Good evening, all:
After almost a week away on vacation to Nebraska (no cell reception and a broken computer...so I really had the chance to actually be away), I returned this week to my wonderful BTFO job. Seriously, we're less than 10 full days away from BTFO. I for one am thrilled, and anxious. Best way to deal with anxiety: get busy. Josh and I have been working hard, and we hope that you'll enjoy the results.
Here is one of the last installments of my 'Introductions' section. Dean Emilie Townes is a person you will all know soon (if you don't recognize her name already), and is a wonderfully kind person who cares a tremendous amount about the students. I can say that about nearly everyone at the Div School, of course, so understand that the same comments apply to all I've interviewed thus far. But still. So here you are, my interview with Dean Townes.
Q: Dean Townes, you’ve studied at U Chicago and Northwestern, and taught at Union. Why do you find your home at YDS?
A: I always function on ‘call.’ All my teaching jobs have been because it has been clear to me that God is calling me to this place at this time, and the same is true here. It was a surprise, I was not planning on ever being at Yale, it was not on my radar screen, but when the first call came from Dean Bartlett about teaching a course on “black something” I was like ‘sure.’ I did, and found there were students interested in what I taught. I also found myself teaching here rather than simply managing the classroom, which is what I was doing at Union. I’m a teacher, and I need to be where I’m a teacher, and Yale became that place. There are faculty here that I can work on projects with, students that are interested in looking at structures behind the issues and how we can be faithful responders to the good and bad in society, and I thought this oddly enough has become home. I look forward to coming in to school and seeing what will happen each day. I often say to staff in emails to staff: life here is never dull. We may be New England proper, but we are not dull.
Q: What do you hope for this year?
A: We recently started a long-range planning and self-study process for reaccreditation, and I look forward to seeing what we find for our future, what we will look like. Harry has asked us to see what we want to be in 2020. How will we get there? How will we keep doing the assessment and evaluation? We are building a process where the whole school is involved, not just a few people meeting in secret. And much like any other institution at Yale, we have a lot going on, and not a whole lot of people who know all that is going on. Wouldn’t it be great to know at one moment all that is going on? I think we could make wise choices what this means for education, the church, individuals, and how we can be really live into being hearers and doers of the Word in the fullest sense, as opposed to kinda hearing, kinda doing. We can really be engaged. This year is a year of reflection and I’m looking forward to it. I’m not sure I’ll say the same thing in December, but right now it’s exciting.
Q: What about students here makes you laugh? Shake your head?
A: Yale students at Div School tend to be exceedingly earnest—and I use that in the best sense of the word. I find that endearing in the student body, that most of you come here because you are trying to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing, and how faith and religion plays or does not play into that. You ask hard questions of yourselves and teachers, and on your best days you actually listen to each other. When I watch that unfold in chapel, or class, or the halls, or wherever we are gathered, and see the best part of that, it is endearing. To watch that unwillingness to compromise because it’s the easy way, when I see you searching for the truth in this, and how we get there: I find myself smiling when I see those moments.
Now, when you’re not doing that I’m not smiling, and wish you would chill out and be more gracious. The staff takes a big hit when you’re not being gracious, but when you’re at your best it’s quite delightful to behold.
Q: Do people take themselves too seriously here?
A: Yes. Yes. Yes. This is a school with far too many type A personalities, from faculty, staff, students, admin, you name it, we tend to be type A. Luckily, my parents were both college administrators and teachers, and they taught me from example: if you can’t amuse yourself at what you do sometimes, you’re in trouble. If we can’t laugh at ourselves, realize that nothing should be so serious that we can’t see the humor in any day, then we’re in trouble. So yeah, you take yourselves too seriously. You’re too grade-driven. It doesn’t make you better students, or content students. We worry as faculty about how you take grades too seriously and don’t enjoy learning, which defeats the life of the mind. Learning should be a great joy, not drudgery. One of my happiest moments is being able to sit and read a book just to see what an author is saying. You can do that and be in a class… believe me, it is possible! My hope is that some of y’all will take a chill pill. I know that phrase is out of style, but it’s the only one I can think of that’s printable.
Q: What is the most common question from first years, and what do you answer (just to get it out of the way)?
A: How do I get an H? is the question more than any other one. The answer: always do your best work. That doesn’t guarantee an H, but that’s how you get one. In other words, I follow Socratic thought, because there’s no answer to that question. There are too many faculty and different things required of different disciplines, that there is no set answer. Pay attention to faculty on first day of class, when the syllabus is being discussed. If the professor is speaking for more than a few minutes about it, you better pay attention, because they’re trying to tell you something, including what constitutes excellence in the class.
Q: Where is your favorite place on the quad?
A: Marquand. It’s where I go to center myself every day. If I’m on campus, I’m in chapel at 10:30, and I build my day around being in chapel. This place can be such a pressure cooker that I need that time where what I’m doing is trying to be closer to God—as opposed to the next task, or the next meeting, or the next class. Just simply being. And the chapel changes so much during the course of the day because of how the sun moves across the chapel; it can be so many different things. It’s a place of quiet mystery, and I appreciate that.
Q: Any advice for incoming students? Fashion tips? Places to eat?
A: I don’t’ give fashion tips. I give fashion tickets, but not tips. One of my favorite places to eat on a student budget is Mama Mary’s Soul Food on Whalley. Lots of food at Mama Mary’s, you can get two or three meals’ worth of food on a plate. It’s cost effective, and because they now practice healthy cooking (not lard or pork seasoning), it’s even reasonably healthy. Friendly, good food, and you determine how much food by the size of the plate. Right across the street is Edge of the Woods Grocery Store, so you want to be noble and get really healthy food you can go across the street for that later in the same trip.
Q: Anything else?
A: I think it’s this: don’t stop asking questions. Be an active part of what happens at BTFO, but you just get so much info over the course of a week, that at the end it sounds like Snoopy (wah wah wah). Continue to ask questions after BTFO—even during BTFO! People don’t mind repeating themselves for those trying to understand. This is not an easy school to know what you need to do, so asking questions is one of the best things available to you.
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