Multiple Grants Awarded to School of Theology
Associate Dean Bryan Stone and several other faculty members have contributed their creativity and energy to grant proposals over the past few months, and the result of their efforts has paid dividends. Many thanks for these collaborative efforts that will lead the STH community to continue their innovative strides.
- The Lilly Endowment awarded the Center for Practical Theology a $50,000 planning grant for a project called “Called to Lives of Meaning and Purpose” in response to a call for proposals. This grant is for the planning stage during the summer and will lead up to a major proposal in August for the full 5-year, $1.5 million project grant. The CPT proposed to create a congregational innovation hub to work with Mainline Protestant congregations in New England in designing and launching new ministries or enhancing existing ministries that help Christians discover and claim how God is calling them to lead lives of meaning and purpose. The STH innovation hub will provide both a process and a range of practical theological resources to aid congregations (both individually as members and collectively as a body) in exploring their callings, embracing them fully, and enacting them imaginatively in daily practices and ministries. The objective of the planning grant is to design this process in collaboration with congregations and to imagine with more concreteness the resources the STH hub might make available to congregations in New England.
- The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) awarded STH a $50,000 “Innovation Grant” to pursue the development of two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The Ethical Leadership MOOC created by Walter Fluker is already in existence, and Bryan Stone is presently creating the second on Faith and Finance. It was proposed that STH create two more MOOC’s – one on Religion and Conflict Transformation, and the other on Interfaith Leadership. Once these additional two MOOCs are created, STH would have a set of four MOOC’s that might be offered either as a form of continuing education, or possibly, a MicroMasters. For more information on Boston University’s new MicroMasters certification programs, click here.
- The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) awarded STH a $15,000 “Faculty Development Grant” to implement usage of the Intercultural Development Inventory among all faculty and senior administrators at the School of Theology both 1. to develop plans for achievable growth in intercultural competency, understood as a movement from ethnocentric orientations to more ethnorelative orientations (such as acceptance, adaptation, and integration) and 2. to measure that growth. This possibility follows a multi-year process of study, planning, and dialogue led by our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee. The implementation of this tool could possibly lead to an initial faculty and administrator’s retreat to explain the model behind the IDI, answer questions, and secure buy-in.
- The Wabash Center awarded STH a $50,000 grant that will provide funding over the next few years to pilot a set of annual colloquia, workshops, and retreats that augment our teacher-training preparation for PhD students beyond the first-year colloquium, coursework, and multi-year teaching and research internships that already stand at the core of our PhD program. The objective of this new initiative is to increase teaching competencies in our PhD graduates in course design and syllabus construction, online teaching, intercultural competency in teaching, and the development of a philosophy of teaching. The project is a creative new venture jointly developed by the School’s faculty, administration, and doctoral students.