By Melissa Overbeck
Staff Writer
Since the creation of Pepperdine in 1937, university officials have been seeking to discover what it means to be a Christian university. This fall, Pepperdine will take another giant step toward answering that question. In October, it will host the 13th annual conference of the Lilly Fellows program in the Humanities and the Arts, a conference that brings together Christian schools from around the country for the purpose of discussing what Christian education really means.
More than 150 people from 72 universities are expected to attend the conference.
Regan Schaffer, a Pepperdine business administration professor who attended last year’s conference, said it was motivating.
“In many ways I was inspired to a higher standard of excellence in terms of my scholarship and bringing my whole self to that scholarship,” Schaffer said.
Each year, two Pepperdine faculty members have attended the conference, which was, until recently, held at Valparaiso University in Indiana. After submitting a request five years ago, Pepperdine received the honor of hosting the 2003 conference.
Dr. Richard Hughes, director of Pepperdine’s Center for Faith and Learning, is excited for the conference because it will greatly benefit the faculty who attend as well as the university itself.
“Hosting this conference puts Pepperdine on the map,” Hughes said. “It says to people that Pepperdine is a place where the action is.”
Schaffer said hosting the conference sends a message to other schools about Pepperdine’s mission.
Hosting the conference “is a statement about the quality and the focus of the institution,” Schaffer said. “Valparaiso (where the program originated) is known for its excellence in the strength of its personal mission. Hosting the conference helps us to be recognized not only for our academics but (also) for our Christian mission.”
That mission is the focus of the conference, Hughes said.
“Pepperdine says its mission is to ‘strengthen students for lives of purpose, service and leadership,’” he said, quoting the mission statement. “How do you actually do that? What do leaders need to do?”
Hughes enlisted two speakers, Roger Lundin of Wheaton College and Jeanne Heffernan of Pepperdine, to address that issue during the conference. He said he was thrilled to have speakers of such high caliber.
“I know Roger, and I know Jeanne,” he said, “and they are both fabulous … When I think that we will have both of them here at Pepperdine I pinch myself, because they are that good,” he said.
The three-day conference, which is accompanied by a two-day conference for administrators, will be held Oct. 17 through 19 — the same weekend as the annual Pepperdine faculty conference. Both will be held at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica and will conclude with a concert by Christopher Parkening and Jubilant Sykes for both groups.
Both the national conference and the administrative conference are part of the Lilly Fellows program, which began 12 years ago at Valparaiso University. The program was created by Mark Schwehn, a dean at Valparaiso, and Arlin Meyer, professor of English at Valparaiso who saw a need for a program to encourage Christian faculty, both Catholic and Protestant, throughout the country.
The program they created has two main functions: it trains graduate students to be Christian professors and places them in network institutions, and brings representatives of network institutions together for an annual conference to discuss current issues facing Christian education.
The Lilly Fellows program is funded by the Lilly Endowment. This program also funds the Pepperdine Voyage, which is a program for students, and is one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the United States.
October 02, 2003