The faculty members of the future: how are they being shaped?

Christian Century, Feb 4, 1998 by Barbara G. Wheeler

An old story tells about a philosophy professor who, despite his long tenure and large classes, remembered every student he had ever taught. Late in his career he approached a middle-aged woman at a reunion of graduates. "You are Mary Smith," he said to her. "You took Philosophy 101 in 1967. You sat in the third row, on the window side of the classroom, four seats from the aisle."

"Wow!" said the woman. "That's amazing. How could you possibly remember me? That was almost 30 years ago! And," she added, "who are you?"

The story has its charm, but it is not at all illustrative of the educational experience. Students remember faculty more than they remember anything else about their education. While the administration often personifies a school for its faculty, for students the school is the faculty. This was strikingly evident in the two institutions several colleagues and I studied during the past decade (a study which recently appeared as Being There: Culture and Formation in Two Theological Schools). Students, we found, barely notice what administrators do and say, unless students encounter them as teachers, and most students have no idea who constitutes the board of trustees. But faculty play a pivotal role in students' lives, not only imparting information and demonstrating how to think, but also teaching by example how to treat people, what to wear, what jokes are funny and what art and music is good. Students adopt some of the ideas and habits of their teachers, reject some, and adapt some to their own circumstances.

It matters a lot, then, the sort of faculty schools have and will have. During the past five years, Auburn Seminary's Center for the Study of Theological Education (with support from Lilly Endowment Inc.) has been intensively examining theological faculty. In one project, which I codirected with Katarina Schuth, O.S.F, we surveyed current theological faculty and all current graduate students in theology and religion. We also interviewed cohorts of junior faculty in three theological schools over a three-year period, as well as assorted junior faculty in other seminaries. In addition, we conducted case studies of four theological schools that have reputations for being good places to work. And we studied faculty compensation, the history of the faculty role, and the special challenge of recruiting and retaining minority faculty.

We began the study because so many people--seminary deans and presidents in particular--told us that they were worried about whether theological schools would be able to recruit enough qualified faculty to replace the many who soon will be retiring. Between the beginning of this decade and the middle of the next, about two-thirds of those who were teaching in 1990 will have retired.

Our research soon convinced us that there are enough people to consider for faculty slots. Doctoral programs in theology and religion contain more than enough students to fill the number of available jobs.

But will these people be trained and formed in ways that equip them to prepare religious leaders? Deans and presidents have doubts and anxieties about this. Religious studies, they fear, is coming to dominate doctoral programs in the field. Some of the largest programs are housed in universities that have no seminaries; several are in public institutions. Administrators worry that doctoral students increasingly will be trained in the history of religion or comparative religions rather than in Bible, theology, ethics, church history and practical studies--the traditional fields of theological education.

That a number of newly minted Ph.D.s do not hold the M.Div. degree, are not ordained and have no hands-on pastoral experience gives rise to worries about whether theological education will adequately maintain its church connections. Deans and presidents fear that doctoral programs are emphasizing research at the expense of teaching. Added to these worries are the perennial complaints of bishops, denominational executives and prominent pastors that faculty live in academic ivory towers, preoccupied with guild concerns and insulated or even alienated from church life.

Our evidence suggests that many of these anxieties are not warranted. Many widely held impressions and assumptions are inaccurate. We made three especially surprising discoveries.

(1) The popularity of religious studies has not substantially reshaped the training of theological faculty. About two-thirds, including the younger, more recently hired teachers, are trained in 25 doctoral programs, almost all of which were also among the top 25 faculty-supplying programs 30 years ago. There have been a few changes--Hartford and Johns Hopkins have faded, Emory and Fuller have emerged, and far fewer faculty, especially Roman Catholics, are trained in Europe--but every program on the list still is located in a seminary, a religiously related university or a university that has a divinity school. Religious studies programs in institutions that are not related in any way to the church or to ministry preparation do not play a substantial role in training theological faculty.