Coaching in Non secular Research strengthens careers

Serving to worldwide alternate college students regulate to an American context requires a variety of
abilities. Logistical challenges, together with advising college students from totally different academic methods and
cultural backgrounds, mix with the academic targets of partaking college students within the
negotiation of cultural variations. For Sonya Harwood-Johnson, who presently works in UA’s
Workplace of Worldwide Scholar and Scholar Providers, finishing her MA in Faith in Tradition
has been instrumental to fulfill these challenges.

Sonya—who graduated with the MA in 2022—got here to Alabama from Grimes, Iowa. She earned
her BA at Iowa State College with a double main in Anthropology and Non secular Research, and
a minor in Environmental Research. Whereas she was in highschool, Sonya’s household hosted an
alternate pupil from Italy, who shortly turned like a sister to her. Her household has since hosted
10 alternate college students—all of whom have vastly influenced Sonya’s ardour for worldwide
schooling. The interactions with these alternate college students helped Sonya understand that faith
can’t be separated from tradition, because it performs a key position in id and group formation.
These experiences, paired along with her undergraduate research, prompted her to search for a grasp’s
program that centered on faith in tradition.

Whereas looking for a grasp’s program, Sonya got here throughout a quote from our personal Dr. Russell
McCutcheon that her. That quote led her to contemplate our Non secular Research MA, and
she contacted Dr. Merinda Simmons, the grad director on the time. Discussing Sonya’s assorted
pursuits, together with American Paganism, she and Dr. Simmons have been in a position to make a plan that match
her wants.

Throughout her time right here, Sonya discovered herself wanting extra in the direction of profession paths exterior spiritual
research. Understanding her ardour for worldwide schooling, Dr. McCutcheon reached out to ISSS
(Worldwide Scholar & Scholar Providers) and organized for Sonya to have a for-credit internship
of their workplace—an internship that finally led to her present job. With ISSS, Sonya focuses on
“non-traditional schooling,” and facilitating alternatives for worldwide college students to get to
know one another and American college students whereas finding out in Tuscaloosa.

However what does this must do with Non secular Research?

Sonya has two overarching points to her job—each having important ties to non secular research.
The primary is that she should carry out a wide selection of logistical duties. Being an advisor for incoming
worldwide college students from a spread of academic applications, Sonya has researched
worldwide schooling methods and developed her personal methods to prepare them. Her time right here
in REL helped her acknowledge that classifying these college students and their academic wants and
necessities is a political act and to pay attention to the implications of these groupings.
Moreover, Sonya works to facilitate alternatives for college students to fulfill and find out about every
different. Planning occasions, researching cultures, and performing logistical duties are all abilities Sonya
sharpened whereas within the REL grasp’s program—abilities that transcend the standard scope of
spiritual research

However maybe extra importantly, Sonya makes use of the tender abilities she honed inside REL day by day. A part of
facilitating alternatives to develop college students’ worldview contains respecting the concepts and
paradigms folks have. Sonya’s job is to encourage college students to grasp different cultures in a
respectful and thoughtful method—to permit college students to “[become] extra versatile with
variations” between them. Due to her spiritual research abilities, Sonya is ready to navigate
discussions about authenticity, dismantle assumptions, and showcase cultures meaningfully and
with out discriminating. Her time in REL gave her perception into the right way to promote interplay and
understanding between cultures.

Whereas the College of Alabama Non secular Research program teaches onerous abilities about evaluation,
communication, and digital instruments that may be taken to many alternative fields, together with
worldwide schooling, it additionally helps college students develop abilities in human interplay and
group constructing wanted to take them via life and careers.

This submit is a part of a collection that highlights the vary of accomplishments that college students in
Non secular Research obtain whereas on the Capstone and of their lives after commencement. All of us hear
questions like, “What are you going to do with a Non secular Research diploma?” As this collection makes
clear, the talents that college students develop in Non secular Research, together with important considering, interacting
with various viewpoints, social evaluation, and the flexibility to speak to a number of audiences,
contribute to a broad vary of actions and careers.