The Emerging Scholars Network, a recent addition to InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry, today launched its new Mentoring Program. ESN works to identify, encourage, and support the next generation of Christian scholars, at all stages of their academic careers, who seek to be a redeeming influence within higher education. The newly launched Mentoring Program aims to match up undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty within the same disciplines for academic, vocational, and spiritual mentoring.
Today ESN began accepting applications from graduate students and faculty to be considered as mentors. Anyone at any career stage can apply to serve as a mentor, it’s not limited to senior faculty. Potential mentors are those who have a desire to have a redemptive influence within the academy; perceive their work as a calling that involves a desire to “think Christianly” about their discipline and demonstrate mature discipleship of the Lord Jesus Christ. After mentors are approved, the ESN mentoring website that includes a list of available mentors will be launched. For more information on ESN and the mentoring program, please see ESN’s website at www.emergingscholars.org.
ESN recently held its first national conference, The Professor as Pilgrim: A Christian Vision for Mentoring Colleagues and Students in the Context of the Secular University. More than sixty scholars and graduate students from across the United States gathered at the University of Minnesota to investigate what it means to be a Christian faculty mentor. The conference was inspired by the example of Dr. Rutherford Aris, of the University of Minnesota. Dr. Aris, Regents Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, was for 35 years an esteemed colleague in one of the world’s most prestigious chemical engineering departments. Widely considered one of the truly great theoreticians in the field of chemical engineering, he also held an appointment in the University of Minnesota Department of Classics and Near Eastern Studies. At the conference Dr. Douglas Lauffenburger, professor of bioengineering at MIT, spoke of Dr. Aris as a “timeless model,” both spiritually and professionally, for Christian faculty mentoring.
