Faculty Fellows
The BI Faculty Fellows Program creates opportunities for Christian scholars across disciplines to collaborate on pressing and enduring questions. We aim to create spaces where Faculty Fellows can bring the resources of Christian traditions and revelation to their disciplines without compromising professional standing or intellectual rigor. Through intellectual friendship, BI Faculty Fellows promote flourishing in the academy and beyond it.
The Beatrice Institute Faculty Fellows program has three dimensions: community, collaboration, and mentorship.
Community
BI creates formal opportunities to build community among Christian faculty. The Christian Faculty Convivium convenes once a semester to hear from one faculty member about their work and engage in wide-ranging conversation. We encourage faculty to join in the cultural excursions we offer our students and the larger events we put on for the general public.
Collaboration
Beatrice Institute runs three research initiatives, in which faculty of relevant disciplines can be involved. Genealogies of Modernity (led by Prof. Ryan McDermott, University of Pittsburgh) seeks to understand the contours of modernity and how we got to where we are in a globalized 21st century. Personalism and Public Policy (led by Prof. Grant Martsolf, UPMC Health Systems Chair in Nursing Science) draws on the Christian philosophical and anthropological traditions to place the flourishing of the human person at the center of health policy. Being Human in an Age of Artificial Intelligence (led by Prof. John Dolan, Computer Science and Robotics Institute, CMU) seeks how to humanely integrate AI and robotics into society, drawing on the resources of the Christian intellectual tradition. These initiatives arose out of community building, and we hope that further collaborations will emerge as our network grows.
Mentorship
According to Gallup, the single most important factor in college graduate’s lifelong flourishing is the presence of a faculty mentor. Mentoring relationships can range from a cup of coffee once a year to research supervision and grad school advising. We try to arrange mentoring relationships between students and faculty whenever possible. Faculty Fellows in relevant disciplines also contribute to our Christian Studies Fellows Program by teaching occasional seminars and helping develop the curriculum.
We fully recognize the many demands on your time and energy. We will always respect a “No” to any request we might make for mentoring, collaboration, or community.