Tag: In Their Own Words

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Faculty: In Their Own Words – Dr. Paul Doerksen

PaulDoerksenOct2016Dr. Paul Doerksen, Associate Professor of Theology and Anabaptist Studies, has taught at CMU since 2011. His new book is Take and Read: Reflecting Theologically on Books (Wipf and Stock, 2016).

What are you teaching right now that most excites you?

Theological Ethics. I’ve got just under a dozen students who are really bright, articulate, interesting, and willing to really go after questions that are raised by other students or by the readings that we pursue. Every class, it feels like there’s something at stake. That’s exciting.

What are you researching and writing right now?

I’m working on what I hope will be a book-length project on moral patience. The heart of the project is a line from Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics where he writes that God grants us the space and time to become who we were intended to be. That’s a wonderful way of thinking about God’s relationship to humanity, but then I wonder if there’s something in there for the way that humans can get along with other humans. My kids think it’s hilarious and ironic that I’m writing about patience.

What are you reading for enjoyment?

Some of the specific books include Silence by Shūsaku Endō. It’s about a Jesuit priest being persecuted in early modern Japan, and is a take on martyrdom that is absolutely fascinating. Martin Scorsese directed an adaptation that’s finally coming out within the next few months, which I’m looking forward to. I just started reading Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett. It’s really good. And, I’m looking forward to David Bergen. He’s got a new one out that I don’t have my hands on yet.

What do you most long for in your work?

I hope that my work, and the work of CMU more broadly, can be part of encouraging the church and the academy to be faithful Christians. I hope that we appreciate each other’s contributions and understand that we’re involved, at very deep levels, in the same project – namely, trying to figure out what it means to be faithful to Christ.

Do you have any interesting projects underway in the broader community or church?

My Take and Read theology book discussion group continues to be a delight. Thirty people get together four times over the winter to discuss four different books over dessert. It keeps me reading and thinking in ways that are different from the classroom or formal research. My new book is a collection of reflections I’ve written on various books we have discussed at Take and Read over the years. I’m looking forward to being independently wealthy because of the royalties.

What saying or motto inspires you?

The Catholic theologian Gerald O’Collins once said, “Theology is watching our language in the presence of God.” I think about this a lot. We believe that watching our language means not cursing, but there’s much more at stake here than impolite language. All of the Christian life is, in a sense, learning more and more how to talk about God and use that grammar of faith. It doesn’t come naturally, at least not to me. I need to be trained in it and I need to keep working at it.

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Faculty: In Their Own Words – Dr. Sue Sorensen

Sue01Dr. Sue Sorensen, Associate Professor of English, has taught at CMU since 2005.

What do you love about your work here?

I used to be a bit of a recluse – I thought most of my friends were in books. I never used to be a people-person, but CMU has sort of turned me into one. The best people I have ever met are on this campus, and that includes students, faculty, and staff. There is a real culture of kindness and gratitude at CMU.

What are you reading for enjoyment?

This past summer, I reread some fiction by A.S. Byatt, who is the British writer I did my PhD thesis on. I also discovered Lydia Davis. She’s an American writer who writes radically short stories – some of them are only a sentence or two long. And for deep pleasure, I’m re-reading A Dance to the Music of Time, a sequence of 12 novels written by a British author named Anthony Powell.

Where or how do students give you hope?

Students at CMU are well read, extremely well prepared, and intellectually ambitious. Beyond that, the kindness they demonstrate gives me hope. I watch the way they help each other with personal problems, the way they help each other with peer tutoring, and a lot of sort of informal peer counselling that goes on here. When students are in trouble, they circle the wagons and help each other out. Over the years, I myself have been the recipient of this kindness and support that students have offered. It’s again that element of incredible kindness, generosity, and compassion that I’ve seen here at CMU.

What do you most long for in your work?

One of my wishes is that students recognize themselves as my fellow scholars. There’s not a hierarchy in my mind where I’m the person that gets to spout some sort of expertise and people are going to soak in my alleged wisdom. Scholarship is an investigative journey that we work on together, as peers.

Do you have any interesting projects underway in the broader community or church?

One thing I’m most excited about in the coming months is that some of my poetry has been set to music and will be sung by Renaissance Voices, a Winnipeg choir led by CMU’s own Janet Brenneman. I’ve written a series of poems about the Virgin Mary and the Annunciation for their Christmas program, and CMU alumnus Jesse Krause set one to music. It’s one of the most thrilling experiences I’ve ever had in my life: to know that my words have now been set to music and that I’m going to get to hear fine singers sing them.

What saying or motto inspires you?

Michael Ondaatje once said, “I’m just writing to try to see clearly.” That’s quite true and quite wondrous in its simplicity and its depth. A lot of people think that literary writing is about self-aggrandizement. Really, the best writers are not at all narcissistic – they’re actually looking for lucidity and clarity. I really prize this very simple quotation by Ondaatje.

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Faculty: In Their Own Words – Dr. John Brubacher

Dr. John Brubacher, Assistant Professor of Biology, has worked at CMU since 2008.

JB01

What do you love about your work here?

One of the things I appreciate is that at CMU, we have our four commitments: Educate for Peace – Justice; Learn through Thinking and Doing; Welcome Generous Hospitality… Radical Dialogue; and Model Invitational Community. To work at a place that’s seriously trying to make those sorts of things the undergirding aspect of an education is exciting.

What are you excited about teaching in the coming school year?

This winter I’m teaching a course called The Genetic Revolution. I’ll guide students through a series of the greatest experiments in the history of genetics. I’m excited because I’ll be teaching it in historical progression, with the idea being that it will help give students some insights into not just what we know about genes and how they work in organisms, but how we figured it out.

What are you researching and writing right now?

I’m researching little flatworms that are called planarians. You can take one and chop it into 100 pieces, and each piece can regenerate and remodel itself to form an intact worm. That allows us to start asking all sorts of questions about how these flatworms – and animals generally – develop and heal. I’m working with colleagues at the Morgridge Institute for Research in Wisconsin, and I’m helping them with a micro anatomical study of the worms to understand how the cells are arranged in a normal worm, and then how they behave when you cut a piece off the worm. The cells need to migrate around – they need to differentiate and specialize to become different types of cells, and we still have a lot to learn about the basics of cell behaviour in that process.

What are you reading for enjoyment?

I like a little mindless mystery every now and then, so I picked up a commemorative set of four famous mysteries by Agatha Christie featuring one of her most famous characters, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. I just started Murder on the Orient Express. But these days, I’m mostly reading for school and watching the Olympics.

Where or how do students give you hope?

There’s a sense of generosity to our students that gives me hope. One thing that exemplifies what I’m thinking of is that every November, students celebrate Tuition Freedom Day, which marks the end of the fiscal year paid for by student tuition, and the beginning of the year made possible by grants and donations from the Manitoba government, churches, and individual donors. Students host a big festival to celebrate the importance of donor and government funding just to keep this place operational. That’s really powerful.

What saying or motto inspires you?

For my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, an aunt of mine cross-stitched them a wall hanging of Micah 6:8: “What does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” I grew up with that on the wall and that’s always been one of those things to aim for.

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Faculty: In Their Own Words – Dr. Irma Fast Dueck

Dr. Irma Fast Dueck, Associate Professor of Practical Theology, began her teaching career at Canadian Mennonite Bible College, one of CMU’s predecessor colleges, in 1991.

What do you love about your work here?

I love the students and I love my colleagues. I also love the fact that we’re a small enough university that we can’t develop silos. Theology spills into music, which spills into math, and so on. Our lives don’t fit into neat categories—most of our lives are this muddy, murky in-between—and we have a university that embodies that.

06 - Irma Fest Dueck (July 2016) 02

What did you teach this past year that most excited you?

Theologies of Power. It’s an upper level course in theology, and students come from all over the place, including business and communications. It was fascinating to teach them a concept in thinking of power, and then watch them take that concept and read it through their discipline. Power is so insidious—it’s everywhere. For these students to recognize that and work in this interdisciplinary way was awesome to watch.

What are you researching and writing right now?

I’m working on a book about baptism, which I’ve been researching and writing for three years now. The big question that I’ve been wrestling with is: Why aren’t young adults getting baptized? I’ve noticed in my tradition, Mennonite Church Canada (MC Canada), many young adults are actively involved in church organizations but aren’t baptized. Why is that? Why are they hesitant to make commitments to the church? What’s going in in terms of how they interpret the meaning of baptism?

What are you reading for enjoyment?

I just finished reading Lawrence Hill’s The Illegal, about a marathon runner who becomes a refugee. And, I’m always reading poetry, so Mary Karr and Kei Miller are two poets that I’m working through right now. Someone introduced me to them when I was on sabbatical in Scotland. I read a poem a day by each of them.

What do you most long for in your work?

What I long for is that love is at the core of who students are, even as they are aware of the complexities and problems of life, and deal with very real fears. I hope that in spite of the complexities, they don’t slide into cynicism or despair, but that they still love—they love God, they love creation, they love the wonder of this world, they love each other, and they love those who are different from them.

Do you have any interesting projects underway in the broader community or church?

I just finished the Listening Church project with my friend, Darryl Neustaedter Barg, where we interviewed Mennonite LGBTQ people about their experiences in MC Canada congregations and created a video. That was a great project—it gave me a sense of hope for the church. Right now, I’m on the steering committee put together by MennoMedia, MC Canada, and Mennonite Church USA that is overseeing the development of a new Mennonite song collection. We are trying to figure out what congregations need and how the church can resource them for their singing and worship. I’m excited about it.

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Faculty: In Their Own Words – Dr. Tim Rogalsky

Dr. Tim Rogalsky, Associate Professor of Mathematics, has taught at CMU since 2000.

What do you love about your work here?

There are so many things. One is that my students are really, really fun to work with. I just taught a chaos theory course, and student papers at the end of the semester included a paper on spirituality and environmentalism, a paper on Shakespearean literature, and a paper on God’s omniscience. I love the way they think deeply about so many different but interconnected things, and the way they come up with some really profound insights derived from the mathematical theory of chaos and its applications.

05 - Tim Rogalsky (June 2016)

What did you teach this past year that most excited you?

My favourite course is Intro to Calculus, because it’s easy to apply. That’s what makes math really exciting for me: To think about how the way the real world operates can be understood through mathematics.

What are you researching and writing right now?

I just finished a project on Salvador Dali that I would like to continue. Salvador Dali is fairly well known as a surrealist painter, as someone who was rather crass, someone who you certainly wouldn’t think of as a religious person, but there are a lot of depths to him that I’ve found, and some of those depths involved using mathematics and science as a conduit to spirituality. I call it mathematical mysticism.

What do you most long for in your work?

I love the a-ha moments. Sometimes it’s in the classroom and I watch the light bulb come on in a student’s eyes. Sometimes it’s in my own mind or in my heart; I’m teaching a concept and I suddenly get these intense shivers, and I think about how amazing all of this is in the way that it works together. Sometimes it’s in my own research. I can be in the shower or wake up in the middle of the night, and suddenly there’s this idea that just kind of pops forth in full glory that the day before, the hour before, the minute before I didn’t know, but in that moment I suddenly know and understand.

Do you have any interesting projects underway in the broader community or church?

I have given a handful of noon-hour talks at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. In April I presented, “Why Beauty Matters: The Art of Nature,” on some of the really beautiful mathematical patterns we find in the world. I’ll be sharing a version of that at a CMU Face2Face event in November. Explaining mathematics in ways that are understandable to people who don’t have a mathematics degree is something that I love to do. Watching an audience of non-mathematicians says, “Wow!” about mathematics is so, so cool.

What saying or motto inspires you?

The Franciscan friar and author Richard Rohr has been known to say that mystery is not that which is unknowable, but that which is endlessly knowable. That is so often true in both mathematics and theology. We’re always learning, always striving to know better, and that journey is always thrilling.

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Faculty: In Their Own Words – Dr. Candice Viddal

Dr. Candice Viddal, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Physics, has taught at CMU since 2010.

What did you teach this past year that most excited you?

I began teaching a sequence of courses in biochemistry. Biochemistry is essentially a course about the chemical reactions that underlie the way that biological organisms work. I find it very fascinating. In particular, I really enjoy learning about proteins. Proteins are essentially the workhorses of the cell. They do all kinds of different things and each protein has its own task. In the last 50 years, there have been so many advances in our knowledge of what specific proteins look like in terms of their three dimensional structure. I can often find in the literature new stories, new contemporary findings, and new discoveries to share with students in the class.

04 - Candice Viddal (May 2016)What are you researching and writing right now?

I study protein dynamics with computer modeling. This means that I track the motions of the tens of thousands of atoms that compose a protein as a way of trying to understand how it performs its function. When proteins do their job, they have to jiggle around. They’re generally very, very dynamic. One of my particular interests is in tracking the energy flow. That is, if an event happens in a protein, I’m interested in knowing how the information of that event, like the binding of a chemical, transmits throughout the protein so that the rest of the protein responds to it.

What are you reading for enjoyment?

I’m reading Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears. It’s a historical mystery novel about the rise and fall of a wealthy man named John Stone around World War I. The story has a very interesting structure: three different people in three different locations at three different times tell it. What I find particularly interesting about the book is that Iain Pears understands the human condition very well. He gets into the characters’ minds and plumbs the depths of their experience, which makes for an engaging narrative.

What do you most long for in your work?

One dream I have is for CMU to eventually offer a Bachelor of Science degree program. Another dream I have is to teach a “Big Ideas” course in science. Right now, I teach very rigorous scientific courses, and I enjoy that. But I would also love to be able to teach courses that engage with students that are not necessarily interested in the real heavy duty mechanics of the subject, but maybe are intrigued by the concepts. I’d love to teach “Science for Poets,” or something like that. It always fascinates me to think about how I would approach a course like that.

What saying or motto inspires you?

I don’t know who said it, but “A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” I often think about that. It inspires me to grow daily and to live courageously. It also serves as a reminder that we can do a lot more than we imagine sometimes.

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Faculty: In Their Own Words – Dr. Janet Brenneman

IMG_7244Dr. Janet Brenneman, Associate Professor of Music and Dean of the School of Music, has taught at CMU since 2001.

What do you love about your work here?

One of the things that I love about working here is that I can continue to explore, work through, and express the deep connection between music and my faith. Faith and music have always been integral in my life, and to be able to bring that into an academic setting is something I really appreciate about this particular place.

What are you teaching right now that most excites you?

This is the first year I’m teaching a conducting class and it has become a source of great joy for me. It’s fun watching students explore the ways they can invite sound through gesture to create something they’re wanting to hear.

What are you researching and writing right now?

In May, I’m headed to Edmonton, AB to attend Podium, Choral Canada’s annual conference. At the conference, I will be part of a panel of women choral conductors discussing community building and leadership, and what that means for women on the podium. I focused my doctoral dissertation on gender issues and the formative experiences of women choral conductors, so I’m looking forward to getting back into that research and exploring it further in preparation for the conference.

What are you reading for enjoyment?

I’m reading Ru by Kim Thúy, which won the CBC’s Canada Reads: One Book to Break Barriers competition last year. It’s based on the author’s experiences of having to leave Saigon, and then spending time in a refugee camp in Malaysia before finally settling in Quebec. This is in the ‘70s during the Vietnam War. I remember that time because there were refugees that came from Vietnam and settled in my hometown of Wellesley, ON. I remember clearly how that impacted our community, and how the community responded to that.

IMG_7245What do you most long for in your work?

I long for students to feel as though they’ve been challenged and pushed, but also nurtured along the way. I want students to feel that they have a voice and that they’ve had opportunity for that voice to develop and grow. I’ve seen that happen. I’ve seen students come in who have been quite shy, quite introverted, and I think we have allowed them to really bring out the best in themselves, whatever that is. I want it to be individualized. I want them to feel they can be genuine and open in their music making.

What saying or motto inspires you?

American poet and feminist Adrienne Rich said, “[Y]ou cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education: you will do much better to think of being here to claim one.” What I take this to mean is that you have to be proactive. You have to put into something what it is that you want to get out of it. Education is this reciprocal kind of relationship—you can’t simply expect yourself to be fed without also helping to prepare and be part of the process.

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Faculty: In Their Own Words – Dr. Paul Dyck

Dr. Paul Dyck,  Professor of English, has taught at CMU since 2000.

What do you love about your work here?
Paul Dyck Interview 2 retouch

Many things, but one is that I get into interesting conversations with professors from different disciplines. Kenton Lobe, who teaches international development, is in the office across the hall from me, and we’re constantly batting around ideas. We were just looking at a four-book poem by Virgil, The Georgics, which are about farm labour back in classical Rome, and tossing around the idea of maybe putting together a course that would look at poetry about the farm from Virgil to Wendell Berry. It’s a real privilege to work in a place with such a gifted and dedicated group of interesting people.

What are you teaching right now that most excites you?

I’m teaching an upper level course that I haven’t taught before on the sonnet as a poetic form. The sonnet was developed in 14th century Italy, and it’s one of these inventions that just worked really well. There’s no rule that says poets should keep writing them, but pretty much all the significant poets have at least one sonnet. It’s a poetic form that has this kind of attraction that goes beyond questions of culture and language and even topic. It starts off as something devoted to love poetry, and today you’ve got sonnets on practically any topic you could name.

What are you researching and writing right now?
Paul Dyck InterviewI’m working on a book about George Herbert. George Herbert was an early 17th century poet and also an Anglican minister. He’s got this masterful use of the language where he can use the plainest of utterances and make them carry such depth so that you can read and re-read his work. It’s very inviting, but also very profound. I’m combining my interest in Herbert with my interest in book history, which looks at the material history of the books that we read. Typically in Herbert studies you get a lot of theological criticism, and you might get some material criticism, but I don’t think it’s really been adequately explored how the two go together. In Herbert, the material becomes incarnational.

What are you reading for enjoyment?
I just finished In The Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran, by Christopher de Bellaigue, an English writer who is married to an Iranian woman and who spent many years living in Iran. This past December, I travelled to Iran and took a short course on Islam at an institute that CMU has a partnership with. Reading In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs revealed a more complicated story than I would have understood just being there for a week. It’s fascinating how reading can broaden and give more depth to the experience of travelling somewhere.

Do you have any interesting projects underway in the broader community or church?
Recently I was involved with the Anglican Diocese of Rupert’s Land in its Theological Education Commission, which reassessed how the church prepares ministers for their work, and also how the church thinks about theological education broadly. It was very engaging work.