Templeton Religion Trust
At its best, a university is a community that promotes the vibrant exchange of ideas—drawn from a diversity of viewpoints—in the humble pursuit of truth. When universities live up to their potential, they bring outsized benefit to society, industry, and the world.
Scholars who possess a religious “why?” for their professional vocation have a powerful opportunity to help universities uphold this vision and deliver on their tremendous promise. Jared Daugherty, Vice President of the Veritas Scholars Program, sees this opportunity:
Already, faith-informed leaders are serving and making meaningful contributions to the academy, but the university needs more scholars equipped with the virtues of engagement to lead and engage across differences for the good of all. Daugherty maintains:
Driven by a love for the university and its mission to seek truth, The Veritas Forum puts the Christian faith in dialogue with other beliefs and invites participants from all backgrounds to seek truth together. All of Veritas’s programs foster environments where life’s biggest questions—about meaning, purpose, identity, and truth—can be explored freely, respectfully, and rigorously.
Veritas launched the Veritas Scholars Program in 2022 to invest in Christian scholars committed to this kind of engagement. With funding from Templeton Religion Trust, Veritas is equipping the next generation of Christian faculty to faithfully live out their vocations as educators, researchers, mentors, and citizens through annual gatherings and discipline-based mentorship.
Many of the scholars already recognized by their universities as community leaders are the same ones mentoring early-career scholars through the Veritas Scholars Program. Through mentorship, they help these scholars develop a vision for their own faith-motivated contribution to the academy, a vision that shapes lifelong contributions to the university as faculty members.
The Veritas Scholars Program launches each year with the Scholars Summit, an annual gathering that fosters our community of practice of Christian academics committed to living out their faith for the flourishing of the university. Following the Scholars Summit, tenure-track scholars join year-long, discipline-based mentorship cohorts led by exemplar senior scholars in their field.
Through the Veritas Scholars Program, Christian scholars are shaping and equipping the next generation of faculty who will serve the academy in the years and decades to come. By investing deeply in these faith-informed leaders and providing them with scholar mentors committed to engaging across lines of deep difference, the Veritas Scholars Program seeks to revive the university’s highest aims: the pursuit of truth, the formation of leaders, and the good of society—for the flourishing of the academy and beyond.
