Called to Teach. Группа авторов
someone claims to have a “calling,” what do they mean? The term, like its Latinate version, “vocation,” is slippery. Does it specify devotion to a religious life? Does it refer to an occupation? Does it invoke a deep personal sense of contributing something meaningful? At different times and in various communities, it has meant all this, and more.
The Protestant Reformations of the sixteenth century were a decisive moment in the history of the concept of “callings.” Martin Luther challenged the medieval Catholic hierarchical notion of “estates,” or stations in life, where those occupations dealing directly in spiritual affairs claimed greatest honor and were alone considered divine callings.1 Instead, while greatly prizing the office of preaching, Luther argued God calls people to all honest earthly tasks and equally esteems the work of these callings. This was liberating, as the mundane tasks in which most people were engaged—parenting, business, farming, government service, teaching—now enjoyed sacred status.
But as it turns out, this sacredness is not always experienced as liberation. With the twentieth-century expansion of education and opportunity, and the related cultural expectation that one’s career is an intensely personal decision (“what do you want to be when you grow up?”) rather than something communally determined, questions of vocation can be the source of stress and alienation. We are overburdened with options yet, in the last analysis, expected to bear the burden of decision alone, since we are told that personal fulfillment is the ultimate measure of success in one’s career choice. This American individualism is expressed in popular theology, with its notion that God has a distinct “plan for your life.” While many undoubtedly derive great comfort from this perspective of God’s providence, others sense a daunting responsibility: because of the Reformations insight that one’s calling could potentially be any productive task, this “plan” is seldom self-evident. And riding on these life choices is not only personal contentment, but alignment of one’s personal decisions with God’s will. In response, titles proliferate offering advice for how one should “discern” one’s calling.2
Such a preoccupation with finding, discovering, or discerning one’s calling, however, would have struck the major sixteenth century reformers as odd. Their focus—and the theological center of their doctrine of vocation—was not the search for one’s call, but what one finds in the midst of the callings one has. Without fail, what one finds (or rather, hears) are requests from neighbors. This is the voice of God: neighbors asking for bread, advice, goods at a fair price, a listening ear, a word of encouragement.
The office, experience, and accidents of time and location all determine the requests one hears. In Luther’s earthy illustration, the father with the crying baby is hearing the call to “rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, [and] heal its rashes and sores” in full confidence that as he does so, “God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling.”3 The person with “Professor” before her name will get asked to teach by college students. Students may not say it in so many words, but they communicate their needs with their tuition dollars, their willingness to endure uncomfortable chairs (even for 8 am class!), and their sustained attention to material.
Viewed this way, the excitement of vocation is not in the discovery of “what is my calling?,” although many, undoubtedly, train for and pursue certain tasks out of a conviction that in such work personal interests and aptitudes intersect with human need. But the deeper and abiding excitement is in identifying how one can best respond to the requests, best serve the neighbor in the offices, relations, and stations in which one finds oneself day in and day out. This perspective framed our invitation to the contributors to this collection, who responded creatively and thoughtfully to our claim that faithful action within the call to teach (like any calling) is shaped by excellence, commitment, and community.
Of course, the essayists here are also scholars, so they are motivated also by their disciplines. As evident in many of the chapters, their work is enriched by a deep sense that what we teach is important—and therefore bringing others into the community of knowledge is important.4 As teachers, we want to expand the circle of those who know, invite more conversation partners into the discussion of—as Robert Baird so beautifully puts it—“matters that matter.”
Baylor’s Vision for Teaching Excellence
God’s call is never abstract. Vocation is always contextualized, precisely because it is located in the voice of the neighbor. Although we believe the insights in this collection have application in many institutional settings, we consider it equally important to name the particular setting out of which these insights emerge. The context that these essays share is Baylor University, a Christian research university in Waco, Texas, with a strong tradition of undergraduate education and more recent aspirations to achieve R1 status. This intersection of Christian mission, teaching heritage, and research impact make Baylor distinct, if not unique. None of these elements—let alone the awesome something that is greater than the sum of these parts—flourishes without rewards, support, and expectations. As we often say, Baylor “doesn’t take teaching for granted.” For over forty years, Baylor has been intentionally working out the practical implications of that sentiment.
In the late 1970s, William F. Cooper (Bill), Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Faculty Development, assisted by Elizabeth Vardaman (Betsy), applied for and received a grant from the Lilly Foundation to pilot a faculty development program they named the Summer Teaching Institute.5 Robert M. Baird (Bob), Professor of Philosophy, convened the first group of Institute participants in 1978.6 Cooper, Vardaman, and Baird, inspirational and beloved teachers themselves, recognized a need for instructors to think and talk together about how to design, organize, and teach their courses. Cooper’s immediate aim was for faculty participants to write syllabi for their courses, which, believe it or not, was an uncommon practice at Baylor in the sixties and seventies. Thanks to their initiative, teaching development at Baylor was born.7 Thanks to their vision—a vision to guide That Good Old Baylor Line—teaching development has been institutionalized.
Even before teaching development was integrated formally into institutional structures, Baylor proudly proclaimed a tradition of excellence in education. A recent survey of Baylor alumni indicates that “most alumni recall the quality of the education at the university when asked about what comes to mind about Baylor.”8 Scores of our predecessors shouldered significant responsibility for creating and maintaining quality education, Cooper, Vardaman, and Baird among them. We could not be where we are without their work and example.9 Baird, who served forty-seven years on the faculty and received the highest honor for teaching, the designation of Master Teacher, reiterated his advocacy for teaching development in an April 2014 interview: “I take teaching so seriously that to be called a Master Teacher is greatly appreciated . . . though I don’t think of myself as a ‘master teacher.’ I think of myself as a student of good teaching—I try always to improve my teaching.”10
Herbert Reynolds, Baylor President 1981–1995, championed efforts to make teaching a priority. In the first five years of his administration, he established the Distinguished Visiting Professors Program and authorized the Robert Foster Cherry Great Teacher Award. In 1982, he created the designation of Baylor professors as Master Teachers.11 D. Thomas Hanks (Tom), Master Teacher and Professor of English, Emeritus, heeded the call to excellence and dedicated himself to evidence-based, inspirational teaching throughout his forty-one-year career (Hanks won every teaching award Baylor offers). In 1982, Hanks was tapped to take over directorship of the Summer Teaching Institute, subsequently renamed the Summer Faculty Institute (SFI). He served as an SFI director and its key advocate for thirty-five years, retiring from the SFI and Baylor in 2017.12
The founding of the Academy for Teaching and Learning in 2008 has bolstered Baylor’s tradition of educational excellence. You may be surprised to learn that at the time of the ATL’s founding, Baylor was the only university of the Big XII Conference that lacked an established center for teaching and learning. University leaders recognized that increasing student enrollment, fluctuating student retention, expanding numbers of faculty, deepening investments in research, and establishing greater accountability for institutional effectiveness compelled Baylor to formalize support for faculty and ensure the continuation