Episode 57 - The “I” That Teaches: Mitzi Smith
Dialogue on Teaching, Wabash Center’s podcast series, is hosted by Nancy Lynne Westfield, Ph.D., Director of the Wabash Center. Amplifying the Wabash Center’s mission, the podcasts focus upon issues of teaching and learning in theology and religion within colleges, university, seminaries, as well as the publics impacted by these schools. Dialogues with faculty and administrators working in the wide range of institutional contexts illumine the complexity of teaching and the teaching life.
This podcast was taken from the "The “I” That Teaches” video series. It is a project that invites senior scholars to talk about their teaching lives. These scholar-teachers candidly discuss how religious, educational, and family backgrounds inform their vocational commitments and, also, characterize their teaching persona. From the vantage point of a practiced teaching philosophy we get an intimate account of the value and art of teaching well.
“My mother’s faith was foundational, and still is foundational, in terms of what it means to care about other people,” says New Testament scholar Mitzi Smith. “But what is different is that…my faith has developed into a critical faith.” It is a critical engagement with the Gospels, in the service of helping others to deepen their sense of shared responsibility, that she brings into the classroom. Early family experiences, formative relationships and training informs our teaching identity. “I teach with all that I am,” pronounces Prof. Smith. A native of Columbus, Ohio she began her teaching career at Ashland Theological Seminary in Detroit, Michigan. However, Dr. Smith has recently accepted an appointment as the J. Davison Philips Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia.