Comments on the Ward Consultation
Now that my professorial hat is on the shelf, the delight of sharing insights and understandings with educators has become even more important to me. Not only is it refreshing to be among those who take teaching and learning seriously, it is exciting to push reflections back and forth until they take shape and emerge as creative ideas and new ways to grasp the truth that underlies human behavior. Clearly, our world needs these sorts of contributions.
What makes educators valuable are their habits of orderly inquiry. We are at our best when we reflect carefully and think deeply about purpose and meaning. Such professionals are the sort of people who insist on going deeper, never satisfied with superficial and shallow perspectives.
The Ward Consultations have been established and dedicated to the cause of practical reflections built upon sound theory and moral integrity. They have demonstrated year after year the importance of continuing and deepening our learning together. As we continue to fulfill the principles that we have learned to expect of sound graduate education, we deepen our awareness of three basic truths:
Effective learning is far more than
collecting and organizing information.
Learning is a social process in which we share,
select, and shape ideas, reflections, and judgments.
As we seek understanding from its sources
in experience and wisdom, we honor God
as creator, ultimate source, and guide.
Ted Ward, 2002
Dr. Ward has spent his career in formal education at the University of Florida, at Michigan State University (MSU), and at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS). His affiliation with two Land Grant universities reflects his lifelong commitment to education as service and as a lifelong discipline. However, Ted has also spent his career warning of the limitations of ‘schooling’and championing nonformal modes of education. He is considered by many to be one of the more important and influential educators of the 20th century. Graduates of the PhD programs he directed are scattered throughout the world serving in numerous organizations as faculty members, presidents, deans, and provosts, relief and development specialists, parachurch leaders, congregational leaders, mission leaders, and corporate executives. In retirement, Ted continued to influence education and leadership development in his capacity as Senior Advisor for Leadership Development with the Maclellan Foundation.
From childhood, he determined that a primary characteristic of his life would be to make a difference. Early in his university career he made a difference by pioneering new models of teacher education in Florida and Michigan. While at Michigan State University he was on call with USAID to go anywhere in the world where there was need on 72 hours notice. For the tangible differences he made in emerging nations he was given the Dag Hammarskjold Citation for Service in Developing Nations, Uppsala, Sweden (1975), the first American to be so honored; and later the Faculty and Alumni Award for Service, College of Education, Michigan State University (1986). His commitment to the health of family life resulted in an invitation to serve as Consultant on Moral Values and Family, the White House and the U. S. Congress 1984-1987.
On his overseas tours, in his spare time, he consulted with mission agencies and Christian leadership development initiatives to help them think through their particular responsibilities in the service of the church. His consultancies with Christian organizations, government agencies, and corporations are too numerous to mention here. More importantly his commitment to service–to making a difference–is made up of three primary educational values:
Learning is collaborative and lifelong. Nearly all his students can attest to the value of the learning communities that emerged in doctoral programs at MSU and TEDS.
Development is a chief end of any educational endeavor. For Ted this has meant investment in the personal and professional development of individuals, active response to injustice, effort to help communities develop in ways appropriate to their culture, and both the challenge and crafting of educational structures to reflect what most educators claim is their purpose–development!
The necessity of research. Little forward progress is made in any endeavor without carefully designed research. The habit of inquiry into truth, the intentional seeking for truth is a hallmark of the doctoral programs he developed.
Most of his students came to understand the importance of his insistence that even theology had to be marked by openness to critique and inquiry. That he has done all of this while involved in formal higher education marks him as someone who has not utterly dismissed the academy. However, he continues to call the academy to the purposes it espouses but often does not demonstrate.
Finally, Ted is a musician. Though his once considerable instrumental skills have diminished, and though he no longer conducts large choirs, he remains musically literate and has strong convictions about the place of music and the arts in society and in the Christian life. His musicianship is important because it strengthened his ability to see patterns, to think in whole phrases, to hear the holism of things. Several years ago, some of Ted’s former students prepared a festschrift to reflect what they had learned from him and what they felt were his most enduring contributions to education. The choice of title, With an Eye on the Future (Monrovia, California: MARC 1996) was a deliberate recognition of Ted’s capacity to see patterns, trends, and to propose implications for the future. That so many of his collected writings and speeches across more than 30 years read like today’s newspaper testifies to this ability and discipline.
We are in a time where the ability to discern implications for the future of theological education is essential. The need to see situations through different lenses is both mandatory and possible as leaders from different cultures and organizations are able to be in conversation. Ted continues to be a valued dialogue partner for many. In this role he is supportive, a wise counselor, sometimes argumentative, but always a cheerleader—moving people from ideas to commitment to action.
Linda Cannell
For an outline of his life and career click here