“Expound This Love:” Forming the Next Generation of Christian Teacher-Scholars Through the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program

Abstract

In canto XVIII of the Purgatorio, Dante exhorts his teacher, Virgil, to expound on the great love that seizes the mind and will, a love Virgil describes as “a movement of the spirit never resting /as long as it enjoys the thing it loves” (XVIII. 32–33). The best teacher-scholars join their spirits to those of their students, but fully achieving this is less a matter of technique than one of character, of knowing and naming where one’s heart lies in the practice of teaching and learning. As a founding Mentor of the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program (LGFP) who has worked with over 30 graduate students in the Humanities and Arts, in this essay I consider the myriad ways in which participation in mentoring communities like the LGFP expands the horizon of graduate students through online colloquia based on readings from the Christian Liberal Arts tradition, mentoring conversations with a senior faculty member at a Church-related University, and five face-to-face conferences. This Trinitarian approach to formation provides a context for nurturing those practices and virtues that enable a graduate student in the humanities and arts to name her heart as a teacher-scholar, and thus to expound the great love that is at the heart of Christian higher education.