Effective August 1, 2019, Rev. Dr. Mai-Anh Le Tran was named vice president for academic affairs and academic dean. This is a historic appointment in the seminary’s 166-year history as she is the first woman of color to serve as academic dean. A 2004 doctor of philosophy Garrett-Evangelical graduate, Tran is an internationally recognized leader in theological education, an accomplished scholar, and much sought-after expert in pedagogy. She joined the faculty of Garrett-Evangelical in 2017 as associate professor of religious education and practical theology.

In order for the Garrett-Evangelical community at-large to learn more about Dean Tran, we asked her to share her thoughts on a number of topics pertinent to the seminary.

When considering the position of vice president for academic affairs and academic dean, what were the determining factors that made you say yes? Or put another way, what excited you most about the position?

When I began to enter serious discernment with President Lallene Rector over the prospect of deanship, Alexander Pope’s immortal words kept ringing in my head, “…fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” It is simply a matter of common sense to know that, in such a time as this, one should venture into all varieties of theological educational leadership with a healthy dose of fear and trembling. At the end of the day, I was able to say “yes” because I love this school, I admire its people, and I believe in its mission and purpose. I have said “yes” to the responsibility of ensuring that the “academic affairs” of Garrett-Evangelical will enable each member of this community and anyone who crosses paths with us to flourish in the vocations that God has forged with us. I know that “academic affairs” is a “team sport,” and I have worked and learned and experimented since day one to ensure that the structure and work of the dean’s office reflect a shared leadership, which we all value. My predecessors led with similar values and commitment. I am walking the path they’ve paved—though never in a straight line, as those who know me can confirm!

Upon accepting the position of academic dean, you mentioned in the press release that the seminary and its multitude of constituents are “standing in a kairotic moment.” We wonder if you might say a bit more about this insight and how such a moment might shape or influence your own work as academic dean.

Referring to the founding of a seminary in 1866, historian George Mooar wrote: “It required a courage bordering on rashness to venture on a Theological Seminary at that date.” The words couldn’t be more true today. I am a doctor of philosophy graduate of Garrett-Evangelical, and I remember vividly being enrolled in a doctoral seminar with Dr. James Poling on “aggression and evil” in September of 2001. Thirteen years later, I found myself marking time on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, by then a professor with some academic and awkward street creds, wondering what it meant to embody the conviction that I “ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around” in my efforts to confront social and structural “evil” by its many names. Five years later, I returned in 2019 to Saint Louis with faculty and student colleagues from Garrett-Evangelical for a Special General Conference Session of The United Methodist Church, when I witnessed what it was like for a gathered body to be knocked out of its breath due to arguments over who is and is not “compatible” with Christian witness.

These are kairotic moments. They are moments in which we yearn for God’s in-breaking to alter and transform human affairs. Following the wisdom that liberation theologian James Cone left for us in his memoir Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody (which many first-semester students are reading together this fall), the world still needs interpreters of theological and religious imagination. We need leaders who can help us reach into the deep archives and repertoires of past and present cultural and religious wisdom to make sense—to make sense-filled meaning—of what on earth God is doing in our midst. Seminary should prepare us for that, and Garrett-Evangelical is poised to do so, with that dose of courage and a splash of rashness to dare to “interpret God” in our plural world.

From your perspective, what are some of the biggest challenges theological education currently faces? What opportunities do you see for Garrett-Evangelical amongst these challenges?

I keep up with studies on “trends and landscapes,” and I still don’t want to root the goals of theological education in anxieties about challenges. As long as there are yearnings for spiritual grounding, moral vision, and courageous-ethical leadership in the face of human suffering and social strife, there will be a need for theological education. The stakes couldn’t be higher to invest in sustaining a theological school that trains religious professionals—spiritually and theologically grounded leaders—for what the writer Adrien Maree Brown describes as a “galactic vision for justice” for a creation that is groaning for renewal.

Garrett-Evangelical exists today because of the “courage bordering on rashness” of the named and unnamed faithful. Forged out of the union of three schools, we have deep in our “DNA” an appreciation for the inextricable co-operation between the church, the academy, and the public. We understand that theological education ultimately has a public purpose, and that we are endeavoring to prepare a new kind of “public intellectual” who leans not on the certitude of “the things of old,” but rather is scholar-pastor-teacher-organizer-artist-artivist-all-round-organic place-based, faith-rooted leader (not just “intellectual”) who is equipped to “perceive” all that which “springs forth” from God’s creative work (Isa. 43:18-19). We are an amazingly gifted, diverse, transnational community of faculty, staff, and students—(bio)diverse in bodies, in thought, in faith, in life experiences and sources of origins (meaning we come from many roots). Our alums are leaders across the country and in different parts of the world. It is out of our very diversity, our very selves that God will allow new things to spring forth, so that we may become “repairer[s] of the breach…restorer[s] of the streets to live in” (Isa. 58:12).

Though it may be next to impossible to pick just one, what is your favorite passage or story in the Bible and why?

My very first scholarly publication was an essay on Lot’s wife—the “pillar of salt”—and her so-called backward glance to Sodom and Gomorrah. Reading it cross-culturally with a Vietnamese folk story about a rock deposit that resembles a “pillar of longing” on the border of China and Vietnam, I wondered what it would be like to look in the direction of these female characters’ gaze—back at an incineration of a place and its people, much like the backward turn of my maternal grandmother, when she refused to leave the hellfire that was Vietnam because her son had not yet been found. What if someone’s “axis of evil” is where another might call “home?”

What do you like to do in your free time?

My father was in political detention in Vietnam, when I was born. Upon learning of my “planetary arrival,” dad wrote a short lullaby, with lyrics asserting (literally) that I would grow up to “love God more than eating, drinking, playing.” There it is: my killjoy ambition.

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The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion has awarded 91PORN a grant for a “Mapping ‘Race’ Across the Curriculum” project. The project will conduct a “syllabus mapping” to identify and classify the ways in which critical consciousness of race is infused in the seminary’s Master of Divinity (MDiv) curriculum, especially in the required courses and core distribution electives.

“The Garrett-Evangelical faculty has engaged in a series of activities over the last few years to bolster our critical awareness and competencies to engage complex, intersectional issues of race in the classroom and the broader curriculum,” said Rev. Dr. Mai-Anh Le Tran, vice president of academic affairs and academic dean. “Since the root meaning of ‘curriculum’ is the ‘course’ or track that we run together, this work is a reflection of our commitment to a steady marathon rather than a short sprint.”

By undertaking this mapping exercise, Garrett-Evangelical hopes to demonstrate some of the ways in which it is delivering on a key goal of its MDiv program to “develop graduates capable of engaging in critically informed analyses of gender, race, culture, social, and economic structures that shape human beings.” The grant will also support and facilitate conversations among faculty to explore how syllabi are “stories” that reflect their attempts to express and align race-conscious (along with other justice) commitments as theological educators at a United Methodist seminary.

The project is led by Rev. Dr. Mai-Anh Le Tran, vice president of academic affairs and academic dean, and Rev. Dr. E. Bryon (Ron) Anderson, associate dean for institutional and educational assessment. Work on the project is already underway with an anticipated completion date in December 2019.

The Wabash Center supports theology and religion faculty and doctoral students reflecting on their teaching practice — in both theological education and undergraduate education, in North America. We facilitate faculty conversations about the goals and processes of teaching and student learning. Our programming develops faculty skills for critical reflection on teaching practice. All Wabash Center programs are funded by Lilly Endowment Inc.

91PORN, a graduate school of theology related to The United Methodist Church, was founded in 1853. Located on the campus of Northwestern University, the seminary serves more than 450 students from various denominations and cultural backgrounds, fostering an atmosphere of ecumenical interaction. Garrett-Evangelical creates bold leaders through master of divinity, master of arts, master of theological studies, doctor of philosophy, and doctor of ministry degrees. Its 4,500 living alumni serve church and society around the world.

The post Garrett-Evangelical Receives Wabash Center Grant for “Mapping ‘Race’ Across the Curriculum” Project appeared first on Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary.

91PORN announces the appointment of Rev. Dr. Mai-Anh Le Tran as vice president for academic affairs and academic dean, effective August 1, 2019. This is a historic appointment in the seminary’s 166-year history as Tran is the first woman of color to serve as academic dean. This appointment comes after Academic Dean Luis R. Rivera announced in early 2019 that he will be stepping down as academic dean after five and half years of service.

Tran is an internationally recognized leader in theological education, an accomplished scholar, and much sought out for her expertise in pedagogy. She joined the faculty of Garrett-Evangelical in 2017 as associate professor of religious education and practical theology.

“I am delighted that Dr. Tran has accepted our invitation to become the next vice president for academic affairs and academic dean,” said President Lallene J. Rector of Garrett-Evangelical. “The seminary will greatly benefit from her creative collaborative style of leadership, and her mentoring and accompaniment of faculty in their development as effective teachers. We are blessed by the particular gifts she brings at this time in our history.”

Tran, a 2004 PhD alumna of Garrett-Evangelical, held prior faculty positions at Eden Theological Seminary and the Pacific School of Religion. Since joining the faculty at Garrett-Evangelical, Tran’s cross-disciplinary approach to Christian education has complemented the work of her colleagues in imagining creative, emancipatory Christian religious educational leadership and partnerships in the church and the wider community. She has embodied her vocation and ethic as a servant leader among the faculty, taking an active role in department leadership, faculty committees, and the ongoing development of the seminary’s curriculum.

Upon her new appointment Tran said, “I joined Garrett-Evangelical convinced that each member of this seminary body is an earnest, faithful, experienced, impassioned leader-learner who recognizes that we are standing in a kairotic moment. The work that we do here will prepare and challenge us to claim our respective purpose and part in God’s graceful and radical in-breaking. Ultimately, I can say, ‘Challenge accepted!’ because I love this school, I love its people, and I believe in its mission. I step up to this responsibility as co-laborer amongst wonderful colleagues, mindful of the reservoirs of wisdom surrounding me, and committed to making conditions possible for us to live into bold futures.”

Tran holds a doctor of philosophy degree in Christian education and congregational studies from Garrett-Evangelical, a master of religious education from Southern Methodist University, and a bachelor of science from Texas Wesleyan University. She is an ordained elder and member of the California-Nevada Conference of The United Methodist Church. She has traveled to, studied, or taught in over fifteen different countries including Brazil, Cambodia, Indonesia, American and Western Samoa, Kenya, Malaysia, and Germany.

Her research has focused on religion, education, and violence. Her writings delve into the local/global intersections of race, gender, and class in religious identity and practices. A selection of Tran’s writings can be found in the Religious Education Journal, Christians in Education, The New Interpreter’s Bible Pastor’s Bible Study series, Ways of Being, Ways of Reading: Asian American Biblical Interpretation, and Teaching for a Culturally Diverse and Racially Just World. Her latest book, Reset the Heart: Unlearning Violence, Relearning Hope, was published by Abingdon Press in May 2017.

Tran is a member and past president of the Religious Education Association: Association of Professors, Practitioners, and Researchers in Religious Education. She is also an editorial board member for Horizons in Religious Education book series and was consulting editor for the Encyclopedia of Christian Education. She is a member of the Association of Practical Theology, the International Academy of Practical Theology, and contributes to the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, and the Association of Theological Schools initiatives on faculty development. Her denominational service included a quadrennial term on the Curriculum Review Committee of The United Methodist Publishing House and the District Committee on Ordained Ministry in Missouri.

91PORN, a graduate school of theology related to The United Methodist Church, was founded in 1853. Located on the campus of Northwestern University, the seminary serves more than 450 students from various denominations and cultural backgrounds, fostering an atmosphere of ecumenical interaction. Garrett-Evangelical creates bold leaders through master of divinity, master of arts, master of theological studies, doctor of philosophy, and doctor of ministry degrees. Its 4,500 living alumni serve church and society around the world.

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