This presentation explores the distinctive value that Lutheran higher education offers in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. Many institutions are discovering how operational challenges quickly turn into existential crises yet turn to generic solutions that lack authenticity and fail to resonate with students and their parents.

The presentation discusses the basic competitive strategies and how Lutheran higher education is uniquely positioned to create distinct competitive advantages. Lutheran institutions can offer a compelling alternative to the disingenuous mimicry that many institutions engage in through a distinctive and authentic commitment to inquiry, vocation, service, and grace.

The presentation ties key elements of Lutheran higher education to each of the parts of VUCA to demonstrate how it offers clarity, community, and purpose amid instability. Lutheran institutions can respond to volatility with resilience, uncertainty with thoughtful inquiry, complexity with humility, and ambiguity with authenticity grounded in a love of Christ and neighbor.

Faculty and institutional leaders are encouraged to see their institution’s Lutheran identity not as a limitation, but as a strategic imperative that will allow them to thrive, adapt, and serve meaningfully in an age of rapid disruption.

Although the economic pressures on higher education are impossible to ignore, I argue that if Lutheran schools treat students and parents like consumers and seek to “sell” ourselves to them as though we’re in an economic competition, we’re likely to lose that battle and see our doors close, and perhaps sooner than later. “That sounds just like a Humanities professor,” you may be thinking, “in love with an ideal, failing to take practical realities into account. Surely we need business and marketing experts to figure out how to keep our doors open, given today’s tight economy and anti-intellectual socio-political environment? Surely we ARE in competition with other schools? Surely the payment of tuition dollars means that we are, in fact, providing our students with a product – namely, a degree with a distinctively Lutheran brand?”

I will present and evaluate several aspects of higher education through a pair of contrasting lenses, “student as citizen within the beloved community” versus “student as consumer within a capitalist society.” The contrast reveals that the consumer model undermines Lutheran educational values and makes those of us who work at Lutheran institutions hypocrites, capitulating to the values of a selfish society in which many respond to tensions and uncertainties with less love and more isolation. Our unique educational mission not only calls us, but empowers us, to engage in our work such that our graduates are both inspired and equipped to serve others, work for justice, and bring love and connection to a world in need.

The nursing profession is one that is highly regarded and in great demand. Nurses encounter a wide variety of people and situations most of us will never be exposed to. Therefore, it is important to incorporate medical ethics as part of any nursing curriculum that serve as the guiding principles for healthcare professionals. At Concordia University Chicago, we are adding medical ethics case studies to two of the bedrock courses of the program, BIO 2700 - Anatomy and Physiology for Clinical Practice I and BIO 2800 - Anatomy and Physiology for Clinical Practice II. Given that CUC is a university affiliated with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, we have also included a missional element to these medical ethics case studies. The missional element involves presenting students with difficult, real-world situations that a nurse may likely encounter on the job. Students will then be asked to research the issues, formulate their own opinions and offer an appropriate course of action. Additionally, students will be asked to explain how they would approach each issue through the lens of the LCMS and its teachings. We feel this seamlessly incorporates the teachings of the Church while maintaining the robust scientific topics necessary for success in the field of nursing.

Faced with a diverse yet increasingly polarized society, students often fear engaging with others with whom they perceive they disagree. At the same time, students speak of diversity as a gift and as something important for human flourishing. This presentation offers a Lutheran ethic of interpreting others’ actions in the best possible light as a way forward in conversations across difference. This interpretation does not require students to shed their own viewpoints, nor does it require a mindset where ideas and beliefs that dehumanize others are tolerated for the sake of diversity. Rather, interpreting others’ actions in the best possible light requires curiosity of both the speaker and the hearer: curiosity about oneself for the speaker, and curiosity of others for the hearer. Interpreting oneself in the best possible light can also help students explore viewpoints that, prior to college, they had not considered. By engaging themselves and each other in the best possible light, students are able to choose a path that humanizes both themselves and others, privileging curiosity over judgment and community over control.

For more than 25 years the Valparaiso University Department of Physics and Astronomy has offered an honors section of calculus-based introductory physics. Each fall roughly 150 Valpo students, majoring in astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, meteorology, and physics take calculus-based physics, while most of them are taking their first calculus course. But students who have already taken calculus are encouraged to register for the honors section, which emphasizes the integration of calculus and physics from the very beginning of the semester and presents challenging assignments. Enrollment in this section is usually less than 25, which fosters the development of an academic community in which students learn how to effectively prepare for each class and work closely together during class time to practice applying the concepts and skills they are learning. The course material is challenging for students, so the grading structure is designed to reward participation and persistence and allow students to overcome obstacles. Particularly important is the student-instructor relationship, which is nurtured through a weekly evening study session where students can work together on their assignments with the instructor available for consultation. The large majority of students report that their participation in this section builds their self-confidence and their relationships with other students, both of which are positive factors in student retention at the university and in their major fields.

On the surface, the two arenas of Christianity and computer science seem too disparate to meaningfully connect. But there are profound connections between Christ and computing. There is no such thing as “Christian” computer science. Computer science is computer science regardless of who creates, designs, and uses it. Yet, computer science is best understood in a Christian worldview. Computer science developed in a Christian ethos and reflects the nature and attributes of God. Connecting Christianity and computer science energizes and provides deep meaning for our endeavors.

What is computer science? Computer science is not the study of computers! Computer science is the study of subjects related to the principles of computation, information, and automation for problem solving. Computer science is problem solving, but more importantly computer science is a vocation where we love and serve our neighbor by creating true, beautiful, and good computer systems. Computer science focuses on people and how they solve problems. Computer science, as any subject, is rightly understood in the context of a human activity. Understanding the true nature of people springs from a theological perspective.

No subject or discipline “stands alone.” True knowledge and learning arise from discovering the interconnections which exist between multiple, seemingly disparate disciplines. A Christian university demonstrates how theology serves as the “queen of the sciences” by integrating disciplines. The grand ideas of computer science (algorithms, abstraction, information, intelligence, cognition, and creativity) are hard-wired human concepts instilled by the Creator. These grand ideas originated in a Christian worldview.

This paper reflects on the faith-based pedagogies of healing and social justice utilized during the author’s time teaching an Illness and Health in Literature course for pre-medical students at a public, state-funded R1 university. Though the author could not directly share the Christ-focused framework of the course with students, they nonetheless engaged in activities and conversations which promoted values of mercy, the sanctity of life, and equitable patient care.

The paper incorporates narrative analysis of Christ’s compassion for the vulnerable in Biblical stories of physical healing, such as Jairus’s daughter and a woman afflicted with bleeding (Mark 5:21-43) and restoring a blind man’s sight (John 9:1-41), as well as spiritual healing, such as the redemption of an adulterous woman (John 8:1-11), to examine how Scripture illustrates both a multidimensional and justice-focused model of healing. It then discusses how the course utilized secular texts and methods with similar themes to promote an implicitly Biblical model of care to students.

Course methods included analyses of historical literary texts (Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well and MacKinlay Kantor’s “A Man Who Had No Eyes”), contemporary fiction (Mona Awad’s All’s Well), and secondary sources to produce discussions about current issues such as gender and race disparities in healthcare and power dynamics in patient-physician relationships.

Overall, this presentation addresses how educators at either public or private Christian institutions can utilize a similar interdisciplinary pedagogy to help students recognize both the humanities in medicine and the humanity in each other, crafted in God’s own image.

This session presents an innovative approach to integrating faith and vocation in Christian higher education by focusing on staff development. An exploratory case study consisting of a 10-week multi-text reading group focused on vocation found a statistically significant increase in the sense of calling among college staff. This demonstrates the power of structured, faith-based initiatives beyond the classroom. By equipping staff to view their work through the theological lens and values of vocation, institutions can foster deeper engagement with students, stakeholders, and the institutional mission. This approach provides a practical model for cultivating purpose and holistic development across the entire campus.

In book seven of The Republic, Plato writes that “the comprehensive mind is always the dialectical.” Higher education thus should put into dialogue disparate opinions from a catholic range of subjects to achieve this ‘comprehensive dialectic.’ Such a goal is put into jeopardy from two directions today: secular over-specialization and theologically-justified self-censorship. Despite the temptation for Christians to shun secular knowledge, such self-censorship leaves Christians in a position of ignorance, over-relying on cliched understandings of our “opponents.” This ignorance isn’t merely a knowledge problem, but a moral shortcoming, as Robert George and Cornell West argue in their dialogues. Instead of dismissively labeling those we disagree with, we should imitate St. Augustine’s example of appropriating “Egyptian Gold” to better equip ourselves to face the world. Likewise, our students are uniquely at risk of developing cliched, uncomprehensive minds as universities drift further from their liberal arts roots, instead focusing on work-readiness and specialization. This movement is not merely an intellectual failing, but a moral one, as Friedrich Nietzsche and others would argue. In other words, rather than fixating upon the accident of our students’ technical shortcomings (techne), we as educators need to tap into the potent moral (moris) concerns of our students. Byung-Chul Han and Neil Postman both explore this moral-technological intersection, giving students and educators alike the language, and thus some hope, to face today’s daunting moral dilemmas.

For the last decade, I’ve experimented with strategies to reduce polarization in my ethics courses. This presentation will share a variety of these strategies, including ways they’ve been operationalized in assignments and discussion forums. I will discuss the following strategies: laying a foundation by understanding the variety of values that people care about; recognizing that most issues are complicated because they involve multiple legitimate values; expecting disagreement on complicating issues; focusing on building understanding, rather than on winning; framing discussions of controversial issues as conversations aimed at thinking together rather than debates based in defense and attack; and providing people language to disagree in a respectful way.

These strategies show up in my ethics classes in a variety of ways. For example, I give sympathetic presentations of a variety of perspectives to help students understand why intelligent, decent, reflective people disagree. In my applied ethics course, students write research papers on a controversial issue, which then become required reading for the course. The class discussions of these papers are framed as “Conversations Amidst Difference,” during which the goal is to build understanding and think together creatively about how to respond to the issue.

In the run-up to the 2024 election, I used some of these strategies in discussion forums on controversial topics that were open to the whole campus community. The presentation will include some reflections on these forums.

In the 21st century, creativity is a commodity even more valuable than ever. Young children tend to be very creative, but over time, that creative spark tends to fade away, just in time for students to enter the workforce. Many employers want employees who excel at problem-solving, are adaptable to various situations, and are resilient, and creativity can aid in developing those skills. Problem-solving, adaptability, and resilience are good life skills as well, especially as members of “Generation Z” approach adulthood.

Most would think that teaching creativity would be relegated only to so-called “creative fields” (such as the visual and performing arts), but creativity is a skill that can be taught and nurtured in any college classroom, regardless of the content area. In my presentation, I will address these questions:

- What is creativity? What are the skills that help one to be creative?

- Why is creativity important, and why should creativity be fostered in higher education?

- How can we professors cultivate a culture of creativity in our classrooms, especially if our content area does not seem to lend itself well to creativity, or if we ourselves struggle with creativity?

Reading through the Old Testament this year, I have been struck by how valuable Old Testament writers find what I would describe as a poetic mindset. Even non-poetic parts of the Bible regularly draw on Hebrew poetic practices such as repetition, parallelism, imagery repurposed for new contexts. Poetry was clearly a tool for Biblical writers to help them to reconcile with a world that often did not make sense to them on just the surface level. My paper will argue for the urgency of fostering a similar poetic mindset for our students today and provide practical examples of how to do so in college classrooms (even beyond a literature class). Thinking in a poetic manner helps students navigate pluralism and multiple perspectives without sacrificing their convictions. It strengthens their abilities to adapt to new contexts and find meaning and purpose no matter their situation. And in a Christian context, it becomes a powerful tool for recognizing the presence and purpose of the Lord in our lives and the world. As such, I hope to offer a distinctively Lutheran and more vocational approach to the art of poetry that gives our students practical tools and ways of thinking that will help them meet the particular challenges of our current cultural moment.

Whenever higher education goes through periods of uncertainty and financial stress, the arts typically receive short shrift, as universities cut budgets in favor of lucrative programs—ones that promise efficient pathways to jobs, for example. A primary assumption behind eliminating the arts misreads the value of programs in areas such as music, art history, theater, painting, dance, or creative writing, as mere “fluff” for entertainment, rather than areas that contribute to students’ moral, cognitive, and ethical development.

This paper will trace as a case study an early vocational choice of composer Morten Lauridsen, as he responded intellectually and creatively to the anguish he experienced as a student on the University of Southern California campus during the Vietnam War. In the spring of 1972, as he prepared for his doctoral recital, Lauridsen suddenly decided to compose a new piece of music. Choosing one of the best poems from A. E. Housman’s "A Shropshire Lad" (1896), Lauridsen composed an innovative art song, "Be Still, My Soul, Be Still," as a passionate protest piece. The aesthetically challenging work serves as a striking example of music that works in the world, thus reminding us why the arts should remain central to higher education—to cultivate in our students a deep commitment to enduring values, regardless of the ephemeral shifts in either the marketplace or technology.

Towards the end of my undergraduate career onward, many in my world have become transfixed by LLMs. As LLMs situated themselves as ripe for capital, adopters began rejecting quality, value, and possibility all for a frictionless product. Within the growing trend of value collapse in higher ed, we’ve become increasingly transfixed by products: we speak in rankings, we speak simply, we speak with a teleological mindset, like we’re being kept away from something.

In its promise of relief, LLMs take possibility as payment. They are limiting devices best at offering averages in response to any input. They do not care for quality, they negate possibility. In understanding Spinoza’s definition of God as all-encompassing and limitless, LLMs strangle this notion of the divine.

As higher ed apprehensively, but quickly adopts LLM into curriculums, the value of an education continues to spiral away from growth and vocation, exponentially more into transaction. At an equal rate, LLMs limit the futures institutions and their students can imagine. Possibility collapses, value collapses, the divine collapses.

Pulling from C. Thi Nguyen’s concept of value collapse, Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy, and a little bit of Spinoza, I will argue that creation, connection, and learning are divine acts in the liberal arts which AI corrupts and averages when students, administrators, and faculty use it. In short, if we use the same reductive robot in the same way as everyone else, our value collapses and is lost. We must not allow this.

This presentation explores how educators can help students evaluate information and think critically in a world where AI tools can produce convincing misinformation. Generative AI is here to stay and is revolutionizing the way business is conducted and education occurs. While AI tools can produce "creative" content, they are also prone to making mistakes or just making stuff up.

The presentation covers practical classroom strategies for integrating AI literacy into instruction, encouraging students to ask better questions, verify claims, and consider the ethical implications of what they read and create. Examples of projects are provided that force students to engage with AI tools and critically analyze various outputs to identify the key distinctions between "appearance" and "substance".

The session also highlights how AI challenges traditional teaching about “truth,” and how faculty can reframe their role in guiding students through complexity. AI's ability to generate plausible but inaccurate content challenges traditional assumptions about authority and expertise that requires educators to shift pedagogical techniques to serve as guides that focus on formation of students who are strong in character and virtue and capable of independent critical thought in a world where machines are intruding on areas that have been traditionally reserved to application of human intellect.

While artificial intelligence has been around for many years, it leapt into the general public’s consciousness in late 2023. Many novel and exciting ideas have been developed as to future uses of artificial intelligence and the potential to save time and increase productivity. The next several years will reveal what is possible with this new technology, but one concern that is being raised is the potential for artificial intelligence to make students in higher education, and potentially all users of AI, less adept at doing their own research. This includes the ability to read and synthesize information without the use of technology. This paper will include a scholarly literature review to examine the possibility that AI use may result in students that have diminished capabilities to independently gather, utilize, and synthesize material from a variety of sources. In 2010, Nicholas Carr wrote “The Shallows” which examined the concept that the Internet was leading to humans thinking differently. The research for this paper is designed to see if artificial intelligence use will contribute to that decline.

The year 1959, when A Raisin in the Sun was written and produced, was a time of marked societal divisions when Civil Rights had still not yet been achieved and the Women’s Liberation movement was still a few years from being underway, and yet Lorraine Hansberry was able to produce a timeless classic seemingly ahead of its time. Though hailed for its pioneering accomplishments for its young playwright (first Black female playwright to produce a play on Broadway, youngest recipient of the NY Drama Critics Award, etc.), it has been in the following decades where it stands the test of time by daring to dive into taboo subjects both within and outside of the African-American community: Redlining, Assimilationism, Afro-Centrism, Abortion, Gender Equity in the Workforce and Education, and the Dissolution of the American Dream, with its impact especially on African-American males. In 2025, these topics and several others introduced in the play are still hotly debated, approached in polarized ways, or being ignored or erased from recorded memory.
For my presentation, I will be sharing examples from the play that highlight the above themes, as well as lived experiences as both an African-American female in Education and as a professional actress who has played all three women in the play at different points in time (Mama, Ruth and Beneatha). I will focus on how the play can be dissected in ways to Lutheran students that demonstrate the universal nature of the story and how it is accessible to students in understanding the ways our systems, our personal choices, our biases, and our environmental conditioning that can hurt ourselves and others, but the power of love- a love that can only come from Christ- can prevail and bring effective change to ourselves and our communities. There is an enduring message in Hansberry’s play that still can speak to us today in providing a hope, peace, and contentment in the toughest of circumstances, as long as we know love.

In most classrooms, a dominant culture shapes expectations and behaviors, yet educators have the opportunity to intentionally cultivate a subculture that enhances motivation, belonging, and achievement. This session introduces a framework for building purpose-driven classroom environments grounded in psychological safety, autonomy, and shared values. Participants will engage in experiential activities—such as the Circle of Concern vs. Circle of Influence, purpose mapping, and collective value-setting—that mirror student experiences. Attendees will leave with practical strategies and tools to foster engagement, ownership, and persistence.

Students want to help. That “help” often takes the form of volunteer service at a local non-profit agency. At Augustana University students might walk dogs at the Sioux Falls Humane Society, serve dinner to folks at The Banquet (an ecumenical feeding ministry), or pick up trash along our city’s namesake, the Big Sioux River. These are useful activities that help students understand local needs, build group cohesion, if volunteering with others, and can spur useful conversations. Student might ask why there are so many abandoned pets, and hungry people? They might wonder why this river is among the most polluted in the country. At a time when the US political system seems so polarized, it is more important than ever for students to learn not only how to understand problems, but also to respectively and constructively engage with city, county, state, and federal governments.

We live in an increasingly technological world and face global problems such as climate change, the threat of future pandemics, and food security concerns that will require scientific research to address. However, based on a recent Pew Research survey, about half of all Americans think science and religion are in conflict. How can we move past the conflict so that faith communities and scientists are actually in dialogue and working together to address these global challenges? This workshop will provide some background of the history of the relationship between religion and science, highlight the different ways people can think about the relationship and discuss how Americans view the relationship. Through group discussions, we will assess the implications of the current tension between science and religion. In addition, we will also examine where there is common ground and explore strategies to more productively engage in conversations about faith and science.

As education evolves, a variety of higher education models, specifically hybrid and online environments, expand access for increasingly diverse student populations, offering flexibility, geographic reach, and innovative learning pathways. As these formats grow, a critical question arises: How do we ensure that inclusion and a true sense of belonging remain central to the higher education experience? Allen and Bowles (2012) define belonging in education as feeling accepted, valued, and connected within a learning community.

Many students entering hybrid and online programs have limited experience with virtual learning, often only encountering it during the COVID-19 pandemic. While research shows online learning can achieve expected knowledge outcomes, concerns remain about students' perceived skill development and social engagement (Baczek et al., 2021; Kappler, 2023). A major challenge in online learning is the reduced sense of belonging, as virtual environments often limit the social interaction that is essential for fostering connection (Tang et al., 2023).

To address these challenges, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has emerged as a promising framework enabling educators to create flexible, inclusive environments that support diverse learners. Research supports UDL's potential to foster inclusivity, enhance collaboration, and improve learner outcomes (Sewell et al., 2022). Attendees of this workshop will distinguish between the three main pillars of the UDL framework, including multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and expression. In addition, the opportunity to critically analyze attendee-provided course activities and identify opportunities for UDL integration will be a central focus of the session.

In higher education, faculty and administrators face increasing uncertainty, from changing student expectations to broader cultural and institutional challenges. A thriving academic community needs more than resilience—it requires intentional efforts to foster a positive culture and climate. This session examines the difference between culture and climate, offers strategies for addressing toxicity, and discusses ways to involve campus stakeholders in maintaining Christ-centered practices. Participants will gain practical tools to enhance faculty well-being and student success.

In the opening passages of Travels with Charley, while discussing his lifelong “urge to be someplace else,” John Steinbeck uses medical terminology. He talks of “curing” the travel itch, of the “virus of restlessness,” and describes the symptoms of these afflictions in the precise language a psychiatrist may employ. Later in the text, he turns this diagnostic eye toward America, describing its strengths and weaknesses and provides warnings for what he perceives to be its dangerous trajectory. But it is in a brief episode where Steinbeck attends the worship services at a “John Knox church” in Vermont that reveals the foundation of his worldview, a foundation that inevitably colors his diagnosis of America’s future. Steinbeck’s recounting of the sermon, particularly in what he appreciated about it, reveals philosophical and theological shortcomings that affect the “prescription” he writes for this nation.

My project seeks to correct these shortcomings by applying a “Law and Gospel” lens to Steinbeck’s travelogue. By focusing on his comments on religion and demonstrating how his exclusive reliance on the “Law” negatively impacts his worldview and renders his prescription for America to be ineffectual, I will offer a more rounded, Gospel-oriented response to Steinbeck’s vision for the country. I will then utilize this analysis to offer guidance for us in the modern day, with special attention paid to providing suggestions for using a “Law and Gospel” approach in the classrooms of higher education institutions with Lutheran identities.

In 1987 a leading Christian scholar wrote that “we face a generation of students for whom much in life has lost its meaning, for whom morality has lost its moorings, for whom education has lost its attraction.” Such a statement seems as relevant today as it did over three decades ago, and it represents the aimlessness many students experience. At the heart of this condition is an anthropological erosion that reduces humans as only intellect/reason (the head) and raw appetite (the belly). The result, C.S. Lewis warned, is a culture that develops “men without chests”—lacking soul, character, and virtue. Drawing on Aristotle’s insight of eudemonia and in philosopher Charles Taylor’s concept of a “social imaginary,” this presentation contends that what our students often lack is a clear understanding of how flourishing stems from the interplay of our individual and communal practices, our daily liturgies, and the telos (purpose) toward which these are oriented. For Lutheran educators, this means cultivating students’ vision of flourishing by first understanding their fundamental loves and desires—and the extent to which these are directed toward Christ. As Luther writes in his Large Catechism: “That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is really your God.”

The cultural infection of Star Wars is widespread. In this day and age, one would be hard pressed to find someone totally untouched by the cultural phenomenon (Taylor, xix). While religious studies have begun to engage Star Wars academically (i.e., Volume 31 of The Journal of Religion and Pop Culture), the possibilities for teaching religion within the Star Wars universe (inclusive of fandom) remains largely untapped. At the same time, religion is increasingly viewed with skepticism in the West, which opens up the possibility for teaching highly charged subject matters through touchpoints of familiarity. This paper is an exploration of how teaching Mandalorians, Jedi, and Sith (and others) alongside fundamentalisms, violence, dogmas, spiritualities, and sociopolitical dimensions open up critical conversation in teaching students how to engage our polarised world.

Religious studies scholars have examined the ways in which religious interpretations and the development of religious understandings are intertwined with popular cultures, such as movies, songs, and sports. Such unique correlations demonstrate the fluid and constructive nature of religion and religious traditions. In recent years, the influence of Asian popular culture in the contemporary world has been enormous, including in the US. Animes, mangas, manhwas, K-dramas, and Bollywood movies have become commodities attractive to people beyond their original cultural locations. As religious and spiritual values are ubiquitous in Asian popular cultures, they also infuse the products of Asian popular culture. This paper explores how religious and spiritual traditions of Asia, such as Shinto, Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Christianity, are represented in the products of Asian popular cultures, particularly in manga/anime and Korean dramas/movies. However, at the same time, those products actively question and subvert the rigid religious boundaries created in the Western understanding. Therefore, teaching religion through the lens of Asian popular culture can enrich the dominant pedagogy in teaching religion in the US, particularly through the world religion paradigm. The paper highlights pedagogical insights, including prospects and challenges, from developing and teaching the “Manga, K-Drama, and Religion” course at Augustana University.

Kpop Demon Hunters, the new hit Netflix film, provides an excellent case study for using popular culture as a tool for religious engagement. In the film, the members of HUNTR/X seek to strengthen the honmoon and lock the demon king, Gwi-ma, out of the human world. Kpop Demon Hunters exemplifies how many films touch on but underexplain religious practice, concepts, and beliefs, and that space becomes the instructor’s playground for building relevant religious/cultural connections, addressing gaps in religious literacy, tracing religious influence(s) on the source material, applying a comparative approach, utilizing particular hermeneutics, or meeting other engagement goals. Within Kpop Demon Hunters, spiritual forces are at work, with some connection to defined religious practices; this allows instructors to connect to specific religious traditions, improving students’ religious literacy, or it also allows for reflection about what religion looks like or how religion can be analyzed academically. Because moral failures can transform humans into demons, concerns about behavior impacting one’s state in this life and beyond become relevant and provide fruitful ground for comparative, ethical, or metaphysical reflection/analysis. The quest to contain evil connects to various religious traditions, providing fruitful ground for religious literacy, comparative work, and self-reflection. Media need not elucidate religious traditions or even explicitly be religious to be a relevant tool for facilitating student engagement, but Kpop Demon Hunters is an excellent case study on ‘How it’s Done’ to engage with religion(s) based on experience in teaching Scriptures, SciFi, and Fantasy at Augustana University.

Role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons, have surged in popularity in recent years, made evermore apparent with the release of the 2023 film of the same name. Using the model of these games to teach about religion, history, and culture makes learning fun and experiential. What better way is there to learn about religious history than joining in the debates of the past? For the past several years, the Reacting to the Past Consortium has supported various role-playing learning games on a variety of topics, ranging from the French Revolution to Climate Change debates in modern Copenhagen. In my own teaching at Augustana, I have used the published game on the Protestant Reformation by Emily Fisher Gray. My students become members of the Augsburg City Council of 1530. Each student has a distinct role to play, particular objectives to meet, and an individualized writing assignment for their assigned character. They are part of distinct factions, such as the Wittenberg or the Swiss faction, who debate whether and to what extent Augsburg should reform. By jumping into these characters, they begin to learn that debates about priestly marriage, the translation of the mass into German, or what to do with the Anabaptists have wide-ranging implications for political and economic alliances that extend beyond the Church. While the focus is on 1530s Augsburg, the RPG format means that questions about how to ethically engage people of different beliefs and backgrounds in one’s own historical and political moment are never far from consideration as well.

This presentation shares findings from a participatory action research study examining how systems of oppression shape the recruitment, hiring, and retention of Black women faculty at predominantly white, ELCA-affiliated institutions. Grounded in Black Feminist Thought, Intersectionality, and Critical Race Theory, Cycle 1 findings reveal persistent challenges including cultural taxation, racial and gendered isolation, and a lack of meaningful mentorship. These insights highlighted a critical need for intentional, identity-affirming support structures. In response, Cycle 2 involved the co-design and pilot of a structured mentorship program tailored specifically for Black women faculty across a consortium of NECU institutions. Preliminary outcomes indicate that culturally responsive mentorship fosters increased sense of belonging, professional development, and retention. Participants also reported that the program created space for critical reflection, resistance, and healing. The presentation will explore lessons learned in building cross-institutional coalitions, the importance of centering Black women’s lived experiences in institutional change efforts, and implications for leadership committed to equity. By reimagining what it means to support Black women in the academy, this research offers a framework for systemic transformation and a model for institutional accountability in religious and higher education contexts.

A liberal arts education – already an interdisciplinary engagement – describes an education that challenges the intellect through pursuit of wisdom across the breadth of the humanities, the social and natural sciences, and the arts. In the same vein, the field of neuroscience seeks to explain the brain basis of behavior across the breadth of human and animal experience – from describing the neural pathways underlying simple motor commands to the complexities of appreciating great works of art. A cornerstone of Augustana University’s nascent Neuroscience Program is the senior capstone seminar taken by both majors and minors at the culmination of their degree. In this course, students are asked to reflect on the impact of a liberal arts education and an interdisciplinary mindset on their experiences in neuroscience thus far, and on their vocational journeys in neuroscience in the future. Students are tasked with two major assignments to aid these reflections: leading and participating in an interdisciplinary reading group, and creating an ePortfolio summarizing and highlighting connections across disciplines during their myriad undergraduate experiences. In this presentation, we discuss the evolution of the reading group across the three years of offering the course, and the impact of ePortfolios on students’ fluency in communicating how their educational experience and broader knowledge of neuroscience has been shaped by their liberal arts training and interdisciplinary mindset in pursuit of their vocational goals.

Historically, the Christian faith has related sacred art and beauty. Beauty is and was very important to the church and leads to the glory of God. The idea was that the Christians would look through the art to behold the gift of God. In this way, the believer would not workshop [worship?] idols. The interconnectivity between art and religion communication and expression has always played a significant role in influencing our worship, religious beliefs, and practices. The art was meant to lead humans to contemplate God. A way to process gold and silver to form sacred stained-glass artifacts includes the creation of particles less than 100 billionths of a meter commonly called nanoparticles. These nanoparticles formed different colors (e.g. red, blue, yellow). We will discuss the historical development of certain sacred art glass forms and the slow evolution into nanoscience and nanotechnology. The ancient preparation behind the sacred art is now understood and has led to advancements in the fields of chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, and engineering today.

This roundtable presentation will discuss Augustana University’s recent experience in student academic travel. The panel brings together experienced faculty leaders and Augustana’s study away coordinator. Panelists plan to address such topics as logistical challenges, shifting student preferences, and how these classes fit into the larger mission of the institution. They will also take questions from the audience.

Seismic demographic shifts in USA higher education are often referred to as a demographic cliff, but the changes in college and university enrollments are a much more complex story. The drop in High School graduation rates are variable by state and region, US birth rates are declining as birthrates worldwide, and higher education needs to offer a consumer benefiting product which is of interest to Gen Z. At best this change in college enrollment is a gradual decline.