This article argues that there is an identifiable scholarship of teaching and learning in theology and religion that, though varied in its entry points and forms, exhibits standards of excellence recognizable in other forms of scholarship. Engaging in this scholarship enhances a professor's possession of practice and often reveals insights into student learning and the contours of a field that can advance both educational and disciplinary projects. Through conversation with a form of the scholarship of teaching and learning that emerged most clearly in work associated with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, we describe starting points and generative assumptions that have been employed in the discourse of the scholarship of teaching and learning in theology and religion as they have emerged in submissions to Teaching Theology and Religion over the past decade and a half and point to its benefits. See responses to this essay by http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/teth.12021, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/teth.12022, and http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/teth.12023 published in this issue of the journal. Responses by Reid B. Locklin, Joanne Maguire Robinson, and Nadine S. Pence appear in next issue issue, 16:3 (2013).

Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy makes a strong case that minimal religious literacy is an essential requirement for contemporary U. S. citizens. He argues further that high schools and colleges should offer required courses in the study of religion in order to help students reach that baseline literacy. Beyond the general recommendation that such courses focus on biblical literacy and the history of Christianity, however, Prothero does not sketch out his proposal for teaching religious literacy. This essay argues that in addition to providing factual knowledge, teaching for religious literacy needs to involve sustained attention to how religious people use that factual information to orient themselves in the world, express their individual and group selfunderstanding, and give their lives direction and meaning. Such attention to the dynamics of religious life can also help students understand why human beings have persisted in this mode of behavior.Perhaps the most provocative recent book concerning teaching about religion is Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -and Doesn't (2007). The book is important because it makes a strong case that minimal religious literacy is an essential requirement for effective citizenship in the contemporary United States. It is alternately delightful and appalling in documenting how many college students fall hilariously short of even rudimentary religious literacy. But for teachers of religion in higher education, it is also consistently frustrating in its broad prescriptions for remedying the current dismal state of religious literacy in our country. That frustration stems in large part from Prothero's relentless focus on the specific information that religiously literate people need to know. Religious literacy, I hope to show, is more complicated than that.Despite a few nods in other directions Prothero focuses too exclusively on the what of religion and not enough on the how. That is, religious literacy must involve not only a degree of mastery of basic information (such as when to perform the prescribed actions during a Roman Catholic Mass or during Muslim daily prayers -what Prothero calls ritual literacy) but also some insight into how people use that basic information to orient themselves in the world, express their individual and communal self-understanding, and give their lives direction and meaning. To be literate about religion, one needs to know something about religious dynamics, mechanics, and processes -the how of religion. A clear understanding of both the what and the how is necessary to grasping the why of religion -why human beings have persisted in this mode of behavior, even as it has imposed extraordinary demands on them and as frequently brought them to tears as to joy. ARTICLES

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This chapter describes a yearlong seminarfocused on teaching that is offered to all incoming tenure-track [aculty at Connecticut College, a smallresidential liberal artscollege. This seminarisdistinctive because it isfacilitated by second-and tilird-ycar [acuity: Weargile that this peer-mentoting model has three distinct bCllcfits. First, it avoids many of the pitfalls identified with traditional one-onone mcntoring. Second, it addresses thedistinctive challenges thatfacultyface at small colleges. Third, it provides a strong base for faculty to pursue the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Webelieve that ourpeer-mentoring model may wellbe adaptable to different typesof institutions. As evidence of our [aculty'snewfoundengagement in SoTL, where previously littleor flO critical attention waspaid to teaching; program participants have made presentations and run workshops 01/ our own campus and at regional and national conjerences, have begun to serve 01/ teaching committees within theirdisciplinary organizations. ami havegOl/e Ofl topublish their pedagogical workin a varietyofnational publicatiol/s, botli disciplinary and tcachingjocused.A t the Connecticut College Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), we started out with the simple idea of giving more than mere lip service to the notion of the importance of teaching. Part of the original mandate of the CTL was to support new faculty-a straightforward if potentially paternalistic 327 328 To Improve theAcademy idea. Although the amount and kind of teaching experiences that incoming facuIty bring to Connecticut College vary widely, all faculty face the challenge of teaching in a new environment. New faculty have undergone graduate training at large research universities where the type of teaching demonstrated is not necessarily a good fit in the classrooms of small liberal arts institutions. They may be assigned to teach new and unfamiliar courses. There are also new contexts for their work in the classroom, in their departments, and in the college as a whole.Since 1998, Connecticut College's Christian A. Johnson Teaching Seminar for Incoming Faculty has been supporting faculty in their roles as teachers, scholars, and community members and has addressed those challenges that face new faculty members through a regularly scheduled sequence of meetings.I Our peer-mentoring model uses second-and third-year faculty as well as the CTL's director and faculty fellow to lead monthly seminars on topics such as local campus culture, course design, active learning, learning styles, diversity and power in the classroom, and balancing the many demands of campus life. Cohorts of new faculty-no longer isolated in their buildings and departments-are forming bonds and transforming the teaching culture at our college. Teaching has become something not only valued but also shared and discussed.After describing the basics of our yearlong seminar, we will discuss the ways in which our peer-mentoring model addresses many of the challenges new faculty face at smaller institut...

Much engineering practice today involves computer aided engineering tools. While the associated underlying theory is often beyond the abilities of many undergraduates, we still must prepare students who will be expected to use such tools in the workplace after graduation. At the same time, computer-based tools may also be used to improve learning in even the most basic subjects. For example, a significant aid in learning mechanics of materials is visualizing the basic patterns of deformations. Using readily deformable objects in class, such as foam bars, is one aid to visualization. This paper describes a very simple web-based finite element program, which can serve two purposes. First, it acquaints students with the basic steps in carrying out a finite element analysis. Second, this program makes a wide range of deformation patterns available for visual inspection, and thereby can facilitate an increased understanding of some of the variables of importance in mechanics of materials.