Resources
Becoming Anti-Racist and Catalysts for Change Virtual Symposium Using Mobilization Pedagogy Leadership Melanie Harris, Ph.D., Texas Christian University Jennifer Harvey, Ph.D., Drake University Paul Myhre, The Wabash Center Participants Anthony Bateza, St. Olaf College Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom, North Park Theological Seminary María Teresa Dávila, Merrimack College Teresa Delgado, Iona College Michal Beth Dinkler, Yale Divinity School Holly Hillgardner, Bethany College Michael S. Hogue, Meadville Lombard Theological School Deborah M. Jackson, Sewanee: The University of the South Beatrice Marovich, Hanover College Michael Brandon McCormack, University of Louisville Angela Nicole Parker, Mercer University - Atlanta Heike Peckruhn, Daemen College Justin Michael Reed, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Nathaniel Samuel, Loyola University Chicago Tyler Schwaller, Wesleyan College Katherine A. Shaner, Wake Forest University Divinity School Deanna Ferree Womack, Candler School of Theology - Emory University Yvonne Zimmerman, Methodist Theological School in Ohio Description 0f Cohort The most recent protest activities of the Black Lives Matter coalitions have rekindled the national consciousness and served to nurture moral courage across our society. The pervasiveness of white supremacy in higher education contexts adversely affects the formation of all students as well as the vocational trajectory of faculty and administrators. In this moment, there is a desperate need for professors and administrators of religion and theology to discuss issues of race and racism, and these conversations have to then mobilize actions of equity, reparation and healing. Talking about race means naming the reality of white privilege, hierarchy, and the pain of the oppressed and the oppressor; it is a risky conversation, but worthwhile if change is to occur. This virtual symposium will gather colleagues, representatives of schools, for six sessions (November to June), while, at the same time, those representatives also meet regularly with colleagues at their respective schools. The meetings with colleagues at each school will be to metabolize, disseminate, and design based upon the discussions with Harris and Harvey. In so doing, the gathered conversations with Harris and Harvey will seed and inspire embedded projects in multiple locations about the nature and workings of race, racism, and white supremacy. The two layers of discussions along with the embedded project will be catalysts for institutional change toward health and wholeness of many campus climates and institutional ecologies. Embedded Project In additional to participation with the cohort group, which will meet regularly with Dr. Harris and Dr. Harvey, each applicant is asked to create a conversation group at their own institution. The applicant, as the leader of the institutional conversation group, will recruit 2 to 5 members of your institution (staff, faculty, administration) who will meet from November to June to: (a) hear your report and continue the discussion on racism as sparked by the conversation with the cohort group and Drs. Harris and Harvey and, (b) design an embedded project which will mobilize your school on an issue of race, racism and healing. The embedded project is eligible for a non-competitive small grant from Wabash Center. See guidelines for Small Grants Proposal on the Wabash Center website. The small grant deadline is May 12, 2021. Goals This cohort experience, coupled with the embedded project, is meant to: Equip faculty to be active and able participants in classrooms and institutions that are, or are becoming, racially diverse. Grapple with the ramifications and realities of working in a school that remains racially unjust. Create space to conceive strategies to help facilities learn to function well in racial diversity. Mobilize faculties toward projects of equity, reparation, and healing. Model being and feeling equipped to talk about race, anti-racism in classrooms of religion and theology. Dates and Times Cohort will convene via Zoom with Harris and Harvey on the following Wednesdays, 2:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern Time: Wednesday, November 11 2:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern Wednesday, December 9 2:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern Wednesday, February 10 2:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern Wednesday, March 24 2:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern Wednesday, April 14 2:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern Wednesday, May 12 2:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern Wednesday, June 9 2:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern Grant Application Deadline: May 12, 2021 How to be anti-racist: Speak out in your own circles features quotes from Jennifer Harvey, symposium leader. Important Links Payment of Participants Policy on Full Participation Travel and Accommodations Travel Reimbursement Form Questions about the Symposium? Dr. Paul O. Myhre Senior Associate Director myhrep@wabash.edu. Honorarium Participants in the Symposium will receive an honorarium of $3,000 for full participation in the online sessions. Honorarium for members of the embedded project is $250 each. Read More about Payment of Participants Social Media Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Flicker Lilly Endowment, Inc. Other Lilly Supported Initiatives
What does it mean to create virtual community…when you are new to teaching? Creating healthy intimacy and appropriate vulnerability in online courses takes planning. Give yourself permission to be slow. Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfields hosts Dr. Rachelle Green (Fordham University).
I have been a consultant for the Wabash Center for more than a decade now, and I still often wonder what I am supposed to be doing when I consult, and how I should be doing it. Supporting colleagues in the intimate and courageous act of opening up their teaching to other colleagues’ input is often an uncharted journey. I think it’s even more challenging in an era where the primary pandemic I worry about is the one having to do with discerning what is true and real, and what is not. I think you can talk about this in any number of ways—COVID-19, racial injustice, climate catastrophe—but at heart the question is how we navigate the complex and multiple realities we and our students are inhabiting. I have had the enormous privilege of walking alongside two gifted colleagues these past few months—Dr. Mitzi Smith and Dr. Dan Ulrich—as they took on the challenges of designing and leading a course together, where one of them was the expert and the other was the learner, all the while walking alongside their student learners. Drs. Smith and Ulrich are Second/New Testament scholars, teaching in two very different seminary contexts. Dr. Smith is an African American woman, and Dr. Ulrich is a white man. This last sentence is at the heart of the project they took on, within the Wabash Center’s grant program, to imagine and embody what it can mean to develop a pedagogically effective and ethically responsible trans‐contextual online intensive course. They set out to bring into focus African American and womanist approaches to sacred texts—both those of the Bible, and those of the lives of women and men whose struggles are part and parcel of having no permanent shelter. Dr. Smith was the formal teacher, Dr. Ulrich the formal learner. And I was a listener, a learner, and perhaps a cheerleader as they tried to walk this walk. I think I know a lot when it comes to designing learning in digital spaces—but much of what I know is not relevant when trauma is the essential ecology in which we are living. Here are things I learned: Teaching and learning are thoroughly relational, and this moment in time requires us to face that reality directly and intentionally—it is no longer possible to pretend that what we do is purely cognitive. It’s really difficult to be trained as an expert in your discipline, and from that training demonstrate being an active learner. Humility and openness are key to navigating this terrain, but they are rarely the skills or capacities we are rewarded for in our scholarship. Empathy, not sympathy, is essential in this work but the difference between these two abilities is not generally taught in higher education. Certainly our students find the distinctions very difficult to parse. Structural and systemic racism are so much a part of higher education that it takes a lot of effort simply to discern the “next right step” in resisting them. Teaching together needs to begin in relationship-building long before a syllabus is written, let alone implemented. There is a necessary balance to be found between the improvisational nature of teaching when you are doing it alone, and the shared work of collaborative pedagogical design. Institutional constraints will force certain problematic compromises to be made no matter how committed you are to justice. Here are questions I still have: What kind of authority is it necessary to have in a class? With a colleague? As a consultant? How do you say “I’m sorry” in a way that matters? What does it mean to be an “expert” in an academy so riddled with injustice that the very performance of “expertise” may be re-inscribing that injustice? What degree of transparency is important for students gaining a sense of the power dynamics embedded in specific academic disciplines, and when might it be better to obscure them? I am left with a profound gratitude that there are scholars in this world who are seeking to break down some of the power dynamics of the academy. I remain thoroughly committed to the search for a “pedagogically effective and ethically responsible trans‐contextual” way of teaching even if I’m still not sure what that looks like—at least this project has offered me a hopeful glimpse!
What could it mean to seize this moment as a time for creativity and opportunity to rethink teaching? In what ways can data driven decisions impact design of new educational paradigms? What are the new set of skills needed by professors in this digital age? Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield hosts Dr. Frank Yamada (Association of Theological Schools).
Kwok Pui Lan (Candler School of Theology at Emory University) and Tat-siong Benny Liew (Holy Cross College) interviewed Dr. Sarah Bogue of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University . They discussed ways for building community in virtual teaching and online learning. Creative ways of using Zoom and other technologies in online learning are explored. Incentivizing student interaction both within and outside of class meeting times helped to foster a community of learning.
Kwok Pui Lan (Candler School of Theology - Emory University) and Tat-siong Benny Liew (Holy Cross College) interviewed Dr. Kristina Reardon, Director of the Writer’s Workshop at the College of the Holy Cross. They discussed the challenges of turning a class into a community while teaching remotely. Strategies for supporting and resourcing student learning needs, especially for college students, are explored in the video.
Wabash Center Staff Contact
Sarah Farmer, Ph.D
Associate Director
Wabash Center
farmers@wabash.edu