From interviewing university presidents to providing guidance for parents during their students’ college years, Todd Ream has no shortage of published works these days.
Dr. Ream, Associate Professor of Humanities at Indiana Wesleyan University, interviewed Judge Ken Starr, President of Baylor University, for the March/April 2011 issue of Books & Culture magazine. Just last year, Ream interviewed the legendary Father Theodore Hesburgh, former president of Notre Dame, for Books & Culture.
Almost concurrently with the publication of the Starr interview will be the release of Taking Every Thought Captive: Forty Years of Christian Scholar’s Review, a collection that he worked on in conjunction with fellow editors in honor of the journal’s 40th anniversary.
Late April will see the release of A Parent’s Guide to the Christian College: Supporting Your Child’s Heart, Soul, and Mind during the College Years, co-authored by Ream with Skip Trudeau and Tim Herrmann.
Parent’s Guide focuses on the three domains of Christian college experiences: common worship, the classroom, and the out-of-class. Each chapter discusses misconceptions about the college experience, offers a brief overview of what current literature says about the subject, and closes with practical considerations related to a particular season of life at a Christian college.
Ream said, “We want parents to be valued and informed partners in the educational process. We believe that if they understand the critical commitments that define a Christian college or university, they will be likely to ask more of the institution and their children than less. We want the role that parents play to be one that helps the institution and their children to be more distinctively Christian.”
Ream sees a natural relationship between writing and teaching. “In terms of writing, I believe Christian scholars are called to serve particular publics,” he said. “In many ways, the first public we are called to serve is the Church. As a philosopher of education, a secondary public I am also called to serve is the education community. Hopefully, these interviews and these books help meet needs that emerge at a point where these two publics intersect—Christian higher education.”