Michael Beaty

Secularization and National Universities: The Effect of Religious Identity on Academic Reputation.

That most private national American universities began with a firmly rooted religious identity is well known. Today, these pace-setting universities boast sterling academic reputations, but they retain only vestiges of their religious identities. This shift in ideological allegiances at schools such as Harvard University suggests to some that todays religious colleges or universities are on the horns of a dilemma—maintain a distinctive religious identity or move toward a strong academic reputation. The purpose of this study, then, is to empirically assess the dilemma that national universities cannot attain a reputation for academicexcellence if they maintain their religious identity.

Making sense of a religious university: Faculty adaptations and opinions at Brigham Young, Baylor, Notre Dame, and Boston College

Faculty surveys at Baylor, Boston College, Brigham Young, and Notre Dame illustrate how faculty adapt to being at a religious university. The surveys show that: 1) most faculty report supporting both religious and academic goals; 2) conflicts between the two goals were typically resolved on the side of academics at Baylor, Notre Dame, and Boston College; 3) an association exists between the organizational structure of a university and the faculty attitudes towards their schools religious traditions; 4) faculty responses varied around three significant variables-denominational overlap with the sponsoring church, receiving a degree from their current university, and the college or school in which they teach; and 5) new, more complex metaphors are needed to describe the current state of higher education.

FAITH AND LEARNING: TOWARD A TYPOLOGY OF FACULTY VIEWS AT RELIGIOUS RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES

This paper presents a typology of views held by faculty members at four religious research universities concerning the relationship of faith and learning. Only one pattern of responses (out of eight) affirms that faith and learning should exist in complete separation. As a result, the study challenges Jencks and Riesmans (1968) argument that the academic revolution leads to the demise of faith in favor of academic competence.

Faculty attitudes on integrating faith and learning at religious colleges and universities : A research note

Reflecting the broader secularization debates, considerable research and disagreement exists over the degree to which religious higher education is distinct from its secular counterpart. One crucial and controversial way in which religious colleges and universities can differ from the secular academy is to integrate faith and learning by including faith-based perspectives in the core curriculum. Faculty surveys from six religious colleges and universities reveal a separatist camp and an integrationist camp. We use logistic regression to examine faculty positions on integrating faith and learning. Among the most powerful predictors of faculty attitudes are the type of institution (research university or liberal arts college) and the denomination of the faculty member (same as the denomination that sponsors the school or different).

Moral Education at Religious Research Universities: Exploring Faculty Attitudes

Abstract This article presents the results and an analysis of 1,728 survey responses from faculty at four top tier religious research universities regarding their support for moral and civic education. The results demonstrate that a majority of faculty members at these schools supported both the general goals of moral and civic education and specific suggestions for integrating moral and civic education into the curriculum. Nonetheless, three major concerns emerged about its actual implementation into the curriculum.