Dr. Niel Nielson

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. Click to continue »

This spring semester we were pleased to have Leslie Leyland Fields on campus for the Nick Barker Writer-in-Residence program. Fields taught a class on Creative Nonfiction, and gave public readings of her own works. The Nick Barker Writer-in-Residence program honors retired Professor of English and former Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Nick Barker, and is funded by the generous financial support of an anonymous donor. You can listen to a podcast about the Nick Barker Writer-in-Residence program and read more about Leslie Leyland Fields at her website.

Here are some examples of our students’ responses to their class experience with Mrs. Fields:

I absolutely loved being part of this class….I learned so much about not only the creative nonfiction genre, but how to write….

I had always written one way and this class really stretched me to have to try writing from different angles.

It was a humbling and challenging experience. It took my love and skill for writing and directed its focus to Christ….it kept hounding gently the fact that I write for God.

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I just finished reading two books recommended by an acquaintance: Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences (Broadway Books, 2005), and Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Basic Books, 2007). The author of both books is Leonard Sax, a family physician and a psychologist.

In Why Gender Matters, Sax takes on the dogmas of gender-neutral child-rearing and social constructionism (the view that differences between girls and boys derive from social expectations with little or no input from biology), and presents a compelling account of the enormous price that children and society have paid for these modern experiments. Under the pervasive influence of blurred distinctions between male and female, particularly the erasure of gender distinctions in school program and curriculum, many children feel “less rooted” in their identity as boys or girls than at any time in our memory.

The neglect of gender in the raising and education of children has resulted in a loss of direction for the growing child and especially the adolescent. The adolescent today is like an explorer without a compass in a trackless wilderness, unsure of the path or the destination.

Consequences include dramatic increases in anxiety and depression among even young children, an elevated sense of instability and threat in their personal lives, and massive confusion about their own identities and about how to relate to one another. Click to continue »

I recently read an article by Phil Zuckerman, associate professor of sociology at Pitzer College, an article adapted from his 2008 book Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment. Zuckerman conducted interviews with residents of Sweden and Denmark, two countries known for their relative absence of religious belief and conviction, in order to support his claim that

…it is not the most religious nations in our world today, but rather the most secular, that have been able to create the most civil, just, safe, equitable, humane, and prosperous societies. Denmark and Sweden stand out as shining examples.

While he clarifies that he is not making a causal argument, i.e. that the alleged high level of social health in these countries is caused by the low levels of religiosity, he states that he wishes “to soberly counter the widely touted assertion that without religion, society is doomed.” He aims this counterargument at those who claim that religion is the foundation for a moral and just society, for human dignity, and for happiness and contentment. Click to continue »

This week’s blog is a bit of a potpourri, written in Ft. Myers, FL, where I’m traveling with my wife for the College. Yesterday I preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Naples in the morning and at North Ft. Myers Presbyterian Church in the evening, and today I speak in the chapel service at Evangelical Christian School of Ft. Myers.

1. My travels have recently taken me to Miami and Ft. Lauderdale; Baltimore and Annapolis; Jackson, MS; Washington, D.C.; and soon again to Miami. These trips have included several preaching engagements, visits to schools, gatherings with Covenant alumni and parents, and conferences connected with my work as college president. Kathleen has enjoyed speaking engagements with women’s groups from Wichita, KS; Greensboro, NC; Suffolk, VA; and even Dubai, where she spoke at a women’s conference and was hosted by the parents of a Covenant student. What a joy it is for both of us to connect with the larger Covenant family around the world, and to see the church at work in so many remarkable ways in so many interesting places! Click to continue »

This past weekend was Parents Weekend at Covenant College, with many parents visiting campus and participating in their sons’ and daughters’ schedules and activities. It’s always a wonderful weekend as parents gain a closer glimpse into college and campus life.

On Friday I spoke in chapel and afterwards received several requests to make my talk available in some accessible format. So I’m posting it here on my blog, edited for print, noting that it is certainly longer than my normal posting but trusting that readers will find it helpful.

Good morning. I want to say a special welcome to parents who are visiting on this Parents Weekend. These are interesting and challenging times for all of us, and we here at Covenant are very grateful for the opportunity to serve your families.

As a Covenant parent myself, I am keenly aware of the differences among colleges and universities, and I am continually grateful for the distinctive mission and commitments of Covenant, and for its impact on our sons Dan and David.

My wife Kathleen sends her greetings and her apologies for not being here. Months ago, before the Parents Weekend date was finalized, she agreed to speak at a women’s conference for a wonderful church in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where she is right now. She is staying with the parents of Covenant student Zein Baluch; we’ve known the Baluch family from our Chicago-area days. But she is really sorry she is not here to see you parents.

I want to talk this morning about something that has been on my mind for some time now, triggered more recently by a number of conversations and experiences that have alerted me to a viewpoint that lurks in many Christians’ minds, including perhaps some of yours. Click to continue »

Much is often made of the role of the college years in enabling students to ask important questions about what they have been brought up to believe. College is a time for inquiry and exploration, and for many this includes a skepticism, real or provisional, about received views and commitments. Many professors take great pride in leading students in this practice of dispossession, believing that only by such practiced doubt can the rising generation think for itself, make up its own mind, and learn to live by its own convictions.

In a recent essay in the New York Times, David Brooks questions this practice and its underlying assumptions about who we are as human beings. Click to continue »

Occasionally I come across websites that are worth passing along, not because they are thoughtful or helpful or truthful but because they are, well, just so bizarre.

The first website….

As most of the readers of this blog know, this past week brought the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, along with the continual reminder of the evil tragedy of almost 50 million human deaths. As I spoke in our chapel service this past Friday, I urged our campus community never to lose the crucial importance of the sanctity of human life as foundational for all other truly moral causes. I quoted from an article by Joel Belz, which I also quoted in an earlier blog:

It’s hard to see how anyone can claim to be a protector of the environment and not put high priority on the preservation of human babies. To defend a focus on the future of polar bears and whales, while asking evangelicals to get less noisy about infant humans, is an embarrassing contradiction.

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In his essay “On Stupidity,” Thomas Benton, the pen name for William Pannapacker, associate professor of English at Hope College (MI), identifies two cultural trends which have served to undermine the intellectual seriousness of today’s college students, and of American society in general. One is the proliferation of technology and wired connection, and the effects include diminished verbal skills, perpetual distraction, skimming in place of deep reflection, short attention span, and self-absorption. I’ve written in previous blog postings about this trend, and educators, as well as church leaders, do well to recognize and address the shallow virtual reality in which so many of the rising generation live so much of their lives.

The other trend which Benton notes is the rise of anti-intellectualism in American public and political life. Click to continue »

This is a thrilling Christmas break for the Nielson family, the highlights of which are the weddings of two of our sons. Our oldest son Jon was married on December 20 in Chicago, at the historic Moody Memorial Church, and our middle son Dan (2008 Covenant graduate) will be married on New Year’s Eve at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Waco, Texas. What a delight to welcome into our family two beautiful, wonderful daughters! After living in a household with only males, Kathleen is very, very happy to have some female companionship!

I have the privilege of giving fatherly charges to both couples during their wedding ceremonies. Click to continue »