Academics in the current political climate of higher education are heavily pressured to perform.
A large number of academics now have the expectation to not only take up teaching, publish but also to submit proposal bids and expect to win significant amounts of money. At the same time any University department is loaded with increasing burdens of administration – admissions, examinations, accreditation, programme reviews and handling student complaints and appeals are to name but a few.
It is as though some are tasked with these undesirable administrative activities while their ability to do research is hindered and the chance to develop their careers is slowed.
Should an academic have the heart to care for the needs of students and the day to day matters of the University or should they be focussed on developing their careers as the chance of any Christians remaining in senior academic positions goes down day by day?
These are exactly the conversations we had at the 2014 Conference held at Birkbeck. We were warmly encouraged and inspired by God’s word brought to us by Dr Wesley White starting with the topic of Christ and the Enlightened Mind, where Paul opens his letter to Colossians referring to God’s kingdom of light. Encouraging papers were also presented in the afternoon which brought together a number of new acquaintances in our network, which was a much valued time together.
Papers / Abstracts
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Daryl McCathy: Ten Pitfalls and Ten Commandments for Christian Academics |
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Abstract Handout Discussion Questions |
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David Booth: Fundamental challenges for Christians in the culture of academic psychology and the cognitive sciences |
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PowerPoint (pdf) Notes (pdf) |
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Esther Lui: Crossovers in Translation Studies and Christianity |
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Recordings
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Wesley White: “Cultural Challenges and Priorities for Christian Academics” (45 mins.) |
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Small file (mp3) 18 MBytes download Large file (mp3) 82 MBytes download |
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Mark Surey: “Face to Face with the Fountain of Wisdom: knowing Jesus in the ocean of knowledge”:” (26 mins) |
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Small file (mp3) 10 MBytes download Large file (mp3) 47 MBytes download |