Wabash Center

06/02/2026

😎 Summer break is here, and that means one thing at the Wabash Center: summer workshops!

📂 The folders are out.
🍷The tables are set.
🍿 The snacks are in position to vanquish the first wisps of hunger whenever and wherever they should arise.

We’re ready and thrilled to welcome three groups of scholars to the campus of Wabash College over the next month.

05/29/2026

At a recent directors' retreat, Chelsea Yarborough , Rachelle Greene, Lynne Westfield , Sarah Farmer and Lisa Thompson celebrated Dr. Thompson as 17th president of Union Seminary!

Just as we hope to offer to our participants, the Wabash Center values stepping back and grounding our work in fundamental understandings of ourselves and our vocations.

And it's a joy to celebrate our friends' successes every step of the way!

05/28/2026

What if one of the best ways for students to learn is to prepare to teach?

Laura Carlson Hasler (Indiana University) walks us through “The Teaching Portfolio,” a capstone assignment that invites undergraduates to interpret a biblical passage, engage an interpretive artifact, and imagine how they would teach the text themselves. The result? Deepened learning, collaborative energy, and new ways for students to connect course ideas beyond the classroom.

Read about this assignment and how it helps students synthesize, interpret, and teach: https://bit.ly/3PRTKgN

05/27/2026

The emotional labor of teaching is real — and most faculty carry it alone.

In her new book Thinking Teaching, Wabash Center Director Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield names what so many educators feel but rarely say out loud: that genuine teaching draws on your full self — body, mind, spirit, intuition, humor — and that the depletion afterward is not weakness. It's the cost of doing the work with integrity.

If you've ever needed an hour of silence after a hard class conversation, this book sees you.

Thinking Teaching: Stories, Insights, and Strategies to Ignite Reflection, Discussion, and Imagination is available now through Cascade Books / Wipf & Stock.

05/25/2026

👀 We're making some changes to our newsletter that we hope will make for a great experience for our subscribers:

▶ New, streamlined design
▶ Monthly
▶ Curated
▶ Enriching

If you missed it, check it out here: https://bit.ly/3R9B5xj

And if you're not currently subscribed, we welcome you! Always be in the know for the newest Resources, Grants, and Gatherings from the Wabash Center to help you deepen your teaching practice. Subscribe here: https://bit.ly/43bB3rm

05/21/2026

Should we really be meeting students where they are?

Emily O. Gravett (James Madison University) reflects on a tension many of us feel: students learn best when material feels relevant, personal, and connected to their lives—but what happens when that emphasis on relevance narrows their world instead of expanding it?

What if some of the most important learning happens when students encounter what feels strange, unfamiliar, or even irrelevant to them? What if education should not only affirm students’ experiences, but also unsettle them, stretch them, and build empathy across difference?

How can we motivate students while also decentering them?

Read more: https://bit.ly/4tHvkUV

05/20/2026

Lynne Westfield has spent decades in the classroom. She has sat with students in their confusion and their breakthroughs. She has asked hard questions about what theological education is actually for — and refused to settle for easy answers.

Thinking Teaching is what happens when someone like that finally writes the book.

It's not a collection of techniques. It's a sustained invitation to treat teaching as a spiritual and intellectual practice — one worthy of the same care and imagination we ask of our scholarship.

If you've ever ended a class wondering whether it actually mattered, this book was written for that moment.

Teaching adult learners in college, graduate school, and seminary can be challenging—even for the most experienced professor. This resource provides creati...

05/18/2026

From a strong pool of proposals, the Wabash Center is pleased to announce our 2026 Large Project Grant awards.

This year we welcomed, in addition to our regular areas of interest, proposals focused on AI and pedagogy. Scholars responded in a big way to this unfolding story in teaching and the teaching life.

Congratulations to all our awardees!

We encourage you to visit our website to read all about these forthcoming initiatives:

https://wabashcenter.wabash.edu/grants/large-project-grants

05/13/2026

What does it feel like to hold two full-time jobs in one academic role? 🎓

Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi (Iliff School of Theology) reflects on coming into academia "sideways"—from the church, with a non-traditional doctorate, as a Latina and first-generation college graduate—and what eight years of running an internship program, supervising staff, teaching, AND building a research agenda has really cost her.

"I realized early on that if I wanted to pursue a research and writing agenda, I needed to adopt a bivocational mentality as a teacher-administrator. Unfortunately, what this has led to is possessing two full-time jobs."

Sabbatical gave her a glimpse of something different. And now she's asking a question out loud that often lurks in the shadows of mountains of tasks:

"I still feel honored to be here. Might I dare to want more?"

If you're navigating teaching and administrative roles (or evaluating stepping into said waters), this is for you. 👇

🔗 https://bit.ly/3QY59vQ

05/06/2026

Neighbor is more than proximity. Neighbor is action. It demands something of you.

Situated in the aftermath of a recent significant medical scare, Nancy Lynne Westfield reflects on womanist theology, communal care, illness, healing, and the sacred courage of showing up for one another.

In the midst of institutional precarity and inherent academic dislocation, where have I mistaken collegial proximity for genuine neighborliness—and what would it take to move from one to the other?

Read here: https://bit.ly/4dss6Qh