MTP 54: Jeff Colbert Part 1, How One Professor Bridges Beliefs & Politics in the Classroom

What happens when a college professor breaks into tears… at Disney World? Or gets spiritually called out by a student? We sit down with Jeff Colbert, Political Science professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Jeff shares his love for Disney World, how his own freshman year changed everything. He tells how as a professor, his life was transformed by an anonymous note from a student. And he gives practical examples of integrating his Christian faith into his classroom with an atmosphere of respect. 

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mjcolber@uncg.edu

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Transcript

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As Christian professors how do you handle bias and assumption within yourself and like in class and what you're teaching and making sure that they're all understanding the course? Hey everybody, welcome to Meet the Prof. My name is Shane and my friend Spence and I take questions from college students, just like you heard from Kami, and we will ask them to Christian professors. And our goal is to encourage Christ-centered conversations on the college campus. We're so glad you're here. Thank you for joining us. What would you think if you ran into a professor who burst into tears and you're at Disney World? Or what do you think could cause a professor to get an anonymous confrontational letter under their office door? Well, stay tuned for part one of our interview with Jeff Colbert. Jeff teaches political science at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. And before we get started, please remember to click on subscribe or follow wherever you're watching or listening to this and let's dive in. Here is part one of our interview with Jeff Colbert. Well, Jeff, welcome to Meet the Prof. I have really been looking forward to getting to interview you like this. So how are you doing? I'm doing well, doing well. It's good to see you as well, Shane. It's been a while. Yeah, and it's the first time Spence has met you, so good having y'all connected here. Absolutely. Good to see you, Spence. So Jeff, you're in Greensboro, North Carolina. That's maybe three and a half hours from us. What do you love so much about Greensboro? Golly, I thought we only have an hour. mean, you're in trouble now. it's interesting. I came to Greensboro when I transferred here to UNC Greensboro as a student back in 72 and I fell in love with Greensboro and have not fallen out of love since. I think one thing is I like about Greensboro and I was actually talking with a friend of mine last week. Greensboro is a big town. It's technically a city, you know, Charlotte, Raleigh, then we're Greensboro. We're a city, but the feel is more like a town. It's much more informal. Um, of course my university is here. 95 % of my family is here. And so my church is here. So, you know, there's just. I can't imagine a scenario where I would leave Greensboro. Well, tell us a little about your affection for Disney World? Yeah, it's interesting. When I was a kid, we did not travel a whole lot. We didn't do vacations much the way people did. And I remember the very first time I went to Disney, and we go through the magic kingdom. walked through Cinderella's palace and I see or the castle and I see all the intricate detail of the building. And I literally started crying right there. I just could not imagine that I was in this location, you know, and seeing all this cool stuff and really sort of becoming a child almost all over again. We took our entire family down there. We had grandkids, all of them had grandkids. My mom went and, shoot, I'm gonna cry. Dang. We went in, we went in and she stood there and she said, I never thought I'd get to come here. And I thought, this is gonna be a cool trip. So it's just a place you can be a kid. So I always enjoy going there. Have you? bad crying. We try to get every professor to cry on the podcast. Spence is good at that. Well, so before we get into the next question, I want to welcome anyone who has logged in to watch this live. And you know, Jeff, that we are trying something totally new with this interview where we've invited a handful of professors around the country if they wanted to put questions in the chat and hopefully interact some with us later. Jeff, you know this is coming. We've got to know what's your most embarrassing moment you've had as a college professor. yes. One of the interesting things when you first started doing these, asked about student and I started thinking about that, but the last few you've gone to professor I'm loaded either way. but the professor one is really, it came instantly to mind. I make a point of norm. I teach political science, make sure some people don't know that. and I make a point of seldom ever making predictions because I am ghastly wrong almost all the time. And so I just don't do it. when COVID broke, we had been on spring break the week before COVID. We came back on campus on that Monday and there was all talked about closing and what's going to happen. And of course we're still trying to figure out what COVID is and how bad it is and so forth. So I go into one of my classrooms on Monday morning and they said, so Mr. Colbert, you think about those, when are you going home? We leave in the day. What's going to happen? I said, look, look, calm down. Something as huge as a university and the university system cannot possibly just close like that. It'll be at least two weeks, maybe three. Just relax. It's okay. The next day, the email came out that we were closing Friday of that week. So you can imagine when I went in that same class on Wednesday, they were waiting to ask me questions. Hey, Mr. Colbert, I thought you said, yeah, I know you're right. That's why I don't predict things in classrooms. So yeah. That's good for them to see. Professors don't know everything. No, no, Jeff, there's something about your story that is very unique. I think a lot of us hear about college students who may grow up in church and then when they go off to college, they lose their faith. Your story on meettheprof.com is that you grew up in a church religious environment, but your freshman year is when you'd say you came to faith in Christ. So will you tell us about how that happened for you? We moved a lot when I was a kid for good and bad reasons, but we moved frequently. And as soon as we moved, because mom couldn't drive, so she would find that the nearest Southern Baptist Church we could walk to. And that was where I was the next Sunday morning. So I was raised in the church. I heard all the things you needed to hear. and I was I was a pretty good kid. I didn't get into trouble for the most part. My parents divorced when I was 16, which meant from that moment forward, anything I screwed up devastated my mother. just, you know, I came in late from a ball game, like 15 minutes one night, and she had already called the highway patrol to find out where I was. I mean, it was like, she's on, she's boohooing on the couch. I'm going, oh golly gee whiz. So I am looking forward to leaving Raleigh. I initially later came to UNCG, but I went to Chapel Hill first. And then it's like, she wasn't going to see me unless I came home and she was not going to know what I was doing unless I chose to confess, which I was not planning on doing. Um, so I am really looking forward. I've got a roommate, guy named Bob Subtles a very moral person if you will, but he was not a Christian either. And I am planning my freshman year all the things I did not do in high school. I am going to do now. Midsummer I get a phone call from Bob. First words out of his mouth. Jeff, I've been saved. To which my response was from what you know. And he went in to tell me about he got involved with the group called the Navigators who work in college campuses and a military bases. And so he got involved with them. He had a conversion experience. And I'm thinking, oh no, this is, I got Joe Christian as my roommate now. This is not what I was looking for, you know? And mom loved him and I knew if I went out partying, Bob would tell my, oh, then I'm not going, yeah. But because I'd always been going to church. So when he started going to Navigator meetings in Carolina, then I started going with him to Navigator meetings and we have Bible studies and so forth. And I wish to this day, I share oftentimes with young folks at church, anytime, whatever you make a decision to accept Christ, write that date down. You always want to know when it is. I don't have a lot, I don't do regrets much, but one of my regrets is that I did not write that date down. It was fall semester in 1970, 1004 Morrison dorm on Chapel Hills campus. I'm lying in bed at like 10 o'clock at night. And I say, God, OK, I'm yours. OK, I understand now what I'm doing and what I did not do. You know, I'm yours. And like for most adults, it was rocky road after that. You I was nowhere close to perfect for quite some time. But but it is interesting that I got saved at college as opposed to sort of pulling away because of college. Can you identify anything that was going on your freshman year where there was like the final straw, the final break of a barrier to where you had come to faith in Christ personally? not really. I think probably because everything I had done in church up to that point was, you know, because mom said you're going to go to church, you know, kind of thing and church. And I think this is true of a lot of churches. They're generally talking to the larger audience. That's there on a Sunday morning, which typically is not 16 to 18 year old kids. It's the adults in the room, which, which again, my church does that to a degree. think most churches do. When I was in the Navigator group at Chapel Hill, it's just college kids. I mean, we're all on the same plane. The biggest difference is four years, freshmen to senior, that's it. And they were talking to us where we live, know, with the things we're dealing with and so forth. So I think it just spoke to me in a different way than what had ever happened before. And just sort of, okay, yeah, I've got to make a change. This is, I got to accept Christ. And so I did. There's something powerful it sounds like for you being with other believers and your age, your season. Yeah. We've actually had a good question around this about some practical ways that you've expressed your faith to students and maybe some stories about how that's made a difference. Sure. Oh yeah. Yeah. I like that question. Well, let me let me let me tell you a story Shane Shane access heard this story, but it's several years ago, so you might have forgotten in my early early years of teaching. I think it's safe to say I was not a Christian influence in the classroom. I'm not sure I was a non-Christian influence, but I'm definitely not a Christian influence. And I got an anonymous note from a Christian student who challenged some of the things I did in the classroom. Because he said, you talk about being a Christian and being in church, but then you do these things. it was a spring semester, exams were over or whatever, slid under my door. And I read that and I just bawled. Well, sometimes I need a sledgehammer and that was my sledgehammer. So I turned, you know, I turned to God and I said, okay, I will not be in negative influence anymore and I want to be a positive influence. So show me what to do. And what happened next was the most uncomfortably silent six months I think I've ever gone through because I, I, I'm ready. Show me what to do. And God's just going. you know, know God has his own timing So we're talking like eight months later It's a Monday morning. I'm getting ready to walk into my classroom And as I'm about to cross the threshold of the door, I hear God's voice say ask them what they did over the weekend. Okay. I'm pretty sure I know who you are, but I literally backed out of the room. He's like, Okay. All right. So I into the classroom, set my stuff up and cause I know I normally chat for a minute or two before we get into the material and says, so what'd y'all do this weekend? You know, hands go up and once you know, one kids, I have no idea. I got drunk Friday. You know, you know, the same, you know, what's your, several went home, several went to a movie, whatever. And as this conversation going some student raises their hand. Mr. Colbert. What did you do this weekend? Light comes on. Okay. And I didn't start on Sunday. I started on Friday, you know, grandkids came over, spent the night, took them to Chuck E. Cheese, whatever it was on Saturday. But that got me to Sunday. So Sunday I was in church. I go to Cornerstone Baptist Church. I sing in the choir. we did this cool song. It was so much fun to sing. And then just then went on. Okay, let's start class. And this is easy. I was thinking you had to do something like magical about this. And it's just a matter of conversation. what I've started doing the last couple of years is on the first day of class, when go over the syllabus I will tell them, I'm a Christian. Now here's why I'm telling you this. I'm not telling you, so I'm gonna hit you with my Bible next week. I don't do that. Being a Christian tells me how I'm supposed to live. Being a Christian tells me how I'm supposed to treat you. So I will be fair with you. That's to the best of my ability. I will be honest with you to the best of my ability. I will do everything I can that is acceptable and appropriate whether for professor to try to help you get through this. I will listen to you if you have a problem, whether I agree with what's going on or not is completely immaterial. You're one of my students. If you have a problem, can come free. You're free to come talk to me. It's a safe space. I don't have to agree or whatever. And then I just move on, you know, whatever. And at least at this point, I've not had anybody who found that objectionable. I've had some Christian students who have stopped by and have said, I have found students who have been in some distress and apparently felt comfortable enough to come at least talk with me about it for a few minutes. So there are just different ways that it can work in. When a student emails me and tells me they're sick or maybe they're gonna be out because there's been a death in the family, I always put in my email, I will be praying for you and your family. Let me know if there's anything else I can do. And I leave it at that. And I'm still waiting for the first email. Don't you dare pray for me. Most of my emails to my students end with have a blessed day, Jeff Colbert or whatever, But the other thing I do is I listen for language. So for example, blessed is a word that anybody is allowed to use, but nobody uses it but Christians. And so if I had a soccer player in here, this is a number of years ago, she'd had a concussion. She had fallen behind. had to figure some things out. She's from California, so she was way far from home. And so we're just talking back and forth and she said, I just feel so blessed by all the family around me and people helping me. Well, you use the B words on to follow up. I said, I'm just curious. Do you go to church or you have faith or whatever? Oh, yeah, I'm a Christian. I was involved in a church in California and that I'm looking for a church at Greensboro. OK, so then we had a 20 minute conversation about our faith and so forth and how it developed and. I think for me, I just had to have that awakening moment to where I'm willing to do what you give me an opportunity to do. And I asked the question most every Monday, I asked them what they did on the weekend. Seldom today does anybody ask me what I did every now and then somebody does, but normally not. And I don't worry about it. There are other ways to get the message out now. You've shared a lot of things that didn't get pushed back. Another Chris in the chat wanted to know if you have experienced pushback, have you ever gone over the line and a colleague or a student called you out on it? I really don't think I have. Sometimes it's just sort of a non, you know, response or whatever, which is okay. Yeah, I do wear the WWJD bracelet and I have different colors that match my shirts. And so sometimes students will go, I know what that is, you know, and others will go, what is the bracelet thing? What is that about? And I'll just say, what it says WWJD, what does that stand for? What would Jesus do? And so I wear it to remind me. how I'm supposed to act. And sometimes they go, okay, or whatever, know, whatever. But I mean, nobody, no hostility back or whatever. So, and I know that my peers, at least the ones that interact regularly, they know how, you know, they know what my belief is. If you're in my department, you don't know I'm a Christian, then we just hired you last week because otherwise you would know. But it's, don't, again, I try not to be pushy about what I feel. People know, but at least to this point, I don't recall any getting feedback or any pushback. again, if you do ask that to Chris to if you do get some feedback from pushback, well, OK, then we'll then re-examine what you're doing. And you might have been the offender or whatever. You might have done something differently. But it also may be, you know, sometimes we get pushback and OK, then you move on and not push back, but just keep doing what you're doing. You know, we can't let If a person complains out of the 500 that didn't complain, who was the one that should motivate our behavior? It should be the 500, not the one. We should examine to make sure. Or did I cross a line? Because sometimes we can't. Did I do something inappropriate? OK, yeah, even though it was the one, still, I'm the one at fault. I need to back up. But I think more often than not, it probably would be something different. Hey, I want to say thank you to both the Chrises for asking those questions. And anyone else in the audience, feel free to put questions in the chat at any time. And at the very end, we'll open it up for any call-ins if you have a video camera and you want to call in. So we'll tell you how to do that. so Jeff, Spence and I have gone around and asked college students what questions they'd want to ask Christian professors. And so there's this one young lady we interviewed, we talked to named Kami, and she asked this question about bias, As Christian professors how do you handle bias and assumption within yourself and like in class and what you're teaching and making sure that everyone even if they have different worldviews and different mindsets that they're all understanding the course? Cool, okay, interesting question. It hasn't been recent, but there was a class I taught this was again, this was before COVID and I had two young men in the class. were both Muslim. They were clearly very, very good friends. Um, and they had asked to be off for two, one or two days for, for a of holiday. I said, sure. And I asked him what it was and it's a holiday. I recognize this as a Muslim holiday. And I said, if you guys would love like to, I would love to chat with you about your faith. And I'm not going to try to convince you I would just I don't know a lot about your faith and I would love to learn some things would that be okay and they said sure and so they came in and we had a great conversation and and they started off with said well We're not exactly practicing Muslims. Okay. Well frankly for a while I wasn't exactly a practicing Christian so I understand where you're coming from and so we talked about some some similarities and some differences and so forth and It was a good conversation, but I I tried to make people feel comfortable in the classroom. Obviously, in my universe, it's much more from the political perspective. I don't tell students who I register with, who I vote for. I make fun of Democrats and Republicans. It was hard to, you it must be one. I was teaching a class called political issues. And we deal with pretty controversial political topics in there, but we talked about political philosophy early in the course and learn how to talk with people, then not argue and yell and so forth. I had a student in my class, who are you supporting? I told y'all, I do not talk about this in class. I'm not gonna tell you. And he would regularly ask during the, will you tell us now? No, you're never going to learn. I just want you to know. So the semester is over, last exam, he's turned his paper in. He said, Mr. Colbert, you've got to tell me. who you're supporting. And that's the way I ain't got to tell you nothing. And B, why you want to know so badly? Nobody else here cares. And it turned out that he and his roommate who also was in the class, they said side by side, uh, they both were convinced that they knew who I was going to support. And one kid was absolutely convinced. I was a Ted Cruz supporter and the other was convinced. I was a Bernie Sanders supporter uh, supporter. And I thought, wow, I'm doing better than I thought I was. This is incredible. People don't come to my class for the express purpose of hearing what I think about Democrats and Republicans, or for that matter, Christians and Muslims or whatever. They come generally to my American Government class to get some basic information about American government. And as I tell them on the first day of class, if you think Donald Trump is horrible, if you think Donald Trump is great, when your hair color is my hair color, he's just a name in a history book. But if you don't know how the presidency operates, If you don't know how a bill becomes a law, if you don't know how the courts work, you're going to be a lousy citizen and you're not going to understand anything going on. So I'm going to teach you structure and we'll use examples of what's going on in politics. Sure. I I've never talked about checks and balances more than I have this semester. Yeah, but that's okay. The conditions require that. And I don't do it from a way that is argumentative or attacking. So I hope that that that doesn't become an issue, but I recognize from the very beginning. It's not you know, there I my beliefs are strongly held, but God will make it clear to me who needs to hear those strongly held beliefs. Well, we'll pause there and I can certainly see where students would feel comfortable in Jeff's classes. And thank you for joining us. Thanks for listening. And if you please remember to like or subscribe or follow. And if you are a Christian professor, please check us out on meettheprof.com and consider telling some of your spiritual journey there. It's real easy to click and create your own profile. And if you are a college student and you're hearing this, please check out Meet the Prof to see if there are any Christian professors in your area. And lastly, if you're interested in giving financially to this ministry, thank you so much. And you can give online at give.cru.org. Cru is C-R-U dot org / 0424344 So till next time, we hope this encourages you to have a Christ-centered conversation on your college campus.