 Wabash Center Director Lucinda Huffaker |
Founded by Wabash College religion professor Raymond B. Williams in 1996 with an initial grant from Lilly Endowment, the Wabash Center has sought to enhance teaching and learning in college and university religion departments and theological schools. The Center realizes its goals through a series of ongoing workshops, consultations, grants, and other supportive activities for faculty members and institutions.
“This new grant, the largest the Wabash Center has ever received, will enable us to continue to conduct workshops for faculty in seminaries, colleges, and universities from all over the country,” said Director Lucinda Huffaker. “In addition to the work we do on the Wabash campus, the grant will allow us to fund scholarship and institutional initiatives to improve teaching and learning, and through our Web site and international journal, share the results of our work.”
Over the course of its first seven years of existence, the Wabash Center has been able to establish itself as the most important center in North America for fostering excellent teaching in theology and religion. More than 440 faculty members have taken part in programs on the Wabash College campus, while the Wabash Center has issued more than 300 grants totaling more than $4 million since its founding.
“When we began our work, only a few of the Ph.D./Th.D. granting institutions in theology and religion had formal programs in place to help their graduate students become better teachers,” explains Huffaker. “Now nearly all of them do, and we are proud that most of the new programs have received support from the Wabash Center.”
In addition to issuing grants and its summer-long series of workshops and consultations, the Wabash Center publishes its own journal, Teaching Theology and Religion, which has contributed to the growing body of literature in the field of teaching and learning in theology and religion.
“Most grants are awarded on the promise of future accomplishments,” says Wabash Dean Mauri Ditzler, “but a big part of this grant is in response to what already has been accomplished. Lilly Endowment’s continued funding of the Wabash Center’s activities suggests that the Center is indeed improving teaching theology and religion at all levels—seminary, graduate, and even undergraduate.”
“This new grant will allow us to continue what we’ve been doing since the outset, but also begin a more systematic evaluation of the effects of our work so that we know where to invest our resources in the future,” adds Huffaker.
One of the goals of the new grant will be to work with approximately 400 faculty members who will take part in workshops and consultations directly run by the Wabash Center. An even larger number of faculty members will benefit from approximately $3.8 million in grants, which include grants to fund institutional advancement or group projects; individual study leave grants; individual small project grants; and non-competitive grants for pre-tenure participants in teaching workshops.
Additionally, the new grant will allow the Wabash Center to continue to create new literature on the subject of theological teaching. The editors of the Center’s journal, Teaching Theology and Religion, will be more proactive in seeking essays and quality articles that will enhance teaching. Grant money will also be used to fund book-length projects on the subject.
The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion is based at Wabash College and housed in Hovey Cottage. It conducts its workshops and consultations in the Detchon Center, Trippet Hall, and the Malcolm X Institute. Its director is Lucinda Huffaker, who assumed that position in the spring of 2002 after serving as associate director since 1997.
The Wabash Center receives counsel from its Advisory Committee, which is comprised of William C. Placher (chair) of Wabash College; Charles Foster of the Carnegie Foundation; Willie Jennings of Duke Divinity School; Serene Jones of Yale Divinity School; Diane Kennedy of Aquinas Institute of Theology; and Mark Schwehn of Valparaiso University.
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