Blogs

Caleb Elfenbein Assistant Professor Grinnell College Last year, I began asking students in my Islam, gender, and sexuality course to write a paragraph about what they think it means to study these topics from a humanistic perspective. It’s the first thing they write for the course. This year (as with...

Nancy Lynne Westfield Associate Professor of Religious Education Drew Theological School The intent of racism is to dehumanize. Consequently, a prevalent strategy of racism is to convince caring people that non-white people are lacking - lacking in values, lacking in character, lacking in abilities, lacking in that which makes for

Sufia Uddin Associate Professor Connecticut College Since 9/11, colleges and universities have increased their course offerings in Islamic traditions and Muslim cultures. Yet, it seems that anti-Muslim rhetoric is everywhere. In Caleb Elfenbein’s recent blog, he points out that our students know only the world with our “war on terror”

Cláudio Carvalhaes Associate Professor McCormick Theological Seminar To teach is to create worlds. Worlds known and unknown, worlds that we will visit and be visited by, worlds that will haunt us. Worlds that we hope students will engage in many ways. Worlds that hopefully will show the ways in which

Martin Nguyen Associate Professor Fairfield University Teaching the Qur’an can be a formidable undertaking. Even though the Qur’an is an abiding research interest of mine, it makes teaching the scripture no less challenging. What do I choose to cover and how should I go about it in the course of

Tat-siong Benny Liew Class of 1956 Professor in New Testament Studies College of the Holy Cross After about six months and fifteen horrible haircuts in the San Francisco Bay area I finally found somebody who could give me a decent haircut, and I became a loyal customer for the

Theological school deans are not just theological leaders for their institution, they must be EDUCATIONAL leaders. That is, they must implement sound educational practices related to curriculum, instruction, supervision, assessment, and administration. While faculty members can focus on course-level and individual student learning assessment, academic deans need to implement program-level assessment in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the school's curricular course of study. There is a variety of ways to assess the effectiveness of the curriculum, and there are several levels of assessment (program-level, course-level, student testing, student projects, etc.).

Molly Bassett Associate Professor of Religious Studies Georgia State University A week into the spring semester, the fall term seems like it was forever ago! In my last post, I talked about the informal evaluations my students took, and since writing that post, I have thought about some of the.

Sophie Gilliat-Ray Director Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK Cardiff University The Muslim populations of most Western societies have grown over the last two decades as a result of immigration and conversion to Islam. This has drastically changed the landscape in which teaching and learning about Islam.

Nancy Lynne Westfield Associate Professor of Religious Education Drew Theological School Teaching for racial equality, and against oppression, has meant coming to grips with what my adult students (domestic and international) do not know, i.e. the basic concepts of race and the mechanisms of racism in the United States. Teaching