Search results for ""Author Todd C. Ream""

Shifting faculty roles in a changing landscape Ernest L. Boyer's landmark book Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate challenged the publish-or-perish status quo that dominated the academic landscape for generations. His powerful and enduring argument for a new approach to faculty roles and rewards continues to play a significant part of the national conversation on scholarship in the academy. Though steeped in tradition, the role of faculty in the academic world has shifted significantly in recent decades. The rise of the non-tenure-track class of professors is well documented. If the historic rule of promotion and tenure is waning, what role can scholarship play in a fragmented, unbundled academy? Boyer offers a still much-needed approach. He calls for a broadened view of scholarship, audaciously refocusing its gaze from the tenure file and to a wider community. This expanded edition offers, in addition to the original text, a critical introduction that explores the impact of Boyer's views, a call to action for applying Boyer's message to the changing nature of faculty work, and a discussion guide to help readers start a new conversation about how Scholarship Reconsidered applies today.

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In the 1990s, Christian colleges and universities experienced a record boom in students and employees. However, less than twenty years later Christian institutions experienced new challenges spurred on by four major changes: first, the "Great Recession" of 2008 and widespread debt; second, declining birthrates in certain regions of the United States; third, the passing of the Affordable Care Act, which raised the question of whether Christian institutes were required to cover contraceptives; and fourth, the Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage, which brought issues of employment to the forefront at certain Evangelical institutions. Yet despite mounting challenges, most Christian colleges and universities are still stronger now than at any point in their respective histories by almost any measure.With The Anxious Middle, Todd C. Ream and Jerry Pattengale engage the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a model for navigating our tumultuous times. The authors argue that if the present age is defined by what Bonhoeffer calls in Creation and Fall the "anxious middle"—somewhere between Eden and the Apocalypse—the challenges faced by Christian higher education must be recognized as both existential and practical. To confront them while still embracing any opportunities afforded by occasional cross breezes, Christian colleges and universities would be wise to employ a fourfold approach to planning informed by Bonhoeffer's work as well as historic and contemporary examples: institutions should be articulate about their missions, imaginative in advancing them, collaborative in deploying them, and strategic in sharing them. Trustees, administrators, faculty members, and others concerned with the future of Christian colleges and universities will find in The Anxious Middle a planning process applicable to organizational levels ranging from the campus-wide to the departmental or the programmatic. The result is an understanding of Christian higher education not merely focused on surviving but thriving between Eden and the Apocalypse.

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