Project Report

December 2002

 

Issue and Context

 

We designed our project to address one question:  How can we prepare ourselves for radical changes in the way we, as faculty, teach and learn?  For several years prior to the June 2000 Lexington Seminar we had been redesigning our M.Div. curriculum.   It called for major changes in the way we do business at Eastern Seminary.  The changes could be characterized in several ways:

·         Moving from teaching-centered to learning-centered pedagogies

·         Moving from a course-based to a competency-based curriculum

·         Moving from reliance on GPAs and supervised ministry evaluations to student assessment and discernment processes from pre-entry through exit

·         Implementing spiritual life and character competencies within the curriculum itself

 

In Fall 1994 we began major curriculum redesign in response to external and internal pressures to increase the effectiveness of our program.  In May 2000 the faculty completed, and the Board of Directors affirmed a first draft of a new M.Div. curriculum.  We knew the new curriculum couldn’t be delivered without radical changes in our teaching and learning habits.  The also knew the process of change would be both personal and corporate, in each of us individually and in all of us together.

 

Fears and anxieties surfaced as the initial date for implementing the new curriculum approached.   Were we ready to deliver this curriculum?  We were excited about the design and goals of the new curriculum, but in our hearts we really wanted someone else to deliver it.  We weren’t quite ready yet to give up old, familiar ways.  We couldn’t imagine what would take their place.  We needed more than an engaging curriculum design and workshops on skills and approaches to learning-centered theological education.  We needed to be converted as teachers and as learners, though not all of us were equally eager to be converted.  We would  need to go against ways of teaching and learning we had come to accept as good, necessary, and even right.  Because of their backgrounds, several colleagues already knew from the inside out where we were going and some of what this would cost.  But how would we get to the starting point together, or at least be headed in the same direction?

 

The question our project addressed was significant for several reasons:

·         Ignoring or minimizing our fears and anxieties would be tantamount to taking ourselves as persons out of the picture both personally and as working colleagues.  Our Seminary’s mission emphasizes the importance of dealing with the whole person.  How would we take ourselves seriously as whole persons?

 

·         Our new curriculum had been designed in an open, cross-disciplinary manner.  Design and delivery of certain courses would follow a similar pattern.  Given deeply ingrained turf habits around individual courses, we couldn’t imagine how this would come to pass.  We had developed corporate ownership and a strong faculty voice around the curriculum itself.  Nonetheless, broader ownership of design and delivery of particular courses would require new levels of collaboration that, in turn, required deeper levels of trust.  What would need to change if we were to reach these levels of trust?

·         Our new curriculum would require students to engage each other differently.  It would require them to demonstrate willingness to learn, along with progress in practicing new competencies.  Our integrity as teachers and learners was at stake; we ourselves had to walk the walk, so to speak, if we expected students to do the same.  Furthermore, we needed to begin this work well before we implemented the new curriculum.  It would change our hearts as well as our behaviors toward students faced with the same requirements.  Would we be able to meet the challenge?  

 

Project Design Activities and Strategies

 

The Lexington project will complement our Wabash project.

We needed to address our own readiness as a faculty for major change.  In addition, we needed to acquire teaching and learning competencies that would serve a learning-centered approach in the classroom.  We decided to focus our Lexington work on readiness for major change and to continue with this focus when we later began a three-year Wabash project.  The Wabash intensive workshops would focus on new competencies needed for teaching and learning in the new curriculum.  We carried out our plan with a series of six retreats and workshops, beginning with the Lexington retreat.  This initial retreat would focus on us, not on teaching and learning competencies as such.  Follow up work would also remain focused on us.  The Wabash intensive workshops would, on the other hand, begin introducing us to new competencies for teaching and learning. 

 

We held our Lexington retreat in March 2001.  In Fall 2001 we had our first major follow-up event, a catered luncheon and conversation about next steps.  By this time we knew major change would include far more than implementing a new curriculum.  We decided to institute a series of Lexington lunches featuring narratives from senior faculty nearing retirement.  In order to prepare for major curricular change we needed to honor and say goodbye to colleagues who had invested hours of creative work in our new curriculum and years of faithful service to the Seminary.  We couldn’t pretend everyone around the table would participate in the future we had envisioned.  Thus, running concurrently with Wabash intensive workshops, we have enjoyed three Lexington lunches in which senior colleagues have shared from their hearts what it has meant to them to be part of Eastern Seminary.  We also had a Lexington lunch at the beginning of this academic year to check in with one another.  In March 2003 we’ll hear from another senior colleague.  Beyond that, we anticipate scheduling two or three more.       

 

Our strategy succeeded admirably.  When we began our Lexington project, we had no idea how much major change we would face in the next two to three years.  Some changes were deeply personal, such as sudden loss of a family member and health crises due to exhaustion and the impact of events in Africa.  As an institution we experienced a series of losses relating to finances, followed by personnel losses and accelerated conversations about becoming part of Eastern University.  Three months after the Lexington Seminar in Maine, we began facing the truth about our financial situation.  Though we welcomed several new faculty members during that Fall, we reluctantly suspended all searches for new colleagues.  In June 2001 the codirector of the project, who was also codirector of our self study process, left to begin a position at another seminary.   In Fall 2001 our president announced his intention to resign in June 2002 as part of moving toward becoming part of Eastern University.  In early February 2002, however,  he announced his departure as of the end of the month, Seminary and University Board approval of a 16-month management plan to move us toward merger, and appointment of a transition team to function as the office of the president from March 1 until the management plan took effect on July 1, 2002.  In May 2002 our library endured a fire, flooding and damage from problems with our plumbing system.  The library was closed all summer for major fire damage recovery.

When we submitted our Lexington grant proposal, we knew moving into our new curriculum would be a kind of death, requiring us to leave behind old habits, assumptions and attitudes.  We didn’t know there would be many other deaths along the way.  The Lexington Project has allowed us time, space and funds for enjoying one another and grieving together in the midst of often overwhelming losses.

 

The project will have two directors:  one teaching faculty member, and one teaching faculty member/administrator.

We had several reasons for this strategy.  Our faculty is small, with most members carrying heavy teaching, advising and committee responsibilities.  We were at the beginning of our self study process which would add significantly to the loads of several faculty members, including the codirectors.  Finally, we needed one director (the associate dean) with access to at least minimal administrative support in order to maintain continuity of process and records.  

 

The plan succeeded in part.  Our codirectors carried most of the weight of designing and writing the actual grant proposal.  Lexington team members and the rest of the faculty participated in shaping the direction we took, but the burden of actually planning and carrying it out would rest with the codirectors. 

 

As described above, however, one of our directors is no longer with us due to taking a position at another seminary.  She wasn’t even able to attend the Spring 2001 Lexington Retreat due to family illness.  Given her key role in both the Lexington Seminar and our work on curriculum redesign, we found ourselves unable to replace her without creating more work for the director.  The director had already used her student assistant to help prepare for and run the Spring 2001 Lexington Retreat.  In September 2001 her student assistant became a full time administrative assistant and has played a key role in setting up our Lexington Lunches.

 

Since the departure of our codirector some steps in the project have been difficult or were delayed.  In addition, we have keenly missed her partnership on the faculty.  Nonetheless, her departure and other unexpected events have served a good purpose.  We needed a slower pace in the academic area in order to deal with institution-wide weariness, and anxiety about our future.

 

The project will have an external consultant/facilitator.

Though we have educators on our faculty, we intentionally sought an external consultant to bring a fresh perspective on challenges and realities we would face within ourselves as we moved closer to radical changes in the ways we teach and learn.   An outside consultant would be taken more seriously than one of our own.  More importantly, the project needed to focus from the beginning on the entire faculty together, not on the faculty minus one designated faculty expert.

 

In our work on the new curriculum we had already benefited from attention to educators such as Stephen Brookfield and Jane Vella.  We had also met with and listened intently to many people:  denominational and church leaders, lay persons, Black clergy in Philadelphia, alumni and students from diverse cultural backgrounds, educational consultants, sociologists, and theological educators with whom we shared drafts of our work on the curriculum.  But all this activity was about the curriculum itself and needs of our students.  It wasn’t about what would need to change within us as seminary professors in order to deliver a learning-oriented curriculum.  We couldn’t imagine what that would take.  We wondered how we would acquire this readiness.  Perhaps we could learn from faculties that had made the kinds of changes we would be making.  We might also learn from faculties that had unsuccessfully attempted similar changes.  But would they know or understand us?  We wanted someone with an outside perspective who would understand where we were coming from in our particular seminary community:  virtually equal numbers of women and men, multiethnic, multiracial, multidenominational, international, evangelical/conservative, motivated toward social justice, committed to local churches, global mission, and the full partnership of ordained women in ministry.

 

The strategy of going with an external consultant/facilitator was very productive, particularly since our consultant was an outsider with insider experience at Eastern Seminary.  Thus her introduction to what it would take for us to change our ways was blunt, honest, visionary, passionate and pastoral.  All of us were able to focus fully on the work at hand, allowing her to be our guide.  She also met other requirements for our consultant:  relevant formal training, experience working with adults in nontraditional teaching and learning settings, insight into and appreciation for the radical changes we face, and knowledge of the literature of adult education. 

 

Though our consultant knew the Seminary and several faculty members well, she didn’t know all of us.  In addition, we hadn’t told her that most teaching faculty members also carry administrative responsibilities.  During the retreat separate assignments were made a few times for teaching faculty and for administrative faculty.  Some weren’t sure of their major identity; a few wished they could become teaching faculty for a day.  If we were doing this again, we would do what we have since done for all subsequent workshops/retreats:  send our facilitator an annotated list of participants and plan so that faculty and administrative exercises are integrated, or carried out at different times.

 

Affilitate faculty and long-term adjuncts will be included in the work of the project.

We have a number of part time faculty members with years of faithful, excellent service to the Seminary.  They have been and will continue to be key players in our curriculum.  Many had already participated in curriculum redesign activities.  We considered it imperative that they be included in this work as well.  Because of other professional obligations we couldn’t require them to participate.  Nonetheless, several have regularly participated in project activities.  The value of their participation goes beyond their own readiness to teach in the new curriculum and their satisfaction about contributing creatively and constructively to our future.  When they are away from the Seminary, their descriptions of our work together are a powerful witness regarding the nature of the changes we anticipate and the extent to which we are first focusing on our own preparation.   

 

Key administrators will be included in the work of the project.

Administrative support is crucial for faculty work on teaching and learning.  We need time and space for this work.  We need administrators who can envision with us the kinds of time, space, faculty and support personnel we’ll need as we move into implementation of the new curriculum.  We need support for policy review and new ways of thinking about faculty development and faculty loads.  We couldn’t simply report back to administrators the results of work on our project.  We needed to have them in the room, witnessing not just what we were working on, but how we were going about the work.  We wanted direct dialogue with them.  We wanted them to buy into our need for radical change, and to support us with their interest as well as their ideas and expertise about how to get things done.

 

A number of key administrators have been part of the project.  Though our administrative structures have changed radically since the beginning of the project, behavioral dynamics and patterns between faculty and administrators have changed in positive ways over the last few years.  Faculty work on preparation for implementing the new curriculum is now a central feature in our strategic planning goals.  This gives us visibility and support at both the administrative and Board levels.  The inclusion of key administrators has also helped ease tension between faculty and administrators by giving administrators an inside view of the faculty at work on more than the nuts and bolts of curriculum redesign or classroom instruction.    

 

The project will have three phases: pre-retreat, retreat and post-retreat.

The plan called for the following:

• Phase One:  research into institutions and persons who could serve as resources, planning for an initial retreat, and designing pre-retreat activities and reflection.
• Phase Two:  a retreat with two overnights at which we would engage in activities, reflection, dialogue and planning regarding major changes in the way we teach and learn.
• Phase Three:  regular reflection on our progress, identification of additional needs, goals and resources, and preparation of reports for external audiences and reviewers.

 

In Phase One we designed our retreat and engaged in preparatory activities and reflection.  We selected a Roman Catholic Spirituality Center near Philadelphia for our retreat.  The setting was relaxing and beautiful.  We had a set of multi-purpose rooms to ourselves, and were served meals in a private dining room.  The setting succeeded beyond our expectations.  We had time and space for activities serious and hilarious.  We weren’t deprived and we weren’t camping out.  The cost was extremely reasonable and left us with a substantial amount for post-retreat activities.

 

Our consultant suggested two pre-retreat activities.  First, she recommended we spend time in reflecting together about how this change will affect our spiritual and professional lives, and praying for one another.  Second, she recommended we collect pictures of Philadelphia settings in which our students minister, and pictures of students who minister in those areas.  We would then display them in a format that invited meditation and reflective prayer.   This exercise was less verbal, and was oriented to external realities with which our new curriculum would deal. 

 

In early February we gave time to the first activity during a faculty meeting.  We paired off and shared with each other our anxieties about changes ahead, recorded them, and then prayed together.  Anxieties included such things as whether we would be able to work together across differences in the faculty, whether we would be able to deliver enough traditional content in our courses, and how we would be able to identify what students need to learn.  During January we gathered photographs for a notebook, a valuable visual aid that is now part of our documentary history.   The photographs showed the remarkably different contexts in which our students serve, as well as the wide diversity in our student body.  This underscored the magnitude of moving to a learning-centered approach in the curriculum.  Gathering the photographs generated good will among students who gave us permission to photograph them in their ministry settings.  It also gave the director’s administrative assistant an opportunity to talk about our teaching and learning project as she traveled around the Philadelphia area with her camera and notebook.  Students began to understand how seriously the faculty was taking themselves, students and the new curriculum.

 

In Phase Two twenty faculty and administrators retreated on March 15-17, 2001 to the Spirituality Center for two and a half days of activities and reflection on our readiness for major change.  We began counting personal and institutional costs of changing from teaching- to learning-centered classrooms.  Topics covered included relationship as the key to faithful teaching and learning; knowing the needs of our students; personal and institutional transformation needed as we begin new ways of teaching and learning; external partners in our educational context and how to begin getting to know them; how we can know each other differently as colleagues; and how administrators can support faculty during our transition into different ways of teaching and learning.  We also left time in the evenings to relax and to engage in wildly competitive board games.

During the retreat we collected and reviewed feedback each day, adjusting our plan as needed.  Following the retreat each participant wrote a one-page personal response to each of the following items.

·         What was particularly valuable for you in this retreat?

·         What will be especially difficult for you as we move forward?

·         Identify one personal step you will take immediately (before April 27) in each of two areas:

o     A different way of relating to faculty/administrative colleagues

o     Something you will investigate further using outside resources (people, books, etc.)

• Identify resources you’ll need for the 3^rd item.

 

These statements would be the agenda for post-retreat conversation.  They would also let the director know who needed help with financial resources, for which we had a modest budget. 

 

Immediately following the retreat we sent to all retreat invitees copies of our facilitator’s overheads and handouts, and transcriptions of all material on newsprint.  We also placed on library reserve several copies of video and cassette tapes of selected sessions from the retreat, and one master copy of transcribed notes of all sessions.  This material, particularly the transcribed notes of sessions, has been valuable as we’ve moved ahead with our process.  Our consultant and several faculty members unable to attend the retreat made use of the video and/or audio cassette tapes.  We are gathering all retreat materials from Lexington and Wabash work for use in designing a plan for bringing new faculty on board and working toward successful first review for promotion or tenure.  The materials will also help us identify teaching and learning markers for review of mid-career, senior and post-tenure faculty members.  

 

As called for in our plan, we prepared a brief report on the retreat for our Board meeting in May 2001, and filed a brief status report for the Lexington Seminar the following Fall.  We planned an informal lunch and conversation to reflect on our progress.  It was scheduled for May.  The lunch was cancelled, however, due to our director’s health situation that led to a two-month medical leave of absence.  We did not make initial plans for a report to be presented to colleagues in at least one professional setting.  In the absence of the director of the Project, work waited until the following Fall.

 

Phase Three began in Fall 2001.  In November 2001 we held our first Lexington lunch with post-retreat conversation.  It was a catered event, held in the room in which we have faculty meetings, around a table beautifully set for the occasion.  Everyone invited to the Lexington Retreat was included on the invitation list.  Several weeks before our first lunch the director copied and distributed to individual faculty members their retreat responses and reminded them these would be part of our conversation in November.  By the time we met for lunch and conversation, however, these responses were no longer at the top of our agenda.  We needed to address growing anxieties about three more pressing matters:  the financial situation of the Seminary, particularly in light of September 11; the seminary president’s announcement that he would resign the following June; and accelerating conversations with Eastern University regarding possible merger. 

 

After eating together we spent time in pairs and then together identifying and discussing anxieties about finances, our president leaving, and possible merger with the University.  We listed together the names of faculty and staff colleagues we had lost already in the last five to eight years.  The list was staggering.  We continued with other observations including such things as whether new faculty would own the new curriculum as we do; whether we have enough faculty members to deliver it; where funding will come from to support smaller classes; whether we will be absorbed by the University; the large number of faculty nearing retirement, and how intentional our interaction with each other needs to be in light of this.  We were facing immense losses at a time when we needed to become stronger and clearer about our identity as an educational institution. 

 

We decided we wanted to hear from our retiring senior colleagues as a way of honoring them, beginning to say goodbye, and moving into a new future.  We asked them to tell the truth about their lives at the Seminary.  What had it been like for them?  What would they like us to know about them before they leave?  We agreed to continue scheduling Lexington lunches immediately following selected faculty meetings.  We would hear from one senior colleague at each lunch.  Instead of reaching for outside experts to come in and talk with us about preparing for major change, we reached for conversation with senior colleagues as preparation for major change beyond anything we had anticipated.  So far we’ve had three Lexington lunches with senior colleagues and anticipate at least two or three more.  They have been heartwarming, sometimes funny, always painful and filled with unexpected confessions.  They have also become occasions for personal expressions of gratitude that might not otherwise have been given.

 

In many respects these lunches have become the most visible indicator of the effectiveness of our project.  We cannot make radical changes in our approaches to teaching and learning unless we trust each other enough both personally and professionally to work together as beginners setting out on a brand new adventure.  Our Lexington lunches have become one setting in which we have regularly acknowledged this concretely either as future retirees or as those who remain.  Of those remaining, many have served long tenures at the Seminary, but none of us has been part of the Seminary as part of Eastern University.  Nor have we experienced seminary life without a president.  Nor have we ever been in a post-September 11, 2001 situation with regard to our finances.       

 

Phase Three remains unfinished.  We have reported regularly to our Board, but have not been able to prepare a professional report to share with other colleagues in theological education.  Our numbers are small and our energy is limited.  We anticipate doing this, but cannot say when or where or how that will happen.

 

Resources Used

 

The material above already identifies and comments on the way we used resources:  a consultant/facilitator, a photo album, a retreat center, caterers for special lunches, a student assistant and an administrative assistant, and key administrators.  Looking back, however, our major resource in all this has been ourselves.  We had anticipated more interaction with external resources.  As it turned out, we needed to interact with ourselves in ways that strengthened our sense of identity and cohesion as a faculty.  We needed to find a new faculty voice around our identity as teachers and learners, just as we had already found a new voice around our new curriculum. 

 

We have also had funds graciously provided by the Lexington Seminar.  We have been frugal but not stingy in the way we’ve spent it.  We’ve been able to take what may seem to be only a little money and make it go a long way toward accomplishing our goal:  preparation for radical changes in the way we teach and learn.  We’ve been able to do this in a way that embodied grace, hospitality, joy mixed with pain, and courage to change.

    

Project Results

 

What we’ve learned about our issue:

• Being ready for major changes in the ways we teach and learn is primarily connected to the way we relate to each other, not to our skills as instructors.  In our project we’ve focused on relating to each other as colleagues, but the same point holds true for relating to students and others who partner with us in our new curriculum.  Preparing for major change means doing our relational homework before and alongside any other homework we need to do.

 

• For us at this time, reaching out for help begins at home.  The good will, experience and expertise of faculty colleagues is our first, most accessible line of support as we make our way through major transitions.  Colleagues have often been our last resort.  This can foster the impression that faculty members are at least multicompetent if not omnicompetent.  We want students in our new curriculum to reach out to each other instead of believing they should know and be able to accomplish everything on their own.  Isolation hurts all of us.   

 

• For each of us, the cost of changing long-ingrained habits of teaching and learning is different.  Differences between us must be both visible and accepted if we are to move into new habits of teaching and learning.  We need to know what we’re dealing with not simply in our students, but with each other.  For some the cost may be too great.  Moving ahead may not mean moving ahead with everyone on the current team.  On the other hand, the cost of not making radical changes in the way we as faculty teach and learn must also become visible.  Are we prepared for this cost as well?   

 

• As a faculty, the cost of radical changes in the way we teach and learn isn’t worth it if our goal is to find a quick fix to the way we do our educational business, or to make a big splash in the small pond of Western theological education.  We must do this work from our hearts, or not engage it at all.  It takes time, energy, willingness to live with ambiguity, and some uncertainty about how we will accomplish our long-range goals. 

 

• Internal and external resistance is not best met head-on, but through the discipline of identifying and naming concerns without discussion, debate or problem-solving talk.  Over time and with disciplined, guided practice, this approach will dissipate much internal, personal resistance.  Colleagues needing to work on challenges and concerns will over time receive direction, inspiration and encouragement.  Putting things out on the table without seeking to resolve them immediately is a powerful means of building trust and respect.  Hearing one another without anxiety and seeing attitudes change over a period of time generates internal confidence in our ability to get through resistance together.

 

• Administrative buy-in is absolutely critical relationally, structurally and strategically.  Without it we will not accomplish our goal of changing the way we teach and learn.  Administrators have the authority to make institutional changes.  Our institutional structures must change in small and large ways if our goals for teaching and learning are going to be realized.  Small changes are as critical as large, visible changes.  In fact, over time many small changes will be necessary in order to celebrate large, visible change.

 

Since the project is concerned with preparing for major changes in teaching and learning, we haven’t focused on changes themselves or attempted to measure them.  More striking has been the impact of the project on the faculty.  In a recent conversation we reflected on how our Lexington retreat and lunches have affected us.

 

·         Our retreats and lunches have had an amazing impact on how I feel about our faculty and administrators.  We’ve grown more open, vulnerable and sensitive to each other in the last two years.  As a faculty member I feel better now in spite of (perhaps because of) the stuff we’ve had to go through together.

 

·         We’ve been inching our way toward more congruence, practicing what we say we want to be, listening to each other as people, becoming relationally oriented to each other.  Students are watching us.  I wonder what they see?

 

·         What we’ve become together in the last two years magnifies my sense of what we’re going to lose when our senior colleagues retire.  This is very hard for me to contemplate.  I know it won’t stay this way, but I’d like to address this more, not just celebrate the past.  How will we maintain this when our colleagues are gone?  I’m anticipating grief as each one leaves.  Given all this, how can we work toward something wonderful?

 

·         I’m grateful for the opportunity to say goodbye over a period of time instead of losing our colleagues suddenly.  I’m grateful for the celebratory times we’re having together.  I don’t like to say goodbye, but I’ve had to learn to do that every year with students and colleagues.

 

·         We don’t often have the luxury of privileged living in this place:  good food, good friends, good times!

 

·         Our lunches with senior colleagues have created an environment for beginning to hear each other’s stories and experiences in this community.  This lets me know I’m not crazy; it gives me encouragement and an opportunity to suffer and rejoice together.

 

·         I’m heartened to hear these comments.  Sometimes, from the academic dean’s office, it felt like just another project to keep on top of with extra meetings and reports.  The project itself was more work for me, even before all the interruptions.  It often felt overwhelming.

 

If we were doing this project again, we would identify a new codirector, even if it meant cutting back someone’s teaching load.  As associate dean and now as interim academic dean, our director hasn’t been able to attend to everything, even with an outstanding administrative assistant.  We’ve stayed on track with most of our project goals and evaluation processes.  Some were modified as we went along, though in the spirit of the project as proposed and in keeping with the question we addressed.  Nonetheless, we are only now beginning to identify ways our redesigned faculty development program will support and encourage regular work on issues around major changes in our teaching and learning.  In addition, we have not begun a report to give in at least one professional setting.

 

 

 

Several issues stand out as we look ahead:

·         Will we be able to maintain our focus on teaching and learning as we move through major institutional and leadership changes?  Our remaining Lexington lunches and  Wabash intensive workshops will help us in this regard.

 

·         How will we bring new faculty on board with our work in teaching and learning?  We must increase our core teaching faculty in the next several years.  This is nonnegotiable.  We have already begun putting together materials from our retreats and workshops in order to create a documentary account of our work on teaching and learning.  Our goal is to have materials, resources and a redesigned, learning-oriented process of faculty development that will mentor new faculty from entry through first review for promotion.

 

·         How will we work with current faculty in our shift from teaching to learning-oriented classroom instruction?  Some of this has already begun to happen.  We need, however, to revise our current faculty development process so that current faculty are also engaged in a learning-oriented process.

 

·         How will we assess and evaluate the new curriculum itself as we begin phasing it in?   Will we be able to design an effective, low-cost system that makes use of data and processes already available?  Though our new curriculum was developed out of intensive assessment of our current curriculum, we have never had a unified process for curriculum assessment and evaluation.    

 

·         Finally, the seminary itself must become learning-oriented.  Our goals and plans for the classroom and for faculty will succeed to the extent we are able to become a learning institution.  As a result of our accreditation visit we will be focusing on this issue in the next several years.  The process of assessment for learning needs to become part of the institutional air we breathe.

 

Sharing the Wisdom

 

In addition to what we’ve reported above regarding things we’ve learned, one challenge stands out in particular: the challenge of working from the inside out.  When we began curriculum redesign in 1994, and later as we began thinking about faculty teaching and learning in order to deliver the new curriculum, it was tempting to look around and see what we could beg, steal or borrow from others.  We have been immensely enriched and aided by the insights and experiences of others.  At the same time, we have resisted the urge to accept someone else’s solution as our own.  This has sometimes caused anxiety and conflict due to our need and desire to fix things.  True, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel.  We do, however, need to determine the size, color and design of our particular wheel.  It didn’t happen overnight.  It happened through a process of disciplined thinking and listening, almost obsessive record-keeping, hours of conversation and testing of ideas, and, eventually, discovery together of what we could do well in our setting given our faculty, our mission, our student body, and our context.

 

 

Dr. Elouise Renich Fraser, Project Director

Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary

6 Lancaster Avenue

Wynnewood, Pennsylvania  19096