Don Opitz
Office Phone: 724-847-6883
ddopitz@geneva.edu
Disciplines/Field of Instruction
- Director of the Geneva Master of Arts in Higher Education
- Professor of Sociology and Higher Education
Degrees Received
- B.A. from Westminster College 1983
- M.Div. from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in 1989
- Ph.D. from Boston University in 1995
Courses Taught
- In our graduate program in higher education I teach Vocation and Formation, The Foundations of Learning and Knowledge, Introduction to Campus Worldviews, Vocation of Teacher, Principles of Effective Teaching, and Leadership and Mentoring in Higher Education.
- In the undergraduate sociology program I teach Readings in Contemporary Sociology; Sociological Theory and Method; Work, Vocation and Leadership; Social Groups, Utopia and Shalom, and whatever Brad Frey tells me to do.
Presentations/Publications
- The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness, with co-author Derek Melleby. Brazos Press, 2007.
- But Now I See: A Crash Course on Worldview and Why it is Important, Comment Magazine, 2008.
- Our Reformed Identity, Professional Development Workshop for Student Life Division at Calvin College, February 2008.
- Academic Faithfulness lectures at The President’s Symposium on Christ-Centered Education at Huntington University, March 2008.
- Callings, Multi-faceted Faithfulness, and the Church, Pastor and Lay Workshop at Westminster College, March 2008.
- Academic Faithfulness lectures at North Central University, April 2008.
- New Directions in Educating Student Affairs Professionals,
for the upcoming ACSD conference at Messiah College.
Current Projects
- Reading poetry. My life has been far too unpoetic, so I am loving the words of Hopkins, Auden, Wilbur, Heaney, Milosz and others. I am open to recommendations.
- Simplifying. I am a consumer, and I consume way too much—too much food, too many natural resources, too much energy, and I produce too much garbage. I have been reading in environmental science and environmental sociology. It is easy enough to read and learn about stewardship, but the challenge is actually changing the patterns of consumption and waste in my life. I hope to develop at least a course and a program to engage Geneva students on these matters.
- I've got a couple of writing projects underway, but frankly they aren't moving along too quickly. One is on leadership, and it contains reflections on my years of teaching in Geneva’s Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership. In it I am attempting to construct a theory or model that is less market driven than so much of the leadership lit, and something that is more foundational than much of the Christian leadership lit. In an article on the “justice movement,” I'm trying to make sense of the rise of interest and involvement in social justice organizations among contemporary college students.
Miscellaneous
- I have been married to Christine for fifteen fabulous years. Christine is a marvelous cook, a wiz at organizing, and she is the most generous and caring person I have ever met. My lovely step-daughters are now grown women—Lauren is working as an accountant with Dicks Sporting Corporation and Katie is working at a drug and alcohol rehab clinic while she is also doing MSW work at Pitt. I love standing knee deep in a stream, somewhere in a forest away from traffic, listening to the rushing water, spotting birds along the shore, and hoping that a trout just might take my fly.
