My Path to Academia

I am so excited to share that I have been hired for my first two adjunct positions. This fall, I am going to be teaching Introduction to Humanities online at Southeastern University. I have also been hired at Houston Baptist University as an adjunct in Apologetics. I do not have a class assignment there yet, but I am very excited about the opportunities that will develop from this connection.

For any of you who have looked at my CV, if you turn back my education to the summer of 2013, you might wonder how and why I ended up where I am. This post is going to be an abridged history of my journey from business school to the humanities.

My story begins before my graduation in 2013. As an undergraduate, my focus was incredibly utilitarian. I was in college because I wanted to get a good job, and it was just the next step of what I was supposed to do. I double-majored in Business Administration and Statistics because I knew that those would lead to profitable careers. A great deal of my attitude was shaped by the reality that individuals with disabilities have difficulty finding careers because of discriminatory hiring. I have experienced this in my own life, and I know plenty of other people willing to work but unable to find anyone willing to give them a chance. At least in my mind, I needed to make myself as marketable as possible to secure a career that I would be physically able to do, and highly practical degrees made the most sense. I had been accepted into my college’s Masters of Accountancy program upon graduation, but I told everyone that I wanted to go to work. I wanted to prove that I could do it, even against the odds.

I was fortunate to enter college with a great deal of AP credit, so even though I double-majored, I had a great deal of flexibility in my schedule. I took many liberal arts classes just because I enjoyed learning, and I wanted to have the best of both worlds. My majors were my practical options; my electives were for whatever I wanted to learn. Looking back, I did not avoid the liberal arts because I hated them. I actually enjoyed them a great deal. I also enjoyed my major classes. I like to learn; what can I say? You could see the seeds of my love of the humanities even back then, even if it was not my major. However, I never had any desire at that time to major in the liberal arts. I entered as a business major, I added a statistics major later, and that was how I graduated.

Ironically, even though I had an excellent undergraduate career, my practicality almost failed to pay off. After interviewing for many jobs, I had nothing when I graduated. Like I said above, disability discrimination is very real. However, this is not meant to be a bad news post. Within the month, I had a job at the insurance company I still work for today. I was so happy to be employed because, as I said above, my goal at the time was to get a job.

At this point, I was a young businessperson, and the next step for an ambitious young person is to try to move up the ladder. I started taking classes towards my MBA. I found a college that had a trial system. You could take a few classes before you had to apply formally. I thought that would work out well for me. I would take my classes slowly, and eventually, I would be setting myself up for maybe management or something like that. That is the track I thought I was on.

Around this time, I realized I wanted to get back in the classroom as a teacher. The MBA made sense because I already had my business degree, so I could get my MBA and then pursue a Ph.D. in Business. I still had plenty of connections at my alma mater, so if I could advance through that process quickly enough, I might be able to find a position. The desire to teach was already there at that point, but I did not realize I would be changing fields.

During my senior year of college, I had started studying Apologetics on my own. I had a friend who would ask me difficult questions about Christianity, and even though I was brought up in the church, I did not always know how to answer him. I started reading to try to find some answers. I did not doubt my faith because of his challenges, but I was personally unsatisfied answering that we just have to have faith. Faith is part of it, but our God is also a God of reason and order. Therefore, there had to be answers out there to address his questions. I became pretty serious about that study, and it was at that time, I heard about a brand-new Apologetics program, 100% online through Houston Baptist University.

I remember I went to Bible study one night and talked to our leader at the time. I had not even told my family that I was thinking about stopping my MBA and transitioning to Apologetics. I did not know if I was crazy, so I laid out my thoughts to our leader. He asked me about my motivations to make sure that they were both serious and God-honoring. To be honest, I do not remember that many specifics of our conversation, but I know I left Bible study that night convinced that I would work towards Houston Baptist.

I was not a traditional Apologetics student, but I was very excited when I was accepted into the program for the fall of 2014. I graduated from my undergraduate in the spring of 2013. This was a relatively rapid life change, or it at least felt that way to me. I had a new job at a company, and I had started having a decent amount of success. I had my eyes set on the classroom, but I thought I was going to return to the classroom by continuing in the direction I had always gone. Now I was putting my MBA on hold for something that did not seem to have any professionally practical value. This was pretty drastic for someone who made his entire undergraduate career about preparation for the job market and facing that reality as a person with a disability.

I dove into Apologetics with both feet. I had such a wonderful experience in the program, and I learned so much from my professors and fellow students. It had been a while since I had written a research paper, but my professors were gracious and helped me develop as a scholar. My peers knew so much more than I did, but they were also gracious. I certainly experienced iron sharpening iron while I was studying at Houston Baptist University. I was sad to see my two years come to an end, but I was also very excited to graduate in the spring of 2016.

As my time was drawing to a close, I wrote my thesis (which eventually turned into my recently published book, Disability and the Problem of Evil). I loved what I was doing, and it suddenly hit me that my path to the classroom might need to come differently. I had thought that once I finished my Apologetics degree, I would just go back to my MBA and continue on that track. It was just a little intermission that I truly felt God had called me to. It was not a bad intermission, but it was more like a breather.

During my final semester, I also started thinking about how one of the faculty members at Houston Baptist University was earning her Ph.D. at Faulkner University. When I looked at the curriculum, I realized that while there was a core that everyone had to take, there was a great deal of flexibility. That appealed to me. As I was studying Apologetics, a Humanities doctorate seemed to be a little bit off-track. However, it was a regionally accredited Ph.D., and I thought I could tailor my studies to the direction I wanted to go.

I applied to Faulkner, and I was thrilled to be accepted. I was unsure if they would take me because Apologetics might not seem to be the ideal preparation for a Great Books Ph.D. Houston Baptist was and is special, though. As it turned out, there were multiple books I read at Houston Baptist that were part of the curriculum at Faulkner. Not only did that help me out once I was a student, but I imagine that may have helped them feel like I was someone whom they could take a chance on.

Just to recap, you now have a Business Administration and Statistics major working as an insurance underwriter during the day who just completed an Apologetics degree entering a Great Books Ph.D.

Again, my professors were gracious and worked with me to help me continue growing. I was blown away every class by how excellent my classmates were, and there were so many times they brought up brilliant points that I had never even considered. I kept working my way through the program, and I felt good about my progress.

I started thinking about my dissertation, and I was still very much thinking about Apologetics. The main problem was that I had no idea what to do. This is a pretty typical problem for doctorate students, but it is hard to come up with original research for the first time. It seems like all the good ideas are already taken. As you also know, I love The Lord of the Rings, so I was thinking about how I could incorporate that into some Apologetics-related dissertation. However, because there is so much literature on Tolkien’s work, I was having a hard time finding anything original.

Oddly enough, the presidential election of 2016 helped me find my dissertation topic. I do not want to be political here, but I will just say that I was not excited about either candidate, so I began researching third parties. I stumbled across the American Solidarity Party, and I started reading about their strangely named economic theory called Distributism. Imagine my surprise when I found out that one of its most well-known proponents was G.K. Chesterton. I had fallen in love with Orthodoxy, but I was now coming into contact with his economic theorizing.

The problem with researching Distributism and trying to be an informed voter was that it was hard to find much information. While there are certainly proponents of it, I wanted to learn more, but I had difficulty finding what I wanted. Then it hit me that this might be a perfect dissertation topic. I had a fascinating subject like Chesterton to research, and I had an economic theory that had not been discussed very much. Discussing economic theories was also somewhat in my comfort zone based on my undergraduate background. Of course, I had to relate this idea to a Humanities dissertation by studying the historical presentation of Distributism. Isn’t it funny how everything comes full circle? I ran away from studying Business, and my Humanities dissertation required understanding concepts that I learned as an undergraduate. I am convinced that God has a sense of humor.

My dissertation was a grueling process, but I was finally able to defend it in May of 2020. While my research did not turn out to be all I hoped it would be, a good dissertation is a done dissertation. I was thrilled and relieved to be done. However, I was now left in a bizarre situation. With my kind of hodgepodge resume, how on earth was I going to find a classroom? What would I even teach? What was I qualified to teach?

Part of that dilemma was exacerbated by poor planning on my part. Kind of like I did during my undergraduate, I took various classes for my Ph.D. electives. I should have specialized more heavily, but I was not thinking about that at the time. In hindsight, I certainly would have dedicated all of my electives to one subject area, but I was studying what I was interested in at the time.

My first approach was, naturally, to reach out my alma mater, Houston Baptist University. We started the process, and I got my application and documents in. Unfortunately, there were no openings for me at the time. I began to think about how I could gain additional experience in the field. Like most professions, most of the job applications online wanted experience. To get the experience, though, I needed someone to give me a job. I sent out a bunch of applications, but none of them came back favorably.

As a result, I made two decisions for the fall of 2020. I began teaching high school online through Kepler Education. High school is obviously different from college, but learning to teach online would be a valuable addition to my skill set. Also, because of the incredible freedom teachers are given at Kepler, I was able to design a class entirely built upon the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. I was able to craft my first experience so that the material was entirely within my comfort zone. Therefore, even though teaching was new to me and I was quite nervous about the actual process of educating, at least I had material and content that I was comfortable with.

I made a second decision to pursue a Higher Education Teaching Certificate through The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University. I wanted to show that I was dedicated to improving my craft, and I also learned a lot about curriculum design, something I had never formally studied. Even though I knew that, as an adjunct, I would not be designing curricula right away, understanding the mechanics of how that process worked and how to speak intelligently about it would undoubtedly be important.

Even though none of the applications I had sent out had given me what I wanted, I was still moving forward. I certainly had no intention of stopping.

I do not remember precisely when I found the job posting at Southeastern University. It was for an adjunct instructor in the Humanities. With a general Humanities doctorate, I would need a program that would have a place for me, a generalist. Also, I was certainly interested in teaching at a Christian university, so Southeastern piqued my interest.

For those of you who remember searching for jobs, most of the time you probably wrote a cover letter and just customized it a little bit for all of the jobs you were applying for, right? I admit that I have done that as well in the past. That is not what I did for Southeastern. I wrote a very passionate (and probably overly lengthy) cover letter outlining why I was interested in this job and why I thought I would be an excellent fit for the position.

Then I waited. And I waited. I did not forget about my application, but months went by and nothing came to be. Then, in the middle of December, I received an invitation to a Zoom interview for this position. I was so excited. I picked out my lucky bowtie and prepared for the interview. I guess my letter paid off because the first thing we talked about during my interview was that my letter convinced them to call me.

The interview went so well, and I left that meeting with confirmation that I would indeed be hired, but the catch was that they needed an instructor for a class starting in just a few weeks at the beginning of January. I had never read the course text before, but I was so eager to start teaching that I said I would do it. The book was shipped to me, and I read it quickly to prepare for my class.

Unfortunately, the class did not happen. As it turned out, there was not enough enrollment. While I was disappointed, I had filled out all of the HR paperwork for Southeastern, and I was officially hired. That was great news, and I began looking forward to the fall of 2021, when I would have my first class. I did not say anything publicly at the time because I did not know what the fall schedule would look like. Still, I remained very confident.

As time marched on, doors began to reopen at Houston Baptist, which I was thrilled about. Like I said above, that was the first place I wanted to teach. I had a wonderful experience as a graduate student, and I love the field of Cultural Apologetics. After a few delightful interviews, I found myself hired as an adjunct faculty member. One of my friends described this part of my journey as coming full circle. I had started studying Apologetics there, and now I finally had the opportunity to return in a different capacity. It was like returning home.

While there were no classes that needed a professor immediately at Houston Baptist, I did receive my class assignment at Southeastern soon after. I would be teaching Introduction to Humanities in the first eight weeks of the fall semester. Everything had honestly fallen into place perfectly. Two great universities decided to give me a chance, and I am so grateful for both of them. I do not know what courses I will teach going forward, but this is just the beginning. Who knows what this adventure will lead to next?

As you can see, my journey to the classroom has been somewhat convoluted. There have been lots of twists and turns. So many things have worked out so well. Even when things did not happen exactly when I wanted them to, the fact that they did not happen allowed other doors to open. And then the doors that I originally wanted to open actually opened in the end anyway. There is not much else to say beyond the fact that God is good.