Lonnie R. Welch,
School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science,
Ohio University
[Jan 29, 2011]–
def. vocāre “to call”
A student whom I mentor said: “I want my life as a Christian to have a direct impact on people. I don’t want to be stuck in an office, having to write proposals and research papers.” I countered: “Being a professor opens up many doors for touching lives.”
I could say this with assurance because I am entering my third decade as a professor, and I have reflected on how God has led me progressively into a life of full-time Christian service in academia:
- In my first decade, He taught me how to succeed as a professor and still be a godly husband and father, lessons that were training grounds for the next decade.
- In the second one, two things ignited a passion in me to serve God full-time as a professor. Reading The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel led me to view my research as actually a study of God’s creation and an opportunity to commune with my Creator. Hearing William Lane Craig speak, “On Being a Christian Academic,” at a Cru-sponsored breakfast opened up even greater understanding of how my influence as a professor can be significant ministry.
- As I embark on my third decade as a professor, I continue to do research that builds on the foundation established during the previous decades. Because of the tremendous opportunities I have as a professor, I endeavor to inspire others, both faculty and students, to serve God in secular universities.
The bar is high for entering this mission field, but for those willing to commit their time, talents and resources to the task, numerous opportunities exist for serving God as a professor. Os Guinness expresses in his book, The Call, that calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived as a response to His summons and service.
N.B.
Know of a student sensing a call to become a professor?
Please consider inviting them to join me in June at the Vocare Summer Project. It is sponsored by Faculty Commons in beautiful Durham, North Carolina. Details at http://wannabelikeclive.com.
(c) 2012 Lonnie R Welch
office photo ©istockphoto
Hi, I was just wondering about Faculty Common’s project. Maybe wondering why? Why now? Why are we to ask our promising Christian Students? Here’s where my quandary stems from: I am an active Christian, published multiple times (with awards), from a well-regarded PhD program. I have been “on the market” 10 years. Great references and teaching evals., too.
Tenure lines have been being cut every one of those years. Even Christian colleges passed me over, due to “excessive numbers of highly qualified candidates.” (Usually in many hundreds for one opening.) If all that’s left is adjuncting, in which I do feel I have been serving God, although I can rarely do the things described in the Faculty Common essays (no office, no continuity on campus for further mentoring, no money for sharing pizza, even), and since part-timing adds up to minimum wage or less, don’t you think we might be doing our students a disservice to encourage them to work under such conditions with little hope becoming a “real” professor? The articles about these circumstances are in Inside Higher Education online and New Faculty Majority (one is a free and more up-to-date version of the Chronicle of Higher Education, the other is a consortium of contingency college instructors, but their data is also in AAUP). IHE recently printed a heartbreaking article about a man who ended up a career adjunct and later found he couldn’t pay for his daughter’s funeral when she suddenly died. Few of my peers have health care; I do through my husband’s job. I’m grateful for what God has given me, but since there are fewer and fewer tenure lines, I cannot in good conscience encourage my students to see this as a viable career, let alone the mission field described in Faculty Commons.
Adjuncts live under surveillance at work. Speaking for God is difficult, and how would one invite students over while working at multiple schools and sleeping little, as most do? (Also, we are turned in for fraternizing in some places.) The long mentoring chats where a student asks one about God is also not possible if one is a “freeway flyer,” like most college teachers today. People literally run to their cars from class. The blessing of being underemployed is I am still around for those chats–if I can find us a good hiding place, that is.
Your mission field is changing, perhaps passing away. If one of my administrators has her way and switches my last teaching job to all online teaching, I will pray that God opens a different path for me. I *wanted* to be a professor, not a PBS cartoon character or an over-educated temp, turned in for the slightest reference to God in some jobs.
Everything you describe on this website is worthy, noble, and Christ-like in its attitude. But the access to carry out such work is rare and quickly becoming a thing of the past. I’m very sorry. But you and Faculty Commons really should start to work with your new mission field: temporary, non-professorial instruction. Christians in that situation need your guidance and help–that’s where your younger Christian colleagues have disappeared to. Hope this helps somehow. God bless.