Academically Speaking: Lessons from a Life in Christian Higher Education (Rick Ostrander) - A Review

 

ACADEMICALLY SPEAKING: Lessons from a Life in Christian Higher Education. By Rick Ostrander. Foreword by George M. Marsden. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2024. Xiii + 199 pages.

Once upon a time, I was a student at a Christian college, and then later, I taught theology at a bible college. When I received my Ph.D. in historical theology, I assumed that Christian higher education of some form would be my career. It didn't work out that way as I spent most of my working years serving as a pastor. While I didn't end up in academia, I have had a keen interest in the field of Christian higher education. So, when I saw Rick Ostrander's book Academically Speaking in the Eerdmans catalog, I was intrigued enough to request a review copy.

Rick Ostrander, the author of Academically Speaking, spent his adult years working as a professor, administrator, and consultant in Christian higher education. Having spent much of his working life in academic administration, he considered writing a handbook for aspiring administrators in Christian higher education. Instead of that book, Ostrander chose to write an autobiographical account of life as an academic administrator. Thus, in Academically Speaking, Ostrander takes the reader on a journey that begins with his life as a young college student at Moody Bible Institute, which at the time was a three-year certificate program, to his current position as Executive Director of the Michigan Christian Study Center. In the course of writing the book, Ostrander shares the highs and lows of life in Christian higher education. It is worth noting that at the point the book comes to fruition, Christian colleges and universities, not to mention seminaries, are struggling for survival.

When Ostrander matriculated at Moody, he did not envision a career in higher education. He was more interested in basketball than his studies. Though things have changed in the intervening years, academic excellence was not the name of the game when he began this journey. I sense that he is not alone in this. He writes about his early experiences at a college that was immersed in the dispensational premillennial/fundamentalist ethos. Indoctrination into fundamentalist beliefs was the primary concern. Nevertheless, he encountered a few professors who transcended this ethos, providing him with a glimpse of what true Christian higher education might look like (Chapter 1). Before we move to the next phase, Ostrander offers us a “Corporate Interlude,” in which he tells of the time spent in the corporate world while his wife finished her education in music. After she finished her graduate education, having decided that the corporate world was not his calling, he decided to pursue further education (remember that he had a three-year bible college certificate). He landed at the University of Michigan, one of the leading public universities in the country. What he experienced there triggered his scholarly/academic interests in ways his time at Moody had not. In this academic world that was quite different from Moody, he found the academic world very stimulating and chose history as his area of study. Because the university was generous with his Moody credits, he was able to finish his Michigan degree with little trouble. What this experience did was awaken in him "a love of ideas, taught me the value of critical thinking, and instilled in me confidence that I brought something to the academic table" (p. 32).

After he finished his history degree at the University of Michigan, he decided to pursue graduate education at the University of Notre Dame (Chapter 3). This chapter, titled “A Community of Scholars, describes his decision to pursue advanced degrees in American Religious History, first with Nathan Hatch and later with George Marsden, who authors the foreword of this book. Before taking up residence in South Bend, he and his wife Lonnie headed to Europe for a three-week journey beginning in Zurich but included places like Romania (right before the fall of Ceausescu). He describes his time at Notre Dame as being especially formative, though he largely lived a monk-like existence focused on his studies and serving as a teaching assistant. He writes that one of the benefits of his Notre Dame experience was the opportunity to “witness firsthand a healthy blend of piety and intellect. Bible college evangelicals have sometimes believed that scholarly excellence comes at the expense of spiritual devotion, but that suspicion for me was dispelled at Notre Dame” (p. 54). Anyone interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in religious studies or other fields might find this chapter of interest.

After earning a Ph.D. the next step is getting a job, something that is increasingly difficult for Ph.D. recipients. He notes that in 2020 only about 40% of Ph.Ds. find jobs in academia (p. 55). As a personal witness, it took me four years to find a position that lasted two years and I never found my way back into academia. The good news described in a section titled “Desert Interlude,” was that he got his first job. Though he was grateful to obtain this job, the school he went to was a struggling Southern Baptist college in Arizona that at the time was best known for its baseball team. Though today it is an extremely large for-profit university, back then it was on near life support. It also didn't pay well (neither did my one job) and it had rather poor facilities. Nevertheless, it was a job that provided him with a valuable learning experience when it came to teaching. He points out that until recently instruction in being a teacher was not a major component of graduate education.

After his brief time in Arizona, Ostrander landed a teaching position at John Brown University in rural Arkansas. This new job, which he describes in a chapter titled “Loosening the Bible Belt” (Chapter 4), was once again in the area of history. This school was a family-run enterprise rooted in fundamentalism. Three generations of John Browns served the school as president. Although he began his time at John Brown as a history professor, he would end up serving for five years as a dean. Thus, he began his career in higher education administration. Thus, we see how he moved from being a student to a professor to an administrator took place. It’s a path that most higher education administrators take. At each point along the way, we get to see what this particular aspect of academic life was like. While at John Brown, Christian higher education was on the upswing. For this rather poor family-run enterprise help would come from a nearby corporate giant (Walmart), which provided significant financial assistance. Not only did this school and others grow and prosper, but many, including JBU heeded Mark Noll's critique of the scandalous nature of the evangelical mind and began to place greater value on scholarship. Unfortunately, as Ostrander points out, in recent years that university like many others has been affected by the polarization of evangelicalism, leading to an undermining of its academic life.

After serving as dean at JBU, he took the next step up the administrative ladder of leadership, answering the call to serve as provost at Cornerstone University, a former Baptist institution in Grand Rapids, Michigan (Chapter 5). It is in this context that Ostrander oversaw an entire academic program including a seminary. One of the challenges he faced at Cornerstone involved a science department dominated by young earth creationists along with a Bible and Theology department that was much less fundamentalist in orientation. That might seem odd, but he writes that the department chair was a young earth advocate and made sure that the department reflected that view, which put it at odds with the Bible and Theology people, with Ostrander having to referee the situation. He writes that the early years of his tenure were largely enjoyable though challenging. While we get a sense of what Christian higher education looks like from the highest levels, we also see what happens when a person in leadership begins to discern that they are not in alignment with the school’s ethos. In his case, the area of dissonance centered on major issues of human sexuality. Things became complicated when one of his sons came out as gay. Because he was supportive of his son’s discernment, this put him at odds with the school's beliefs. I expect that this is becoming more common with time, and people in leadership face greater pressure to comply. This situation provides a window into the challenges of leading institutions when you find yourself at odds with parts of the school’s ethos.

The next stop in this journey after serving as provost at a university, a position understood to be second only to the president, was to serve in leadership at an institution providing support to a network of colleges and universities. Thus, in Chapter 6, Ostrander describes his time working for the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. This institution provides resources colleges and universities could not sustain on their own, such as semester-abroad experiences, training for new faculty, and advocacy for universities. The last element in their sense of identity is why the headquarters sat on Capitol Hill. In Ostrander’s case, he was hired to serve as the vice president overseeing the academic side of the institution’s work. This included overseeing the semester-abroad programs. In this chapter, we learn something about this organization, which my alma mater is a member of. There is a lot of interesting material here, including discussions of the challenges faced by an organization like this as it tries to serve a diverse set of schools, with different theological perspectives and needs. Again, the issue of human sexuality proved to be an issue of concern for the Council after the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage and the constituent schools responded differently. After several years in this position, he was first downsized and then he moved on to a new venture, though for a time he earned extra money working for a landscaping business.

As he contemplated the future, Ostrander decided to pursue work as a consultant (Chapter 7). After all, he had a lot of experience in higher education, including organizing semester-abroad programs. So, he started a business. It was risky, but it also contributed to his own experience. In this chapter, we learn something about why schools might turn to consultants to help them navigate difficult issues or address short-term needs. His attempt to develop this business was affected by the advent of COVID-19, as the pandemic limited his opportunities. As a result, still relatively young, he began looking at other, more stable opportunities. For him, that included taking a position in August 2021 at Westmont College in Montecito, California. The discussion of his time at Westmont is interesting because that college has a reputation for high academic standards and is also very expensive. He took a job as assistant to the president tasked with developing the college’s attempt to create a downtown Santa Barbara program (the Montecito site could not expand). While it paid well and also allowed his wife to teach at Westmont's music program, he soon discovered that this would not be a long-term position.

The journey from student to the present leads back to Michigan. More specifically it led back to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, where he currently serves as Executive Director of the Michigan Christian Study Center at the University of Michigan. This chapter introduces us to another form of Christian engagement with the academic world. In this case, an evangelical entity designed to bring faith into conversation with higher education at a major university. He notes that these study centers have been cropping up across the country. They are not just campus ministries. They are designed to engage with the university’s academic world. He writes that “in an academic culture characterized by polarization and shouting across political divides, Christians can model respectful dialogue, even between those with deep disagreements, because discussion and debate are foundational to truth seeking” (p. 166). He believes that these study centers can fill this need.

As we work our way through Academically Speaking, we get to know something about Christian higher education, especially evangelical Christian higher education. We learn about its perceived benefits and challenges. We learn how the purpose of education often gets caught up in larger cultural debates, which often undermines the academic purpose of these institutions. We see how commitments to open inquiry and academic freedom ebb and flow. Some of these challenges have economic dimensions. Most of these schools have little to no endowment and are subject to the whims of their constituencies.

The epilogue serves as a summation of the journey, with Ostrander offering some insights from his experiences through the years. What he describes should not surprise us. Higher education in general is in decline. There are fewer students and higher costs. Many in the United States have lost faith in education (this is especially true in white evangelical circles), and even corporations put less emphasis on college education. As he surveys the situation, he suggests that Christian colleges need to discern what it is they have to offer that is different from other schools. The primary offering, he believes, is a sense of community. He even suggests that Christian colleges consider hiring full-time faculty to teach the general education courses and use adjuncts to teach the majors, an inversion of what takes place now. The goal here is to invest in long-term relationships. That might not thrill many seekers of Ph. Ds, but it does make sense.

As I read Ostrander’s Academic Speaking, I thought about the colleges, seminaries, and schools I've been involved with as a student and as a member of the faculty. In many ways, I am in a different place from where those schools now sit. The reason I left the one full-time academic post I had been called to was that I was not in alignment with the school's ethos (they chose it for me). In other words, I didn't fit. But even my alma mater is not in the same place culturally and theologically as it was when I was a student. Though, interestingly, the person I was at the time probably fits the current version of the school quite well, though as time passed, I became more liberal and the school, which was always moderate in its ethos, seems to have taken a more conservative turn. While I read the book with great interest, Ostrander didn’t write this book for me. He directs it to fledgling administrators in Christian institutions of higher education, hoping that these administrators might learn something valuable from his vast experience in Christian higher education. I believe that he might be correct that using this genre might prove more beneficial than an introductory handbook.