04 Apr 2025
04 Apr 2025

2025 ATS Vocational Retreat for Midcareer Faculty

Price: TBD
  • Price: $250.00

Overview

Welcome Letter for Participants of the 2025 ATS Vocational Retreat for Midcareer Faculty

By application; Wondering how your professional “second half” will be different? Feeling untethered now that tenure (or its equivalent) is behind you? Overwhelmed by organizational changes taking place in theological education and in need of a “recharge”? Then this experiential vocational retreat is for you!

Moving into your professional "second half" comes with questions about changes that theological education and your school are facing and the impacts you will have in these spaces. Having reached a halfway point in your career, you are in the position to review and perhaps reshape your vocation as a theological educator. In this vocational season, you might consider engaging broader publics as a theological educator. In this vocational season, you may also be asked to help lead the changes that need to come and to mentor the next generation of theological educators.

After successfully shifting from roundtable gathering to vocational retreat for the last Midcareer Faculty event, we will again lean into experiential pedagogies, with the understanding that activity, expression, and rest will coax new kinds of reflection and imagination in participants’ understanding of vocation.

In this time of significant changes within the world, the church, and theological education, how will you take on the responsibility of guiding important changes in your institution? How might your gifts best be used to serve the mission of your institution? How should your vocation develop within the context of the mission? Explore these questions and your next vocational chapter this April!

Additionally, this year ATS will offer a pilot program—a half-day post-conference on Exploring Senior Leadership—as part of a broader effort to support the effectiveness and longevity of those new to senior leadership. Following the Midcareer Faculty event, the 2025 ATS Chief Academic Officers' Conference will take place. Several academic deans will arrive early to connect with a selected group of midcareer faculty who are seriously considering taking on senior leadership. Participants will hear reflections from the journeys of current academic deans and will share in small groups their hopes and concerns about such a transition. As a pilot year, there will be no additional fee for the post-conference.

Agenda
Goals of the Retreat:
  1. Foster a clearer understanding of the vocation of "theological educator," including the connection between individual and collective vocations.
  2. Explore shifts in living out the theological educator's professional "second half.”
  3. Promote the enhancement of professional relationships.
FRIDAY, APRIL 4

→ Bring your artifact/metaphor for your vocational journey (e.g., icon, object, something written).

1:30 p.m.     
Registration|Pacific Room

2:00 p.m.     
Welcome and Assumptions about the Retreat|Pacific Room
Deborah H. C. Gin, Director of Research and Faculty Development, The Association of Theological Schools

2:30 p.m.     
Opening Ritual
Lakisha R. Lockhart, Associate Professor of Christian Education, Union Presbyterian Seminary

3:05 p.m.
Framing about Theological Education
Deborah H. C. Gin, Director of Research and Faculty Development, The Association of Theological Schools

4:15 p.m.
Break

4:30 p.m.
Framing about Vocation
Bonnie Miller-McLemore, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, Emerita, Vanderbilt University Divinity School

Roundtable Discussion

5:45 p.m
Break                                                                                                                                           

6:00 p.m.     
Dinner|Patio Room (Outside)                                                           

SATURDAY, APRIL 5

8:00 a.m.     
Breakfast buffet|Patio Room (Outside)

8:45 a.m.     
Morning Prayer|Pacific Room
Chelsea Yarborough, Associate Director of Leadership Programming, The Association of Theological Schools

9:00 a.m.     
Experiential Workshops I (your workshop will be listed on the back of your name tag)

Contemplative Photography|Pacific Room
Audrey Shaw, Paralegal, Scarpone Law Offices, LLC

Movement/Play|Patio Room
Lakisha R. Lockhart, Associate Professor of Christian Education, Union Presbyterian Seminary      

Visual/Tactile Art|Palm Room
Chung-Yan (Joyce) Chan, Principal, Canadian Chinese School of Theology Vancouver

11:30 a.m. 
Break                                                                                                                                  

12:00 p.m.   
Lunch Buffet|Patio Room (Outside)                                                                               

1:00 p.m.     
Experiential Workshops II (your workshop will be listed on the back of your name tag)

Contemplative Photography|Pacific Room
Audrey Shaw, Paralegal, Scarpone Law Offices, LLC

Movement/Play|Patio Room
Lakisha R. Lockhart, Associate Professor of Christian Education, Union Presbyterian Seminary

Visual/Tactile Art|Palm Room
Chung-Yan (Joyce) Chan, Principal, Canadian Chinese School of Theology Vancouver

3:30 p.m.     
Space for Reflection and Additional Conversation|Pacific Room

4:30 p.m.
Dinner on your own

SUNDAY, APRIL 6

8:00 a.m.
Breakfast Buffet|Patio Room (Outside)                                                                             

9:00 a.m.     
Retreat Reflections, Revelations, and Closing Ritual|Pacific Room
Deborah H. C. Gin, Director of Research and Faculty Development, The Association of Theological Schools
Lakisha R. Lockhart, Associate Professor of Christian Education, Union Presbyterian Seminary

11:30 a.m.   
Adjournment

EXPLORING SENIOR LEADERSHIP POST-CONFERENCE
Goals of the Post-Conference:
  1. Foster a clearer understanding of the vocation of the academic dean.
  2. Explore the possibility of taking on senior leadership earlier.
  3. Connect with experienced deans and others interested in leadership.

2:00 p.m.     
Registration|Pacific Room
Submit index card: What questions about administrative leadership are you bringing with you?

2:30 p.m.    
Welcome and Introductions|Pacific Room
- Goals of the postconference
- Participant introductions – Name, school
- Dean introductions – Why I became a dean and what keeps/kept me here

3:15 p.m.
Topical Exploration with Deans – Mid Groups

4:00 p.m.
Break

4:15 p.m.
Focus on Participant Discernment
Small Groups or One-on-One

5:30 p.m.
Fireside Chat – Plenary Conversations|Pacific Room

6:15 p.m.
Closing Activity

6:30 p.m.     
Dinner and Additional Small Group Time|Patio Room (Outside)

Workshops
Accommodations

Hyatt Regency Newport Beach is located at 1107 Jamboree Road, Newport Beach, CA 92660, approximately 11 minutes from John Wayne-Orange County Airport (SNA).

ATS will make reservations for your stay and provide a breakfast buffet daily. Guest rooms include complimentary Wi-Fi; there is complimentary Wi-Fi in the meeting rooms.

A 24-hour cancellation policy or a cancellation fee will apply.

Check-in: 4 p.m.
Check-out: 12 p.m.

Any attendee wishing special consideration for late check-out should inquire at the front desk on the day of departure.

Parking
Overnight self-parking: $40
Day self-parking: $25

Transportation Information
We recommend Lyft or Uber (cost is approximately $10–25 one way).

 hotel-floorplan.jpg

Presenters
Joyce Chan

View Bio

Joyce Chan

Joyce Chan is the principal at the Canadian Chinese School of Theology Vancouver. Prior to that, she served at Carey Theological College for 19 years as professor of Church history with six years serving as the vice president academic, where she gained a strong identity as an "imagineer" of theological education. She is passionate in designing curriculum that encourages collaborative learning, nurtures student formation, and forms communities across cultures in both in-person and online learning environments.

Chan received her BS from the University of California, Los Angeles, M.Div. from Gateway Seminary, and PhD in religion from Baylor University. Her research interest focuses on documenting major movements and biographical stories among the Chinese Canadian immigrant churches through both archival study and oral history. Her publications include Rediscover the Fading Memories: Early Chinese Canadian Christian History (2013), and William Dean and the First Chinese Study Bible (2014). She is an ordained minister in the Canadian Baptists of Western Canada and a certified art therapist. When she is not working, she enjoys reading and making art with her daughter.

Lakisha R. Lockhart

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Lakisha R. Lockhart

Lakisha R. Lockhart is a spouse, mother of two, ordained minister, womanist play facilitator, and associate professor of Christian education at Union Presbyterian Seminary. She is author of Doing Theological Double Dutch: A Womanist Pedagogy of Play and has co-edited Theopoetics in Color: Embodied Approaches in Theological Discourse and Nobody's Perfect: Redefining Sin and Mistakes in Adolescent Christian Education.

Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore

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Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore

Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (she/her) is E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, Emerita, from the Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion of Vanderbilt University. An internationally recognized leader in women and childhood studies and pastoral and practical theologies and a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology, she is author, co-author, and editor of 18 books as well as more than a hundred chapters and articles. Her most recent book, Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling (Oxford University Press), challenges superficial ways people toss around the word “calling” and examines the more complicated and even painful realities that shape our lives.

Audrey Shaw

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Audrey Shaw

Audrey Shaw learned photography as a forensic scientist and went on to teach law enforcement and forensic photography collegiately. She has owned a photography business during which time she became involved with conducting Retreats in Contemplative Photography. She is currently employed as a paralegal.

Other

WiFi Network: @Hyatt_Meetings
Password: Meetings25

A grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. will cover the cost of overnight rooms and meals. Participants are responsible for the costs of programming and travel to/from California.

Guest fee: $75 (adults only; includes meals but not program participation)

Dress is business casual.

Event Contact
Monica Laughery

Date & Time
Fri, Apr 04, 2025 , 1:30 p.m. PT —
Sun, Apr 06, 2025 , 11:30 a.m. PT

Location
Hyatt Regency Newport Beach | Newport Beach, CA

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