Secularity and the Liberal Arts

Problem Statement

The collaborating institutions will devise and test new understandings of secularity in liberal arts education as a means of engaging students in questions of meaning and value. Established in the late 18th or 19th centuries, when Protestantism was assumed to be integral to teaching, learning and service at a college, all four institutions have over time come to reflect the secular and secularizing trends in US higher education. These institutions value secular ideas as a means to promote tolerance and critical thought, and to create democratic institutions and civic engagement, but they also wonder whether uncritical secular assumptions are in various ways stripping some students and faculty of fundamental aspects of their identity. They wonder, in other words, if secularity is truly "neutral." Exploring how current understandings of secularity both help and hinder efforts to integrate questions of value and meaning into the curriculum as well as the co-curriculum, faculty and administrators on each campus will develop initiatives specific to their needs. The partners share the goal of developing leadership on their campuses to ask whether and how secularity is an enabling condition of liberal arts education. The Teagle Foundation grant period for this project began in the fall semester, 2006, and concludes with our conference, November 13-14, 2008 (see "Conference" link above).

Group Activities

The working group is collaborating on a joint series of initiatives, including faculty-administrator seminars, new course models, faculty-student research projects, campus forums, visiting speakers, institutional research assessing student, faculty, and administrators experience of secularity and how it frames students' questions of meaning and value, a white paper, and, at the conclusion of the second year, a multi-campus public conference (see below for more information). In the second year, the partners will continue the first year activities, and implement new curricular, teaching development, and co-curricular initiatives. The working group will also develop its white paper; we will present a first draft to Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council, who will serve as respondent and critic. The white paper is composed of four chapters that will provide the basis for the four sessions of our concluding conference.

Campus Activities

Some examples of activities being carried out at individual campuses include:

A faculty/administration seminar at Vassar College to:

1. Discuss secularity in the historical and present context of Vassar;
2. examine pedagogical dilemmas, including the capacities and limits of the classroom as a space to engage students' questions of meaning and value;
3. prepare a teaching development workshop drawing upon the results of our qualitative research and seminar discussions;
4. create an inventory of those courses, academic programs, or co-curricular activities where questions of meaning and value are raised and addressed or where there is great potential for such work;
5. review the results of quantitative and qualitative measures of student attitudes; and
6. develop a team-taught course for seniors, in which the content and pedagogical approach will integrate issues of meaning and value.

Faculty and administrators at Bucknell University are forming a study group on secularism and pedagogy. The group will explore dynamic and flexible definitions of secularism that might be used to frame structured dialogue on issues of meaning and identity. The group will be especially concerned with whether an "across-the-curriculum" focus can open the door to cultural, religious, and political perspectives on "big questions." The 10-member group will meet monthly to discuss readings and scholarly presentations on the limits of secularism and the current pedagogical literature on identity in higher education. Members of the study group will submit a substantive report to the Advisory Board each year outlining ideas for faculty, curricular, and co-curricular development within members' disciplines.

A Macalester College Faculty/Staff Seminar on Secularism, composed of 7-8 faculty members and Macalester's Chaplain, will meet six times during each of the two years of the grant, convened by the Chair of Religious Studies. The seminar participants will complete common readings, prepare seminar papers, and share course materials.

The seminar discussions will bear directly upon the pedagogy employed in 30 seminar courses for first-year students. While seminars vary in subject matter and approach, one common goal is to connect intellectual inquiry to the students' "big questions" of purpose and personal commitment. The faculty seminar will advance thinking about how best to encourage the pursuit of big questions by newly arrived students. The Office of Academic Programs will facilitate exchange between the seminar instructors and their colleagues examining secularity.

At Williams College a faculty/administration seminar at the Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences is organizing discussions, visiting speakers, and consultants on such questions as:

1. What is the role and range of the participants' religious commitments and values, and how do they shape teaching practices and priorities, interaction with college policies, and guidance of student initiatives?
2. How are pressing religious topics in the wider culture addressed in the present Williams curriculum, and how are they handled in the classroom? How are they evident in the dynamics of residential life?
3. To what extent are the religious interests and needs of students known or acknowledged on campus beyond the Chaplains' Office? How are religious commitments and spiritual dispositions generally regarded in the culture of the college?

Inter-Institutional Activities

Full Working Group meetings are held each fall and spring semester over the two year grant period, with each campus serving as host. Two smaller group inter-institutional meetings have also been held to develop and discuss our qualitative research design and results.

The first meeting in October, 2006 at Bucknell University was a day-long Working Group discussion of our goals, interests, plans and resources. We paid particular attention to the dilemmas our secular contexts present for integrating what faculty and students care about-- what we're calling questions of meaning and value -- with their learning and teaching. We began discussing how the four partners can work together to assemble baseline data on student engagement in big questions. We plan to develop shared instruments for a qualitative assessment across our campuses of how students and faculty experience secularity, with institutional research to begin during the spring, 2007.

Our second meeting in February, 2007, is a meeting at Williams College of members of each campus institutional research team to finish the shared interview and focus group questions we will use on our campuses, and to draw up plans and a timeline for training and implementation of our research.

Our third meeting in May 2007 brought together the full Working Group at Vassar College to re-evaluate our goals for the project, brainstorming and developing the planned sessions for our conference, including speakers to invite, and a new project timeline.

Our fourth meeting in August 2007 was a meeting at Vassar College of student researchers and their institutional research supervisors for initial reports by the students about our qualitative research.

Our fifth meeting in October 2007 brought together the full Working Group at Williams College, with student, faculty and chaplain researchers presenting first drafts of our qualitative research reports, and further planning of our white paper and conference.

At our sixth meeting in April 2008 at Macalester College we reviewed and discussed the first draft of our White Paper, with Jonathan VanAntwerpen, from the Social Science Research Council, serving as respondent. VanAntwerpen is an SSRC research fellow, program officer for Council projects on Religion and the Public Sphere, and editor of the SSRC blog, "The Immanent Frame: Secularism, religion, and the public sphere."

This brief summary of our project will be updated as our Working Group implements its campus and inter-institutional activities.

For more information, contact Sam Speers, Project Director, (saspeers@vassar.edu) or any of the other members of our Working Group (see below).

Secularity and the Liberal Arts
Teagle Foundation Working Group Members
Fall, 2006-Fall 2008

• Dan Balik, Associate Provost and Director of Institutional Research, Macalester College
• Randolph Cornelius, Professor of Psychology, Vassar College
• Stuart Crampton, Barclay Jermain Professor of Natural Philosophy, Emeritus, Williams College
• Lucy Forster-Smith, Chaplain, Macalester College
• Ken Livingston, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Vassar College
• Paul MacDonald, Assistant Professor of Religion, Bucknell University
• Joe Murray, Associate Professor of Education, Bucknell University
• Gail Newman, Lissack Professor for Social Responsibility and Personal Ethics and Chair of the Comparative Literature Department, Williams College
• Ian Oliver, University Chaplain, Bucknell University
• Richard E. Spalding, Chaplain to the College and Coordinator of Community Service, Williams College
• Samuel Speers, Director of Religious and Spiritual Life, Vassar College
• Clay Steinman, Professor of Humanities/Media/Cultural Studies, Macalester College

Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Program Officer at the Social Science Research Council, serves as a consultant to the project, attending Working Group meetings and participating in our joint deliberations.

Dayle Rebelein (darebelein@vassar.edu), Administrative Assistant in the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life at Vassar College, serves as Administrator for the grant activities.