Bethel Professor Receives Prestigious Fellowship Award from Yale

Kurty Darling ’10 graduated from Bethel with her B.A. in Third World Studies and Cross-Cultural Missions and is an adjunct faculty member with the Department of Biblical and Theological Studies. Darling was one of the select few doctoral students to receive the “Life Worth Living” Fellowship.

By Marcus Dip Silas S’25, student writer

May 05, 2023 | 10 a.m.

Kurty Darling

Kurty Darling, adjunct professor in the Department of Biblical and Theological Studies

Bethel graduate and current adjunct faculty member, Kurty Darling ’10, has been awarded a prestigious Yale Center for Faith and Culture fellowship. The center was launched 15 years ago and the center’s work focuses on the field of practical theology. Darling is the second member of Bethel’s Department of Biblical and Theological Studies to have been awarded this fellowship. The fellowship was designed to help aspiring faculty in higher institutes of learning envision curricula aimed at moral formation and “the good life” through engaging global philosophical, cultural, and religious traditions.

“My work as an adjunct professor at Bethel has always been integral to my doctoral thesis.”

— Kurty Darling, adjunct professor & award recipient

Darling’s work as an adjunct professor at Bethel informs her doctoral thesis. I am driven to understand how Bethel students engage with the question of what it means to live a flourishing life as a follower of Christ,” Darling says.

Erik Leafblad is a assistant professor of missional ministries at Bethel and one of Darling’s doctoral advisors. According to Leafblad, Kurty’s research is vital in engaging the question of flourishing among young evangelicals. “Kurty brings a unique voice to this ongoing conversation, and her inclusion in this fellowship enhances thepartnership that Bethel has with the center,” Leafblad says. “This is significant to the department and to BethelUniversity at large because her research draws the Bethel student experience into an important ecumenical and theologically generative project.”

The fellowship officially begins on May 1 and comprises a series of online summer workshops that concludes with a week long intensive in Iceland. The focus of the workshops and intensive is course and syllabus design, as well as pedagogical development. Darling has high hopes for what this award means for the Bethel community and her future as a Bible educator. “Because the initiative is intentionally collaborative and integrative, I imagine that the network of fellowship winners will greatly impact my own development as a scholar, teacher, and member of the Bethel community, she says.

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