Teaching Christianity
The Graduate Program in Religious Studies
QUESTION: Can you write something about the background of your PhD students, how you selected them, what makes a prospective doctoral candidate stand out against the pack, whether there is a huge academic gulf between knowledge and argumentative skills of your undergraduates and research students. RESPONSE: Ah, this is an interesting question, and as I’ve thought about it I’ve realized that there are lots of things that I take for granted about the process of admitting students into our graduate program what would not be “common sense” at all to someone who is not deeply involved in the process. I’ve been admitting graduate students for 25 years now. (Occasionally I realize that I’ve never been out of school. After high school I went straight to college, which took me five full years; after college – in fact the next month, because I had to finish courses over the summer – I went into my MDiv program; after my MDiv program I went directly into my PhD program; and I started teaching at Rutgers while I [...]