The Department's Contribution

The Department of Theology and Religious Studies currently serves some 1,700 students in an average of 64 undergraduate courses per semester. We do this with seventeen tenured and tenure-track faculty (all of whom have Ph.D.'s), some fifteen adjunct faculty, and one executive assistant. Three new faculty have been hired for fall 2007.

Our average number of majors for F01-F06 was 24.4. Many of these have been double majors, students electing to enrich or focus another major with the knowledge and skills particular to theology and religious studies. Our average number of minors F01-F06 was 35.2, an increase of 19% from F98-S01. While these numbers remain relatively modest, this does not mean that we see few students. Far from it. The vast majority of our students come to us to fulfill their USD Core Curriculum requirements.

During the past five semesters (F04-F06) the department averaged 5,476 student credit hours (SCHs) per semester, with a student full-time equivalent (FTE) of 365.1. By way of comparison, these numbers are 39% higher than the corresponding figures for the department in the college that historically has had the largest number of majors. The THRS numbers, interestingly, also represent a 15% growth from the academic year 2000-01, whereas the numbers for the college as a whole increased only 7% in this period. The department clearly is a major player in the USD ’s educational efforts.

In terms of our contribution to the standing of the university, we would note that a good number of our faculty have national, and even international, reputations for their scholarship. Our list of publications is impressive, as is the scope of our research. Given our subject matter, “internationalization” is second nature to our faculty. During breaks and sabbaticals, THRS faculty have done research and given invited talks in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Colombia, Vietnam, Laos, China, Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Finland, among other countries.

Our faculty serve on the editorial boards of such publications as the Blackwell Religion Compass, the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, the Irish Theological Quarterly, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, the Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology, Louvain Studies, and Revista Teológica Reflexión y Liberación. They have been invited plenary speakers at meetings of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States, the Catholic Theological Society of America, and the College Theology Society. They have received NEH and Lilly Endowment grants and held fellowships at the National Humanities Center and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. We have a colleague appointed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as commissioner the Faith and Order Commission of the National Council of Churches USA. Another colleague is consultant to the USCCB’s Committee on Bible Translations and Imprimaturs and a member of USCCB’s National Supervisory Board for the Revision and Use of the New American Bible. Last but not least, as of summer 2007, two members of our faculty will have received honorary doctorates.

Since 1994-95, our faculty have been awarded eleven University Professorships, including three of seven awarded in 2001-02. In 2007-08, four of our colleagues were awarded Faculty Research Grants providing release time for research; an additional four will be taking advantage of Steber Professorship funds for research release time.