization.

Notes from Students about Mentoring and Advising<\/strong>
I asked Lindsay Marolf, a former student, for a letter of support for my tenure. Lindsay and I have known each other for many years in a variety of contexts, so she is uniquely suited to speak to my work as a mentor, advisor, and teacher (on the undergraduate and graduate levels). Here is her letter of support<\/a>.

Over the years, I’ve received many other unsolicited notes from students thanking me for my work as a faculty mentor and an advisor. I have attached a sample of them here:
– Dana Glover<\/a>
– Ariel Bloomer<\/a>
– Morgan DeBoer<\/a>
– Ethan Laster<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next page: Incorporating Student Feedback<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Undergraduate Mentoring I have enjoyed mentoring three undergraduate students through honors contracts or senior theses. In the fall of 2017, Lindsie Lawson did an honors contract on Muslim-Christian relations for my BCOR class; she was planning to apply for a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8400,"featured_media":0,"parent":83,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-176","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kelligibson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kelligibson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kelligibson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kelligibson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kelligibson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kelligibson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":912,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kelligibson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/176\/revisions\/912"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kelligibson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kelligibson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}