Skip to main content
Home » Resources » Blogs

Blogs

The Importance of Being an Absent-Minded Professor

Tat-siong Benny Liew Class of 1956 Professor in New Testament Studies College of the Holy Cross If you can remember a time when you kept track of your appointments by writing them on a huge calendar pad that took up half of your desktop (and you know that “desktop” once

Learning in Tragedy-Time

Derek Nelson Associate Professor of Religion Wabash College On February 17 the Wabash community got word that police were on the campus looking for a suspect in a double murder. As it turned out, the suspect was an employee. He had taken a college van, and later ended his life

Teaching Islam and gender: why we need to set an ethical agenda for the classroom

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...

A Strategy to Re-Humanize

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

Seize the moment, trash your lesson plan

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”

Syllabus creation

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

Learning through Experience: Memorization and Recitation

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

The Need to Speak Up . . . from the Start!

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

Ten curriculum assessment tools every dean needs. Part 4: Using Program-Level Assessment Rubrics

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.).

Looking back, but really looking forward

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.

Write for us

We invite friends and colleagues of the Wabash Center from across North America to contribute periodic blog posts for one of our several blog series.

Contact:
Donald Quist
[email protected]
Educational Design Manager, Wabash Center

Most Popular

On Plagiarism and Feeling Betrayed

On Plagiarism and Feeling Betrayed

Posted by Katherine Turpin on October 27, 2025

Executive Leadership Involves New Questions

Executive Leadership Involves New Questions

Posted by Nancy Lynne Westfield, Ph.D. on December 1, 2025

The Top Five (2025)

The Top Five (2025)

Posted by Donald Quist on December 15, 2025

Xenophobia

Xenophobia

Posted by Daniel Orlando Álvarez on October 15, 2025