One of the key distinctives of Covenant’s faculty is their keen attention to teaching students. What happens between professors and students, inside but also outside the classroom, is central and crucial for our mission, and Covenant alumni almost universally report that relationships with faculty members are at the top of the list of the most meaningful and transformative aspects of their college experience.

At the same time, we recognize that effective teaching rests, in significant measure, on effective and energetic scholarship. Our faculty’s ongoing scholarly inquiry necessarily and fruitfully informs the education Covenant students receive, as our faculty guides them in thoughtfully and biblically engaging current issues and conversations. While the majority of Covenant’s graduates will enter vocations other than academic, they will do so understanding the big questions of the whole range of intellectual pursuits and equipped to respond with Christian minds and hearts as those questions inevitably connect at vital points with their various life paths.

Not only does our faculty’s scholarship profoundly shape and bless our students, but it also reaches out beyond our campus as an exciting and important extension of Covenant College. Participating in conferences, speaking in schools and churches, writing books and journal articles and book reviews – these are just a few of the ways in which faculty scholarship enriches wider communities, including both academic and non-academic circles.

One way to recognize our faculty’s scholarship is our Celebration of Faculty Scholarship, held every other year. In the spring we gather information on recent scholarly activities in order to give appropriate recognition to this important aspect of the faculty’s work. Then we hold a reception to acknowledge these wonderful contributions.

This year’s reception on March 31 included brief comments from philosophy professor Bill Davis and physics professor Phill Broussard. Dr. Davis outlined five characteristics of the scholarly work of Covenant’s faculty, characteristics grounded firmly in the Reformed perspective on such work:
● Earnest concern for God’s glory rather than our own;
● Grateful submission to God’s special revelation in Scripture;
● Joyful delight in God’s truth wherever it is found, whether in nature or in Scripture;
● Humble recognition of sin and rightful suspicion of human autonomy and sufficiency;
● Hopeful eagerness to see Christ’s redemptive, healing power in every area of culture.

Dr. Broussard reminded us of the importance of “pure” science which explores the intricate wonders of God’s creation, without having to produce a direct or immediate “practical” application. Such research both equips students with competencies they will certainly use in later years and also assures them about their own capacity for top-level research. He then led the group on a “guided tour” of the recently-installed thin film growth and characterization laboratory, where in December of last year a record low temperature on Covenant’s mountaintop campus was set: -447 degrees Fahrenheit – and that’s not a misprint!

Even though much serious scholarship does not directly touch many people, its implications and applications have profound and long-term impact, for good or for ill. There is, in other words, a “continuum of effect,” and for our faculty’s biblically faithful scholarship a “continuum of value and benefit,” that connects the pure and the practical. While Christian scholars don’t pursue their scholarly work primarily because it is useful, it is nevertheless and almost always useful in its effects on thinking, doing, and living out our faith. I am very, very grateful for our energetic and creative faculty whose scholarly work benefits not just our students and our campus but also the wider communities of the academy, the church, and the world.