Categories
Religious Studies Student Stories

Get to Know Ph. D. Student Andrew Mercer

At SMU, learning happens on campus and all around the world!  Andrew Mercer, a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in Religious Studies, had an opportunity to work in Massachusetts this summer.  Here is his story:

Earlier this year, I applied to serve as a teaching fellow for the summer studies program at the Pappas Patristic Institute in Brookline, Massachusetts.  This is a week-long program designed for masters and undergraduate students as well as clergy and laity to have an opportunity to study patristics under the guidance of faculty who are experts in the field. Participants choose two courses to attend, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  Each course is designed and overseen by a professor, and most courses have a PhD student acting as the teaching fellow. In general, the professors choose the texts that will be read and give an introduction to the material, then the teaching fellows guide the daily reading and discussion of those texts. I t is a wonderful way for doctoral students to gain classroom experience, to get to know scholars in the field, and to discuss research projects with other graduate students.

2016 Summer Institute Attendees

I was able to attend this program thanks to a graduate student travel grant from the SMU Graduate Studies office.  I served as the teaching fellow for a course on the problem of evil in patristic theology and philosophy, a topic on which I had written for our core PhD seminar in philosophy of religion.  My role was to field questions on the material and to facilitate the dialogue, which naturally turned out to be a great way of solidifying my own understanding of the topic.  In addition to being a teaching fellow for this course, I attended another course which was more directly related to my area of specialization (patristic ecclesiology) and was able to make a significant contribution there as well.

 

Categories
Anthropology Engineering English Religious Studies

2013-2014: Graduate Student Awards & Fellowships

Congratulations to all of our SMU graduate student winners!

Mellon Short-Term grant to Massachusetts Historical Society Meghan Tinning English
SSRC Social Scienc Research Council Dissertation Proposal Fellowship Kerri Brown Anthropology
Mensa Scholarship Saler Axel Simmons Education
Fulbright Grant to South Africa Afshan Kamrudin Anthropology
Fulbright ETA to Poland Corinne Matthews Electrical Engineering
Cuban Heritage Collection Grant Joseph Hartman Art History
Beck Institute Scholarship Noelle Smith Psychology
Getty Foundation Internship Rheagan Martin Art History
Ruth Landes Foundation Grant Shay Cannedy Anthropology
NSF DDRF, National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant Shay Cannedy Anthropology
DAAD Grant to Germany Joshua Mauldin Religious Studies
PEO Scholar Award Megan Hinrichsen Anthropology
Categories
Anthropology Biology Chemistry Earth Sciences Economics Engineering English History Mathematics Physics Psychology Religious Studies Research Statistics

Research Day 2014

imageimage2image4Research_day_emptyResearchday4Researchday18
Researchday20Researchday30Researchday39Researchday41Researchday47Researchday54
Researchday57Researchday61Researchday62Researchday63Researchday64Researchday65
Researchday67Researchday68Researchday71Researchday72Researchday74Researchday75

Research Day 2014, a set on Flickr.

SMU graduate and undergraduate students are invited and encouraged to present results of ongoing and completed SMU-based research. The goal of this event is to foster communication between students in different disciplines, give students the opportunity to present their work in a professional setting, and share the outstanding research being conducted at SMU with their peers and industry professionals from the greater Dallas community.

Categories
Religious Studies

Stories that need to be known

Categories
Religious Studies

Research: Texas public-school Bible courses skirt state law