Going to Kent State University

Well, my big news is that I have accepted a faculty position as Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at Kent State University. This is a great opportunity and I am very excited with the many possibilities for research and collaboration with the faculty there and the professional library community in Ohio. I also look forward to networking with alumni from Emporia State University, School of Library and Information Management who are also living and working in Ohio.

It should also be a great place to continue my research of case studies of clergy members and the sermon preparation process. My goal is to do at least six case studies per year for the first three years. I also want to expand the scope of my case studies to include the congregation much more than was the case for my dissertation. I am thinking about studying congregations from the perspective of Wenger's Communities of Practice model. It seems to me that congregations fit the definition of a stable group that is formed through a social learning process of sharing a common interest over an extended period of time. I think there is a great deal to be learned here for the benefit of clergy members as they transition from one congregation to another.