Explicit Curricular Instruction Needed: Merging Adventist Christian Worldview with Critical Thinking Skills in Adventist Tertiary Institutions

From the founding of the first tertiary institution in 1874, Seventh-day Adventist administrators and educators have grappled with the tension between faith and learning, a duality implicit in the sacred/secular curricula split in Seventh-day Adventist tertiary institutions today. This duality fails to represent the Seventh-day Adventist holistic life-view. The Higher Education Biblical Foundation Course Design Model developed by Cynthia Gettys and Elaine Plemons and published by The Center for Teaching Excellence at Southern Adventist University is a curriculum design model that can help mitigate this sacred/secular dichotomy and make scripture central to each course offered at Adventist colleges and universities. The Gettys/Plemons Course Design Model would be strengthened by incorporating the critical thinking framework developed by the late Dr. Richard Paul and Dr. Linda Elder available from the Foundation for Critical Thinking. The Paul/Elder Critical Thinking Framework is an integrated, systematic, and universal approach to the analysis and evaluation of criteria-based reasoning built upon three conceptual sets which together provide the most robust and integrated model of critical thinking currently available. Applying the Gettys/Plemons Course Design Model to each course offered can benefit Seventh-Day Adventist tertiary institutions by unifying the curricula on the Adventist Christian Worldview. Applying the Paul/Elder Critical Thinking Framework can benefit Seventh-Day Adventist tertiary institutions by providing explicit instruction for criteria-based thinking with a shared simple language across the spectrum of disciplines. Ellen G. White (1873) says that “[t]he truths of the divine word can be best appreciated by an intellectual Christian. Christ can be better glorified by those who serve him intelligently. The great object of education is to enable us to bring into use the powers which God has given us, in such a manner as will best represent the religion of the Bible and promote the glory of God” (p. 23). Merging the Gettys/Plemons Course Design Model with the Paul/Elder Critical Thinking Framework will help facilitate the Adventist ideals of making scripture the foundation and context of education while also developing students who are thinkers rather than reflectors of others’ thoughts

Mobile Application for Historical Markers*

Students find it challenging to engage in their local history solely through in-class instruction. Traditionally, teachers remedy this by organizing field trips. However, field trips can be challenging because they are costly, time-consuming, and a liability to the school. Because of these issues, teachers cannot take the students on as many field trips as they would like. The solution is a web app that allows students to discover the historical sites in their areas. This enables the students to independently visit historical sites and gain the valuable out-of-classroom experience that field trips can help with. The web app was introduced to 30 students attending a high school in Collegedale, TN. 24 students answered the survey

Generational and Religious Influence: A Cultural Exploration of Jewelry in SDA Communities*

This study will explore different generational perspectives towards jewelry among Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z within Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) communities. Traditional SDA doctrine discourages adornment like jewelry, however, research shows that traditional values shift with generations. We will explore whether generational values influence the perception of jewelry, using a cross-sectional survey and the established DUREL scale. We expect Generation Z to be the most supportive of jewelry, and Generation X to be the least supportive, despite their reported religiosity. The results may help expose both the SDA church’s Biblical theology and its modern relevance to the changing world

Machine Learning Classification of Fossilized Pectinodon bakkeri Teeth Images: Insights into Troodontid Theropod Dinosaur Morphology

Although the manual classification of microfossils is possible, it can become burdensome. Machine learning offers an alternative that allows for automatic classification. Our contribution is to use machine learning to develop an automated approach for classifying images of Pectinodon bakkeri teeth. This can be expanded for use with many other species. Our approach is composed of two steps. First, PCA and K-means were applied to a numerical dataset with 459 samples collected at the Hanson Ranch Bonebed in eastern Wyoming, containing the following features: crown height, fore-aft basal length, basal width, anterior denticles, and posterior denticles per millimeter. The results obtained in this step were used to automatically organize the P. bakkeri images from two out of three clusters generated. Finally, the tooth images were used to train a convolutional neural network with two classes. The model has an accuracy of 71%, a precision of 71%, a recall of 70.5%, and an F1-score of 70.5%

Fulfilling Purpose, Calling, and Commissioning through Boundary Spanning

Increased efforts to normalize calling within diverse professions have been successful at generating more mainstream acceptance of its premises and purpose, especially in the context of career. Though recognition that calling extends to vocations other than ministers and missionaries bring wider acceptance of the construct, it is often misconstrued as one’s best temporal job fit, rather than a divine purpose through which God intends to accomplish His purposes. From the very acts of creation, God demonstrates that it is only through Him that divine purposes are accomplished. Only God spans the boundary between emptiness and fulness, sinfulness and holiness, humanity and divinity, temporal and eternal to create and recreate; to save and to restore. Scripture is replete with examples of God working in and through others for His salvific purposes. Calling, our holy calling, serves as a conduit through which God continues these boundary spanning acts. It is through this calling and commissioning we fulfill our purpose—God’s purpose

Life of Poetry: Practicing the Art of Incarnation

This creative research project explores three questions. First, what does it mean to live a life of poetry, to be a poet? Second, what is the life cycle of a poem? How does a poem begin, grow, and come to an end? And finally, could Christ be a poet? By writing a collection of poems as the core of my project, I explored the poet’s life, followed several poems through their life cycle, and reflected on the intersection between Christ’s life and ours. To add a practical dimension to the project, I researched the publishing process through books and interviews. This layered task led to a variety of concrete outputs which are organized into three categories: poems, resources, and vision. The poems folder contains an introduction to the collection, first drafts, readers comments, final drafts, and future plans. The resources folder outlines the research I conducted (through reading and interviews) into the publishing process. There, you will find compiled notes, actionable tasks, and lists of resources. Finally, the vision folder contains a reflection, my philosophy of poetry, my future plans as a poet, and the slides for my symposium presentation. Unfortunately, I am unable to include the poems themselves here, since I plan to publish them elsewhere

Artificial Inteligence: Ethical and Theological Implications. In Technology, Ethics, and the Future: Navigating the Digital Age with a Biblical Focus

The contribution of this chapter is to present a biblical and theological reflection on Al and ethics related to AI. First, real examples of AI will be explored to introduce some of the ethical possibilities and challenges they pose. Then, it will address what is currently being discussed and addressed in the field of AI ethics, followed by biblical principles that can guide the approach to AI. The final section will provide an overview of the future of Al as envisioned by technology experts and philosophers, and how their vision for the technological singularity is a techno-humanist affront to God. The chapter will end with some concluding thoughts on AI, ethics, and biblical principles

Columns Spring 2025

Features articles on gamification to increase learning and classroom engagement, summer camp connections, and embracing service.https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/alumni_newsletter/1195/thumbnail.jp

Living From God

“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart will be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,” Deuteronomy 8:11-14, ESV

Cycles in Grid Graphs and Toroidal Variants*

A grid graph is an integer lattice with edges between adjacent vertices. We show that there exists a Hamiltonian path on a 3-dimensional grid graph exactly when all the dimensions are even. Then we take up three topological variants, forming toroidal grid graphs by identifying opposite faces of the grid graph, either identifying one, two, or all three pairs of opposite faces. In these settings, we determine the parity of a cycle’s length that exists on the toroidal grid graph in terms of the dimensions of the graph and the number of times the cycle passes through each pair of identified faces. This allows us to exhibit examples of Hamiltonian cycles in toroidal grid graphs