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Walking the beach, I am caught by the ordered chaos of blue and white shards oriented around a large center shell. What a great image of centered-set thinking, I muse, and pull out my phone to capture the image. Isn’t a part of the deans’ job to keep pointing to the center? To guard not the boundaries but the heart? In the midst of shifting cultural forces, the changing nature of the institutional church and theological education (all our usual suspects), we are committed to a common mission, living a common life, journeying toward a common goal. But a poet reminds me that “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” And the words trouble me because I long for the center to hold. What I don’t see, until I bring the captured image up on my screen, is the bright luminous reflection offering me a glimpse of another reality to which the whole enterprise is oriented. And I think, yes, it is true. The deans’ job is to keep orienting toward the center and fortunately, we do not do it alone.

I imagine that once upon a time, a child joyfully ran along the beach in this sandal - picking up shells, building sculptures in the sand, playing in the waves. But, after a season at sea, this sandal would be difficult to walk in – it’s nearly broken in half, now the home of sea life, and no longer part of a pair. Plus, the child who wore it last summer has likely outgrown it. A new season calls for new equipment. Deans are called to help theological institutions, and the people within them, realize these same sorts of things. The shoes we’ve been wearing (perhaps our curricula, organizational structures, recruiting processes, systems of student support, and faculty cultures) don’t always serve us well in a new season. Moving beyond unneeded parts of the past – first naming and then letting go of old ways and sacred cows – can be difficult, however, and so deans also need to care well for faculty, staff, students, and ourselves amid times of significant change. It’s OK to swap out equipment, and sometimes it’s the best option. We still need shoes to get us where we are going, shoes that will provide cushion and support and protection and make the journey easier, but it’s likely time for a new pair of sandals. New equipment may take time to break in, but we can trust that it will serve us well in this new season and allow us to explore and build and play in response to the divine invitation to equip God’s people to serve as they have been called

The ocean – dynamic, powerful and vast – the dean must be willing to be there; walking with and leading others into the movements of change. The dunes - stable, protective and slow – the dean must be a stable and sustaining presence, standing strong with others in the midst of storms. Or perhaps the dean must be the bridge, creating the pathway between energies of stability and change; walking purposefully back and forth between the two and inviting others to walk along.

The image of the beach environment displays its givens: sand, sea, sky, dunes, plants, even the unseen particles in the air. The image of the boardwalk and “private property” sign shows a (passable) boundary onto which one can walk to the beach. It provides narrow, bounded access to a more open, free beach space. In times of change, the academic dean must understand the givens and the boundaries of theological education. Givens are the physical (temporal) and ontological realities that give boundary (like the narrow boardwalk) and freedom (like the open beach) to the work of the dean. As deans of theological schools, theological givens ought to be primary. As the beach becomes something else without sand, sea, and sky, the theological school becomes something else without a certain set of theological givens, and their relationship to other realities. Theological convictions and commitments rooted in texts and traditions, and how they cohere, serve as the sand, sea, and sky of the theological school environment. Other givens––cultural, social, institutional, etc.––will inform each dean’s context. The theological givens, I think, order and prioritize the other givens. The dean must know and value the givens in order to understand and carry out her role as an academic leader. Boundaries show the dean the context and scope of her work. They also indicate lines that either ought not or should be crossed. At times, the dean must help faculty, staff, and students flourish within a certain boundary, whether institutional, cultural, social or others. Other times, the dean must help faculty, staff, and students break through boundaries such as an antiquated and disparate curriculum. Curriculum revision offers one example where the academic dean leads the school to define new boundaries. These new academic boundaries will resonate if they reflect the givens of the school, like the boardwalk “fits” the beach environment because of how it helps us access and enjoy the beach. Academic leadership necessitates clear vision and creative discovery of the proper path for the people of the theological school. The givens and the boundaries of the school give the dean a context and lenses for that vision. When changes to theological education come, as they always have, a clear vision enables the dean to see his or her way forward so that the faculty, students, staff, and other constituents of the school may confidently follow, even if the future is unclear.

It sighed again the shark. Spitting out yet more fun gleeful humans thrilled at its unreal teeth.

The cactus can be a metaphor for our institutions; institutions whose pasts may seem dead, yet there may still be new growth emerging. The cactus grows around its historical center. The flowers are new life, distinct from and arising out of the present – in all its steadfastness, stability, and prickliness. The dean is to be the light of perspective whose shadow highlights the institution’s place in time.

I was not happy to see the headlights of an approaching dune buggy – its presence would ruin the unspoiled beauty of the beach. Yet when the dune buggy (labeled the “Turtle Patrol”) got close, I realized that the very friendly driver was actually removing a lot of plastic and other litter from the beach, thus caring for and enhancing its natural beauty. I still do not like vehicles on the beach, but I need to be more discerning. In theological education, as a dean, I must learn to withhold prior judgment of what I perceive about the ‘dune buggies’ approaching in the distance.

Walking along the long stretch of beach, the cross-section of the dunes revealed the stringy roots of the foliage penetrating and crisscrossing below the surface. This suggests that despite the shifting of the sands comprising the dunes, the roots help anchor the plants and enable them to continue thriving. Similarly, deans can draw upon their knowledge of the school’s history and roots to maintain a certain stability despite significant changes taking place around the institution.

The 2017-18 Deans’ Colloquy was constituted by a diverse group of deans representing 11 schools in the USA and Canada. Drs. Deborah Krause (Eden Theological Seminary), Luis R. Rivera (Garrett-Evangelical Theological School), and Paul Myhre (Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion) were the facilitators. The group met in Mustang Island for the second half of the colloquy. One of the topics for reflection was: “the Dean’s leadership role in times of deep changes in theological education.” The Deans were given an assignment to spend 45 minutes walking around the beach to identify aspects of the physical environment that may evoke thoughts or visions on the topic. They returned and shared their findings in small groups and then in plenary. It was a rich conversation. The group decided to share some of their reflections in the Wabash Center’s blog series for Theological School Deans. Instead of presenting thoughts in one particular way, they decided to do it freely . . . like the wind . . . like the waves . . . . The next 10 posts in this blog series represent some of those reflections.

Arguably, due to suspicion, skepticism, and the entrenchment of classroom teaching practices, the most scrutinized, assessed, and evaluated pedagogy in theological schools in the last two decades has been online learning (“distance education”). Fortunately, the skepticism that fueled a demand for more rigorous evaluation of student learning in the online environment has yielded hard evidence that online learning is as effective, and sometimes more effective, than traditional classroom teaching. The goal of this work by Catalano, an associate professor of teaching and learning at Hofstra University, is “to assist researchers of distance education, both novice and expert, in finding well-developed and value measures to suit their research questions” (2). The focus of the book is “on properly validated measures, thereby relieving the researcher from having to develop his or her own instrument” (2).     Catelano provides a concise guide to seventy selected assessment instruments (surveys, scales, and methods) that have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of online learning programs. The instruments can be applied to evaluate key metrics and pedagogical, as well as programmatic, elements such as: student engagement, student and faculty satisfaction, information retention, self-efficacy, student and teacher readiness, the online learning environment, cooperative learning, competencies for online learning, student attitudes, student retention and attrition, critical thinking, and achievement. Several instruments focus on specific pedagogical approaches such as constructivism and andragogy. Five chapters provide nine categories of evaluations. Specifically, Chapter 1 provides eleven instruments on student engagement and satisfaction. Chapter 2 contains sixteen instruments on student readiness to learn and self-efficacy. Chapter 3 offers a selection of seventeen instruments focusing on the online teaching and learning environment. Chapter 4 provides twelve instruments on student learning behaviors. Chapter 5 contains five instruments to assess student achievement, retention, and attrition. Obviously, there are enough offerings in these chapters to meet just about any evaluation need an assessor may have. Each chapter includes a brief overview of each instrument covered. Each instrument entry includes a summary of the tool, a description of how the measure is used, and a description of its development and validity.         Some of the instruments described are complete tools (for example, a fully developed satisfaction questionnaire, a complete survey on student evaluation of online web-based instruction, and one on the online learning environment. Other instruments are described with information about their sources should an assessor wish to use them.          In the Introduction Catalano provides helpful background on the criteria for inclusion of the instruments selected for the compendium. The author describes the search process used in identifying the instruments, including applying the criteria of ensuring reliability and validity. For those needing to continue to assess online learning through disciplined and rigorous evaluations, whether as part of formative curricular assessment or to satisfy accreditation requirements, Amy Catalano’s brief compendium of assessment instruments, scales, and approaches is a handy and accessible tool. Indeed, it should be on every evaluator’s desk.