_LFP Update_ Archives ListPrintable Version
__LFP Update__1.4
Welcome to the _LFP Update_, an e-publication from the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts to keep LFP representatives and others informed about the activities of 1) LFP National Network institutions, 2) present and former Lilly Fellows and, 3) the LFP office at ValparaisoUniversity.
In this issue:- Upcoming Deadline for Lilly Fellow Applications
- A review of the 16th Annual LFP National Conference
- A review of the Seventh Annual Workshop for Senior Administrators
-Notable events of the LFP NNB October meeting
- The Second Annual Arlin G. Meyer Prize
- The Inaugural Lilly Fellows Program Book Award
- The New Lilly Endowment Grant
- Upcoming Deadlines for Awards and Grant Opportunities
- Changing of the Guard
- From the Colloquium
____ Upcoming Deadline for Lilly Fellow Applications ____
One of the two initiatives the Lilly Fellows Program sustains is the Residential Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Lilly fellowships are for teacher-scholars who seek to renew and enrich their intellectual and spiritual lives while preparing for leadership roles at Catholic or Protestant institutions of higher education. Each academic year, three Fellows are appointed for two-year periods at Valparaiso University. Fellows are selected from applicants who evince an interest in the relationship between Christianity and the academic vocation and are considering a career at church-related colleges or universities. Application Deadline for 2007-2009Lilly Fellowships is Tuesday, December 19, 2006. Please click here for more information.
____ A review of the 16th Annual LFP National Conference ____
The 16th annual LFP National Conference, hosted by Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, October 13-15, 2006, was attended by more than one hundred LFP representatives and Lilly Fellows. The conference, "A Blessed Heritage: the Contributions of American Church-Related Higher Education" was addressed by four insightful and engaging speakers, each focusing on a different aspect of the topic. The speakers and their papers were:
"Protestant Universities and American Experiences: Vanity, Variety, & Vision"
Douglas Jacobsen, Distinguished Professor of Church History and Theology at Messiah College and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, Professor of Psychology and Director of Faculty Development at Messiah College
"Higher Education: Catholic and/or American: the Contribution of Catholic Higher Education to the American Experience"
David O'Brien, Professor of History and Loyola Professor of Catholic Studies, The College of the Holy Cross
"The Role of Midwestern Christian Higher Education in the Abolition of Slavery"
Walker Gollar, Associate Professor of Church History, Xavier University
At the conference banquet on Friday evening, Program Director John Steven Paul, presented to inaugural Lilly Fellows Program Book Award to Clarence Joldersma, Professor of Education at Calvin College , one of the editors of the prize-winning Educating for Shalom by Nicholas Wolterstorff, and the 2007 Arlin G. Meyer Prize to Cort Savage, Associate Professor of Art at Davidson College, for his installation Scattered Man. On Saturday afternoon, the Conference visited the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center on the banks of the Ohio River. The LFP Staff was especially pleased to greet former Lilly Fellows, Lisa DeBoer (LF 96-98), Westmont College; Caryn Riswold (LF 2000-02), Illinois College; Julie Straight (LF 02-04), Northwest Nazarene University; and Jeff Zalar (LF 02-04), Pepperdine University. Many thanks are due Leo Klein, S.J. Vice President for Mission and Ministry at Xavier, his assistant Diana Rischmann, and Maureen Coz, Director of Special Events at Xavier University for their splendid work in conceiving, planning, and organizing the conference.
___ A review of the Seventh Annual Workshop for Senior Administrators ___
On Thursday and Friday, October 12-13, the Seventh LFP Workshop for Senior Administrators welcomed 30 participants from Network Schools who gathered for a lively and thoughtful and thoughtful discussion of "Hiring for Mission." The workshop was addressed by Dean de la Motte, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Salve Regina University and past member of the LFP National Network Board. De la Motte entitled his address "Hiring for Mission: Mission Impossible?" On Friday, Jill Paláez Baumgaertner, Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies at Wheaton College spoke on the topic "Living with the 'Non' in 'Nondenominational': Hiring for Mission at Wheaton College."
___ Notable events of the LFP NNB October meeting ___
The National Network Board of the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts met for its semi-annual meeting September 29-30, 2005.
The Board considered proposals for Regional Conferences, Network Exchange Programs, and Mentoring Programs. It decided to fund proposals for Mentoring Programs from Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois, and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.
The National Network Board voted the following LFP Representatives to theNational Network Board:
Paul Contino, Associate Professor of Great Books, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California
Mary E. Morton, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio
Caroline Simon, Professor of Philosophy, Hope College, Holland, Michigan
The four-year terms of these board members will begin with the National Network Board meeting in April, 2007. We welcome these colleagues to the Board and thank retiring Board members Denise Doyle, Susan Felch, Susan VanZanten Gallagher, and Jane Kelley Rodeheffer for their years of faithful service to the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts.
The National Network Board also approved membership into the LFP National Network for church-related colleges and institutions for three institutions: Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois, and the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, and Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota.
____ The Second Annual Arlin G. Meyer Prize ____
On October 13, 2006, at the LFP National Conference at Xavier University in Cincinnati, the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts was pleased to award the 2006 Arlin G. Meyer Prize to Scattered Man, a visual instillation by Cort Savage, Associate Professor of Art at Davidson College.
Scattered Man presents a human skeleton whose bones are separated and have been wrapped individually with rubber bands so as to form balls of different sizes. The Meyer Prize award committee was struck by the way this piece provides an experience of total engagement: engagement with current issues and dialogues in the contemporary art world, engagement with the physicality of the gallery space and with the viewer's own physicality, engagement with fundamental questions of humanity and existence, and engagement with the spiritual and religious resources we use to make sense of those questions. According to one member of the jury awarding the prize, "Scattered Man is engaging without being manipulative, open but not aimless, playful without being irreverent, conceptually rich but also insistently material, and serious while avoiding cynicism. In short, it is the sort of piece I wish I encountered in galleries and museums more often."
The Lilly Fellows Program also honored four finalists for the Award: Roger Feldman, Professor of Art at Seattle Pacific University, Seattle Washington, for his site-specific installation, Wahrheitstisch; Jo Yarrington, Professor of Art at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut, for her site-specific installation, Contemplations on the Spiritual--Site Project, Cologne, Germany; Joel Sheesley, Professor of Art at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, for his painting, Householder Sonata, and Joseph Piasentin, Professor of Art at Pepperdine University, Malibu, California, for his painting, Cakewalk--After All is Forgiven.
The Arlin G. Meyer Prize is awarded annually to a fulltime faculty member from a college or university in the Lilly Fellows Program National Network whose work exemplifies the practice of the Christian artistic or scholarly vocation. The $3000 prize honors Arlin G. Meyer, Professor Emeritus of English at ValparaisoUniversity, who served as program director of the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts from its inception in 1991 until his retirement in 2002.
Nominations are now being accepted for the 2007 Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Humanities, which will be presented at the LFP National Conference at MercerUniversity in Macon, Georgia, October 19-21, 2007. The Nomination Deadline is March 1, 2007.
____ The Inaugural Lilly Fellows Program Book Award ____
On October 13, 2006, at the LFP National Conference at Xavier University in Cincinnati, the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts was pleased to award the inaugural Lilly Fellows Program Book Award to Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education by Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology and Fellow of Berkeley College at Yale University.
Wolterstorff is not only a premier Christian philosopher, but over the past 25 years at Calvin College and then Yale University he has been one of the most astute thinkers shaping the conversation on Christian understandings of learning and higher education. This volume, edited by Clarence W. Joldersma, Professor of Education at Calvin College, and Gloria Goris Stronks, Professor Emerita of Education at Calvin College, collects nineteen of Wolterstorff's most important essays on religion and education, providing an introduction to his thoughts about faith-shaped learning and an outline of the way he connects a Reformed, confessional outlook to a progressive social pedagogy. The result is a is an understanding of learning that draws on the best of Christian humanism or intellectualist models of education with an aim to cultivate such character that can introduce the healing power of Shalom--which encompasses ethics, justice, and human flourishing--to students, classroom, school, and society.
The Lilly Fellows Program also honored four finalists for the Award: Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation, by Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Jacobsen; Conflicting Allegiances: The Church-Based University in a Liberal Democratic Society, by Michael Budde and John Wright; Conceiving the Christian College by Duane Litfin; and Can Hope Endure?: A Historical Case Study in Christian Higher Education, by James C. Kennedy and Caroline J. Simon.
The Lilly Fellows Program is now accepting nominations for the 2007 Lilly Fellows Program Book Award. Works under consideration should address the historical or contemporary relation of Christian intellectual life and scholarship to the practice of teaching as a Christian vocation or to the past, present, and future of higher education. Single authored books or edited collections in any discipline, published in 2005 or 2006, are eligible. A Prize of $3000 will be awarded at the Lilly Fellows Program National Conference at MercerUniversity, October 19-21, 2007. Nomination deadline is March 1, 2007.
____ The New Lilly Endowment Grant ____
The Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts was awarded a grant totaling $2,498,936 from the Lilly Endowment Inc. This is the third such grant that has supported the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts. This grant will insure funding for the many initiatives and programs of the Lilly Fellows Program until the year 2012. These include mentoring programs, support for regional and national conferences, and, beginning in 2007, a program to support and mentor current graduate students who intend to work in church-related colleges and universities. The Lilly Fellows Program is also supported financially by Valparaiso University and the contributions of the 84 schools that comprise the Lilly Fellows Program National Network. After 2012 most of the Program's initiatives will be funded from these sources.
____ Upcoming Deadlines for Awards and Grant Opportunities ____
December 19, 2006: 2007-2009 LFP Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowships
March 1, 2007: Nominations for the Arlin G. Meyer Prize
March 1, 2007: Nominations for the 2007 LFP Book Award
March 15, 2007: Applications for National Research Conference (2008-2009 Academic Year)
March 15, 2007: Applications for Summer Seminars (Summer 2008)
____ Changing of the Guard ____
The staff of the Lilly Fellows Program at ValparaisoUniversity is pleased to announce that Kathy Sutherland is joining us here at Linwood House as the new Administrative Assistant. Kathy brings a wealth of experience to the position, having worked in Residence Life at TaylorUniversity and the University of Chicago before coming to Valparaiso as the Director of Student Housing. Most recently she has served as the Assistant to Walter Wangerin, Jr. Kathy holds a B.A. in English and Psychology from Sterling College in Sterling, Kansas, and an M.A. in College Student Development from Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California. She has also done coursework toward an MSW at IndianaUniversity. So when you call or e-mail the office of the Lilly Fellows Program, be sure to welcome Kathy!
____ From the Colloquium ____
The Fellows Colloquium meets on Monday afternoons at Linwood House this year. The membership consist of the six Lilly Fellows, mentors, and selected senior faculty from the University. This semester we are reviewing the literature on church-related higher education with Mark Schwehn serving as Colloquium leader. At the beginning of each session, we pray together Thomas Aquinas's prayer "Ante Studio." There are several beautifully worded petitions in St. Thomas' prayer and each week I find another passage that rings with significance for me and my work. Like this one:
May you
guide the beginning of our work,
direct its progress,
and bring it to completion.
Weekly, we pray God to be with us at the beginning, through the middle, and at the end of our Colloquium session and, by extension, our class, our creative or scholarly project, our semester, our year, our career, our life. It is an incomprehensible gift to be able to call upon our God with the confidence, grounded in evidence and experience, that God will hear our prayer and respond with guidance, direction, and a blessed end. God's Blessings to all of you.
--John Steven Paul