Applications due January 15, 2010
Decisions will be announced by March 1, 2010

Dates:
First Session: July 12-17, 2010 – Wabash College
Second Session: January 27-30, 2011 – Corpus Christi Texas
Third Session: June 13-18, 2011 – Wabash College

Leadership Team:
Willie James Jennings, Duke Divinity School, Director
Robert Pazmiño, Andover Newton Theological School
Amy Oden, Wesley Theological Seminary
Virginia Wiles, New Brunswick Theological Seminary
Paul Myhre, Wabash Center

Eligibility:

• at least 2 years post-tenure
• minimum of 10 years teaching experience
• teaching full-time in an accredited seminary or theological school in the United States or Canada
• commitment to full participation, from the beginning to ending date and time, for the three workshop sessions
  Read our Policy on Full Participation (click here)
  

Description:
This colloquy will gather 14 teachers who are in their mid-years of teaching, from the granting of tenure (or its equivalent) to the last decade or so before retirement. This period in a teaching career presents its own particular challenges for teaching and learning. This is a time when reflection can help mid-career faculty to identify possibilities, renew commitment, venture in a heretofore unconsidered direction, and compose a more clarified sense of self and purpose.

This year's mid-career colloquy will take as its organizing theme, "The Art of the Teaching Life" giving faculty the opportunity to reflect on their identities as teachers in their institutions through the identities of artists. How might our understanding of the teaching life be deepened by imagining its form through the identities and realities of artists? This colloquy is not aimed necessarily at those in the arts, rather we are looking for faculty who are at the point of asking questions such as:

• Now that I have given myself to the teaching life, do I like who I have become or who I am becoming? Have I found my voice in the classroom, in my scholarship, at my institution? Or have I lost interest in the intellectual expressions of my discipline, my institution, or the vocation of teaching?
• Now that I have gained distance from my teachers and mentors, how have I charted my own vision of the teaching life in terms of my pedagogy, my scholarship, and involvement in my institution? In what ways am I yet expressing the gratitude and/or grief of the doctoral formation process in my vocational identity?
• In what ways do I sense my unique contribution to the classroom, my discipline, and my institution? Or is the uniqueness of my voice absent or weak in one or more of these crucial sites?
• Where is the dream now, for my teaching, my scholarship, or my institutional life? What are the projects that now I am prepared to imagine that will demand all my wisdom, experience, and skill? If here is no dream now, what does that mean?
• Where do I want to take the students with the art of teaching? Is it the same places I have grown accustomed to taking them and do I remain satisfied with the destination? Or are there new places I want to go and have them go with me?
• Do I sense generational, cultural, theological, political, and ideological differences from my students and what does that mean for my life as their teacher?
• Is the health of my institution such that I will have to imagine taking on a greater leadership role or must I now begin to imagine the teaching life apart from my institution or even apart from a foreseeable teaching position?
  

Colloquy Goals:
The overarching goal of the colloquy will be to engage in sustained reflection on the teaching life in terms of our work in the classroom environment, our scholarship, and our citizenship in our theological institution through the identities of artists. We will do this through:

• Reflecting carefully on the teacher as artist by considering the formation of artists, noting the parallels, differences, and points of convergence
• Comparing pedagogical form to artistic form by considering the best practices available in teaching and learning in relation to various artistic media (for example, in acting, dancing, oratory, singing, playing an instrument, painting, sculpting, and other forms of crafting)
• Exploring the significance of a "life with students," and the necessary relationships for sustaining such an "exposed" life
• Exploring the mentoring, nurturing, facilitating, and directing characteristics of a "life that teaches" by comparing the embodied wisdom of a teacher with the intimate relation of the artist and her art
• Reflecting on the political nature of the teaching life in its context and content, and its problems and possibilities
• Forming a modest project that will deepen participant familiarity with an artistic form
• Building relationships that will support and sustain participants during the time of the colloquy, and hopefully beyond
  

Read More (click here)

Immigration status has no bearing on the Wabash Center’s selection of participants. It impacts only our ability to pay these participants a stipend. We deeply regret these restrictions but are confident that participants who are not eligible for a stipend will nonetheless find our programs valuable even without a stipend.

Follow-up grant or fellowship:
Participants will be eligible to apply for a follow-up grant or fellowship of $1,000 for deepening a sense of artistry or spiritual direction tied to teaching and learning. Details will be provided during the colloquy.

1) Application contact information form.
Apply online (create your own login id and password)
or Download pdf here. and print out an application to fill-in and POSTMARK by January 15, 2010.
-- -- ( Click Here to login and continue an application already placed on hold.)

2) Introductory letter describing your teaching situation and your reasons for wanting to participate in the workshop, including how your participation will support your development as a teacher.

3) Brief Essay 1
Describe a recent teaching experience when you felt you were expressing yourself in precisely the way you imagined, and then describe a teaching experience where you felt things were going badly. What did you learn about yourself from each experience? (1,000 words)

4) Brief Essay 2
Describe the kind of relationship you strive to have with your students in terms of your discipline, your life among them, and your participation inyour institution. (1,000 words)

5) Academic CV (4 page limit)

6) Two letters of recommendation demonstrating institutional support for your participation in this workshop and describing your interest and skills as a teacher (including one from your dean or department chair). Please have these letters sent directly to you, and include them with the rest of your application materials (whether applying online or applying by mail-in application).

7) Agreement to the Policy on Full Participation read here

All application materials must be postmarked by January 15, 2010. Please submit all application materials together in one packet (1 copy is sufficient). We encourage applicants to apply online by filling out the online application form and attaching the requisite documents online.