By Dr. Lee Kats
Professor of Biology
While institutions such as Stanford and UCLA struggle to find creative ways to get their best and brightest professors re-engaged in teaching, Pepperdine suffers from no similar malady – nor do I predict we ever will.
Pepperdine has always been an institution that values high quality, creative teaching on the part of its faculty, and the last decade has brought additional emphases on integrating scholarship and teaching.
Several years ago, Seaver College decided to add an additional category for faculty promotion, the Distinguished Professor. This new category was initiated to provide recognition for those professors who excel in all three areas of professor evaluation: teaching, scholarship and service.
Seaver College has five faculty members who have earned this high distinction: Dr. Stephen Davis, professor of biology; Dr. Cyndia Clegg, professor of English and associate dean of International Programs; Dr. Richard Hughes, professor of religion; Dr. Robert Sexton, professor of economics; and Dr. Dan Caldwell, professor of political science. Each is probably more recognized outside of Pepperdine for their accomplishments than they are recognized from within the university.
These five professors have uniquely distinguished themselves in their respective fields of scholarship. In addition, each brings creativity and professional expertise into the classroom, stimulating thoughtful class discussions and promoting cutting-edge course projects.
Yet, these are not scholars who isolate themselves in the library, office or laboratory. They strike admirable balances between their scholarly lives and their lives of service, each dedicated to serving his or her community and church. If you have never taken a class from one of these outstanding scholars, register now before you graduate and it’s too late.
There has also been considerable media attention paid to the increasing practice in academia of one institution raiding another institution in attempt to “steal an academic star.” Frequently, these are high profile and well-known scholars who bring prestige and the potential for big grant dollars to the raiding university.
With leadership provided by President Andrew K. Benton, Provost Darryl Tippens and Dean David Baird, Seaver College has aggressively recruited our own academic stars. These stars were not necessarily sought because of the potential for the grant dollars they might bring to the university, but because they were stars modeled after our own Distinguished Professors.
Professor Paul Contino in Humanities, Professor Donald Marshall in Humanities and Professor Christopher Parkening in Fine Arts are three examples. Contino is a scholar of literature who is best known among Christian colleges and universities as a leader in areas of integrating Christian faith and learning. Marshall has the same reputation, but among state-supported universities. Parkening is a world-renowned classical guitarist who came to Pepperdine because he can comfortably integrate his devout Christian faith and his love of teaching guitar.
Such teachers illustrate the college’s desire to occasionally recruit established stars but not ignore the college administration’s emphasis on recruiting outstanding junior faculty. I suspect both the academic and mission-supporting credentials of our recently hired faculty rival or surpass those of faculty hired at almost any other Christian college or university in the country.
While most public institutions struggle to find the right balance between teaching and research, many private institutions struggle to add a third component – that is, balancing teaching and research within the context of the school mission. Increasingly, Christian colleges and universities will look to Pepperdine as a model for having achieved what has infrequently been achieved in higher education — an impressive level of integrating teaching and scholarship within the context of a Christian mission.
November 13, 2003