Application Dates:

Opens: July 1, 2025
Deadline: September 24, 2025

Schedule of Sessions

• March 17,  2026, 3-5:00 pm ET
• April 14, 2026, 3-5:00 pm ET
• May 19, 2026, 3-5:00 pm ET
• June 22-26, 2026 in-person (held at Wabash Center, Crawfordsville, IN)
• July 21 , 2026, 3-5:00 pm ET
• August 25, 2026, 3-5:00 pm ET
• September 22, 2026, 3-5:00 pm ET

Leadership Team

Participants

TBD

Description

In a time when higher education is under scrutiny and institutions are in flux, critical reflection on teaching can become sidelined. We want to turn our attention to imagining and creating moments of possibility in which something different can happen—in which teachers can bring their whole selves to work and play to create a sustainable life.

This hybrid workshop invites early career faculty from diverse scholarly specializations and institutional contexts to join a relational community committed to creating a collaborative learning cohort. We will reflect on how to:

• Move from loneliness to having companions/community/mentors
• Move from desperate survival to strategic thinking and design
• Move from every class being a challenge to a sense of alignment and creative expression in the teaching life
• Move from being overwhelmed to making good choices to navigate the demands of career
• Move from the grind to “the work your soul must have”

The hybrid workshop will gather for six online sessions and an in-person summer workshop at Wabash Center. Sessions will include small group and plenary discussions, structured and unstructured social time, and time for personal and communal growth, relaxation, restoration, and shared meals.

Goals

• To create an environment for collaboration and conversation around teaching and learning 
• To create a restorative space in which participants can reflect on their vocation as teachers
• To engage participants in their development of the craft of teaching through critical reflection on a variety of tools, practices, and methods
• To encourage participants to own and develop their sense of embodied agency in their teaching, institutional life, and career development

Eligibility

Participants must be/have:

• Full-time tenure track or continuing term relationship with one school
• 1-6 years of teaching experience at the institution of current employment
• Teach religion, religious studies, or theology in an accredited college, university, or seminary in the United States, Puerto Rico, or Canada. If working in related fields, must be teaching primary courses focused on issues of religion or theology
• Doctoral degree awarded by January 2025
• Institutional support and personal commitment to participate fully in all workshop sessions
• Tenure decision (if applicable) no earlier than January of 2026
• Hold a job description or contract that includes at least 50% teaching responsibility
•  

Application Materials

• Application Contact Information form 
  
  
• Cover letter: In one single-spaced page, discuss a conversation about your teaching that you would love to have with colleagues but aren’t able to have. What role do you see peer colleagues and collaborators playing in your growth as an early career teacher and scholar?
  
  
• Brief essay in two parts:
  
  Part One: In 250 words or fewer, who is your teaching hero, and what do you want to adopt or adapt from them?
  
  Part Two: In 250 words or fewer, tell us a story about a time or a moment when you were teaching where you said to yourself: “This is why I wanted to teach.” What was happening, and how did it feel?
  
  
• Academic CV (4-page limit) 
  
  
• A letter of institutional support for your full participation in this workshop from your Department Chair, Academic Dean, Provost, Vice President, or President. Please have this recommendation uploaded directly to your application according to the online application instructions.