Conversation with 2017 American Academy of Religion Excellence in Teaching award winner Lynn Neal

Abstract

This conversation between the 2017 American Academy of ReligionExcellence in Teaching award winner Lynn Neal and the editors of Teaching Theology and Religion continues an occasional series of interviews that has previously featured Jonathan Z. Smith, Stephen Prothero, Mary Pierce Brosmer, Mary Elizabeth Mullino Moore, and the 2016 Teaching award winner Joanne Maguire Robinson. The exchange takes as its point of departure the AAR teaching statement that Professor Neal submitted. Topics discussed include introductory courses, active learning assignments, religious intolerance and privatization, student learning outcomes, different levels of student skills and preparation, augmenting assignments through the production of video interviews with scholars, and finding conversation partners for reflecting on teaching under the life balance stresses of the academy today. KEYWORDS active learning, exams, quizzes, religious literacy, teaching introductory courses, work life balance 1 | REFLECTING ON TEACHING WITHIN INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS Kwok Pui Lan: Lynn, can you describe your institutional context? What kind of courses do you usually teach? Are they all introductory courses, or do you also teach seminars?Lynn Neal: Wake Forest is a private liberal arts institution that has approximately 5,000 undergraduates. I teach in the Department for the Study of Religions. We are primarily a service department, meaning that most of our courses fulfill general education requirements for students. We teach a number of different introductory courses that typical range in size from 25 to 30 students, including first year students and seniors, and students are primarily there to fulfill a general education requirement.But the introductory courses are also our primary recruiting ground for majors and minors. These classes expose students to the academic study of religion. We have very few students who come to Wake Forest intending to major or ;21:142-157.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/teth minor in religious studies, but they're generally engaged students, very invested in their grades, and doing well. So that's the context for our teaching at the introductory level, and within this context I regularly teach Introduction to Religion (Neal, 2018a).At the upper-level, faculty teach a range of courses focused on their areas of specialization. These courses typically range from 12 to 16 students, and provide depth and breadth for majors and minors. But we have no prerequisites, and we get a lot of interested students from other departments, therefore all our upper level courses have to incorporate some type of introductory material.Eugene V. Gallagher: In your statement for the AAR Teaching Award (Neal, 2017b), you write about how you have developed as a teacher and learned from the scholarship on teaching and learning. I wanted to give you the opportunity to say some more about that, since I know the teaching statements need to be kept very short.Lynn Neal: I was talking to some senior colleagues a couple of months ago. They were asking wha...