Religion department searching for new faculty member

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The religion department is searching for its newest tenure-track faculty member and has lined up three potential candidates.

Each candidate will have the opportunity to give a presentation in front of faculty and students later this month, and from there the faculty will make their decision.

“We’ve been lacking a tenure faculty member for about four years after Gregory Spinner left,” said David Smith, religion area coordinator. “We finally got clearance from the provost to search for a replacement for this position.”

Upon gaining permission, the program placed an ad for the job through the American Academy of Religion and invited applicants who were interested in the position.

“What we’re searching for now is someone who can help expand the diversity of the coverage in the program,” Smith said. “We advertised for someone with a specialty in an area not covered by current faculty.”

Spinner was a specialist in Judaism, thus leaving a hole in the department upon leaving.

St. Lawrence University assistant professor Maria Rethelyi is one of the three candidates in the running for the job, bringing her specialty in Judaism to the table.

The other two candidates are Indiana University graduate student Aimee Hamilton, whose specialty is in Hinduism and Laurel Zwissler, whose specialty is in new religious movements.

Zwissler has some history with Central Michigan University. The professor from the University of Toronto spoke at the Charles V. Park Library in February 2010 about the difference between being spiritual and religious.

Faculty members that are fixed-term are reappointed every year or two, depending on their type of contract, while tenure-track faculty have the chance to receive tenure.

“They can earn tenure, which is a special kind of status where the university kind of commits to keeping them on unless there is some sort of misconduct to result in them being terminated,” Smith said.

Religion minor Bradley Rito, a Grosse Ile senior, said he liked the idea of the department becoming more diverse with the addition of a new faculty member.

“Quite a few of the professors have specializations in Christianity,” Rito said. “So to require that a professor have a different specialty would bring not only a different perspective, but it would be from the viewpoint of someone who specializes in a religion other than an Abrahamic one.”

Religion professor Michael Ostling said he looks forward to the new candidate, not only for their added specialty to the faculty but the addition of a more feminist study of religion.

“As feminist scholar Rita Gross has said, the feminist study of religion is not about adding women to our picture of religion, it’s about ‘repainting the whole picture,’” he said. “All of the candidates are qualified to bring such feminist perspectives to CMU.”

Religion major Jordan Rife, a Plainwell sophomore, said hiring a candidate who can bring this feminist idea to the table is fantastic.

“I think it will challenge students to look at religious values and rituals in new perspectives,” Rife said. “I think being able to offer more classes for students who are looking to critically think about how religions have lost the development of women is a great step for the CMU religion department.”

While the candidates have been narrowed down to the top three, Smith said the new faculty member won’t necessarily come from that group.

“If none of these people seem like the perfect fit and we want to try someone else in the pool, we might do further interviews. That’s happened in the past,” he said. “The question is, will the candidate we choose accept the offer?”