What Difference Does Your Christian Faith Make in the Classroom? The CCCU Launches Faith & Learning Integration Channel
By Heather M. Surls
The CCCU will celebrate, model, exemplify, research, protect, advance, and encourage the rigorous integration of faith with scholarship in all disciplines as the profound distinctive of Christian higher education. We will be an incubator, a lab, a spark plug, an advocate for the integration of faith and learning.
A
cross CCCU campuses, faculty
at Christian institutions, will find valuable
members are on a quest to integrate
examples of faith-learning integration.
their Christian faith and academic
disciplines. They are reading books on the topic. They are giving lectures and writing papers. They are attending faculty development workshops and talking with their colleagues. And at some point, they are stepping into their classrooms and actually practicing what Margaret Diddams calls the
Brad Shaw, interim vice president of academic affairs and professor of English at Greenville College in Greenville, Ill., and Deloy Cole, director of the digital media department at Greenville, brought the vision for FLIC to life. Last spring, they filmed pilot videos of faculty at nine CCCU campuses,
Faith-learning integration is a challenge, Smith says, because higher education faculty often have not had extensive pedagogical training and are more comfortable with scholarly discussion than discussion about how to teach and portray Christian values to students.
resulting in about 50 videos, approximately
When first asked to participate in FLIC, Smith
half of which made it through the rigors of
hesitated. “The model videos that I was
Diddams, director of the Center for
peer review to be included in the initial library
shown were essentially talking-heads videos.
Scholarship and Faculty Development at
of videos available for FLIC’s launch.
… So they implied a model of teaching
“art” of faith-learning integration.
Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, Wash., understands what a challenge this can be. While CCCU institutions have wonderful faculty, she says, they do not always know
Shaw was motivated to co-lead the project by the need for a resource like FLIC at Greenville and the lack of real-life, non-print
how to best bring faith into the classroom.
media examples for faculty across the CCCU.
The CCCU’s new Faith & Learning Integration
academic exercise in scholarship,” he says.
Channel, an online library of videos showing
“It’s about how we help students bring those
faculty doing just this in the classroom, is a
two things together in the classroom.”
“Faith-learning integration isn’t just about the
resource for those desiring to improve the
where you stand and say things to people,” he says. Smith did not agree to film his video, “Teaching Languages and Honoring Strangers,” until he was able to simulate a classroom experience, complete with student volunteers and back-and-forth dialogue. Both elements are essential to his conviction that faith-learning integration is more than what is said in the syllabus.
faith-learning integration in their teaching.
BEYOND THE DISCUSSION AND
As a member of the four-person peer review
Mark Peters, professor of music at Trinity
INTO THE CLASSROOM
Christian College in Palos Heights, Ill.,
The professors featured in the initial videos
agrees. Faith-learning integration is more
do just that. Speaking from a variety of
than praying at the beginning of class
disciplines—from biology to performing
or tacking a Bible verse on the end of a
“The modeling is going to be very powerful,”
arts to sociology—these professors model
lecture, he says. Peters even hesitates at
Diddams says.
concrete examples of applying faith
the catchphrase “faith-learning integration”
principles to academic subjects.
because it treats faith and learning “like two
panel for FLIC, Diddams believes the videos will help make the esoteric practical for these professors.
FLIC officially launched last November as a
things you have to force together.”
response to the CCCU’s recognition of the
David Smith, director of the Kuyers Institute
need for training in this area. Conversations
for Christian Teaching and Learning at
“I believe the question is less, ‘How do you
with faculty on CCCU campuses revealed
Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.,
integrate faith and learning?’ and more,
their desire for more support in the area of
thinks that when it comes to faith-learning
‘What difference does my Christian faith
faith integration.
integration, what faculty do is as important
make in my study of music, or of biology, or
as what they say.
of sociology, or of fill-in-the-blank?’” he says.
resource for schools with small faculty
“I try to think about it as holistically as possible
As evidenced in his FLIC video,
development programs while supplementing
from as many angles as possible,” he says. In
“Encountering an Artwork,” Peters has
the resources of more advanced programs.
addition to teaching ideas that are consistent
spent time thinking through how his faith
In both cases, new and adjunct faculty,
with a Christian worldview, he believes how he
informs his teaching. Three principles guide
who perhaps have not previously taught
acts in the classroom is critical.
him in these thoughts: the belief that the
The CCCU hopes FLIC will be an excellent
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–CCCU President Edward O. Blews, Jr.
CCCU ADVANCE | SPRING 2013