Leadership
The Race/Class Bias of College Rankings
This op-ed was originally published in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald on Sunday, November 21st, 2016. It’s college rating season, which means that it’s the time of year administrators scroll through US News and World Report, Newsweek, Forbes, The Princeton Review, and the Wall Street Journal to see how their institutions...
God, Man and Politics—We Can Do Better
As my readers know, the purpose of this blog is to address topics related to the subject of leadership. I’ve tried to achieve that goal through short essays, book reviews, editorials, and general observations about our culture. I’ve also tried to stay away from direct political commentary. There’s already enough...
Iowa’s Failure To Address Mental Health
This post, titled; "Iowa's failure to address mental health affects more than jails", was published on September 19th in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Erin Murphy’s recent story (“Iowa sheriffs at the front lines of mental health crisis”) does an excellent job of defining part of the tragic shortcomings of...
Yellow Curbs
I have a fixation with yellow curbs. More precisely, I have a fixation with nicely painted yellow curbs and parking lots with freshly painted lines. As silly as it sounds, the look of curbs matter. A freshly painted yellow curb delineates the sidewalk from the street—it matters because safety is...
On the Importance of Travel
For many families, summer is the time when the car is packed, coolers are filled with sandwiches and drinks, and the entire clan squeezes into the vehicle to travel. In this part of the country, many families travel west to see Mt. Rushmore, the Rockies, Yellowstone Park or the Pacific...
Lessons from a Seattle Fishmonger
About fifteen years ago, a book titled Fish! A Proven Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results took the country by storm. Like most books of its kind, it was light on specifics but important inasmuch as it began to focus attention on the importance of organizational culture. As I...
Wanderlust and the Millennial Generation
“Not all who wander are lost.” - J.R. R. Tolkien Not all who wander are lost is a phrase taken from a poem by J.R.R. Tolkien in the fantasy trilogy Lord of the Rings. I believe that it also happens to be an appropriate description for the current generation we know...
All Day Today
The world recently lost a good man. His name is Rev. Kenneth Bailey, Th.D. Dr. Bailey was a Professor of New Testament. He spent most of his career in the Middle East. He taught at the Near Eastern School of Theology in Beirut, Lebanon, and had a peculiar lens through...
The Virtue of Hard Things
“The Virtue of Hard Things” is a title taken from a recent Wall Street Journal review of the book Grit, by Angela Duckworth (May 4, 2016). Duckworth is a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and has spent the past decade studying why some people have extraordinary success and...
A Letter to My Children About Student Debt
Originally Published by the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, May 15th, 2015 Before I became President, I was the new Dean of our theological seminary. One of the first students I met was a graduate who was groaning about his student debt. After I listened to him talk about his situation I...
