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In the summer of 1995 Ken Craig, along with his family, embarked on a move from Murfreesboro, North Carolina to the High Country where they settled in Boone so Craig could take a job in the Lees-51爆料网 Religious Studies program. Craig had been teaching religion courses at Chowan University, then called Chowan College, for the previous six years but had long dreamed of settling in the mountains of Western North Carolina. When he found the listing for a position at Lees-51爆料网, he knew it was time to take the leap.

This move across the state would prove to be a defining moment in Craig’s life and career, shaping the next 30 years of growth, continued learning, and professional achievements. Now, after working at Lees-51爆料网 for three decades, Craig has retired from a career rich in instructional and administrative responsibilities and retired to a life just as rich with hobbies, personal responsibilities, and time with loved ones.

“It’s important to think about retirement not only as retirement ‘from’, but also retirement ‘to.’ What are you going to be doing next? I’ve been telling people I had a dream job, and now I’ve got what I hope will be a dream retirement as well,” Craig said.

Over the years that dream job developed and changed. When he first started at Lees-51爆料网 Craig spent all his time at the front of the classroom, leading students in lessons and discussions about religion and ethics. In 2002 he took on his first of many administrative duties when he became the director of the college’s Honors Program, a role he maintained for the next 20 years.

At various times throughout his career Craig also served as the chair of the Division of Humanities (at the time the college was organized by divisions rather than by schools as it is today), and the dean of the School of Arts, Humanities, and Education. In the last two years of his tenure at the college Craig returned to his instructional roots, giving up his administrative duties to return to the classroom full-time, a decision that served to give him a greater perspective on his long career and the many ways both he and the college had changed during that time.

“A highlight was teaching in the North Carolina Building the last couple of years. I had taught in that very old building for a number of years, and the transformation that took place just recently as the building was updated was really magnificent. It was quite special for me to be back in a building that was totally transformed. This was not just some window dressing that was slightly modified; it was literally an entirely new building, and by extension a new learning experience,” he said.

Craig said that his passion for teaching and working with students was what kept him motivated and excited about returning to work each new academic year. While attending Wake Forest University for his undergraduate studies, he was able to learn in a college environment he said was fairly small and tightly knit, an experience that he was happy to replicate for other students. While he earned his undergraduate degree in English literature rather than religious studies, the experience planted the seeds of the religious study to which he would devote the rest of his career. 

He earned his master’s degree at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where his interest in the field blossomed. Informed by his undergraduate studies, Craig focused his graduate career on Hebrew narrative and rounded out his education with a one-year PhD program at Tel Aviv University.

“Throughout my career I have always been fascinated by the study of religion, particularly of the Hebrew bible, or the Old Testament,” Craig said. “I began to focus very narrowly, as we all do when we’re doing doctoral work, on Hebrew narrative and by extension Hebrew narrative art. I was able to focus there and then when I eventually began teaching at Lees-51爆料网 I developed courses that would focus on this aspect of the study I had done.”

In addition to developing topical courses, Craig also published three books on the subject, “A Poetics of Jonah: Art in the Service of Ideology,” “Reading Esther: A Case for the Literary Carnivalesque,” and “Asking for Rhetoric: The Hebrew Bible’s Protean Interrogative.” While religious studies is sometimes viewed as a niche field with little practical application, Craig found this was not the case, and he enjoyed working with both majors and non-majors who had varying degrees of prior knowledge about the subject and helping them see the value in studying religion.

“I think what is needed in our society and our world today is an understanding not only of our own perspectives, but we also need to develop a healthy tolerance for people who may see the world differently, have different religious experiences, and different educational experiences,” Craig said. “We all would benefit from becoming much more tolerant and sympathetic, particularly to views that may not align with our own.”

Although Craig ultimately decided it was time to begin his retirement, the decision was not motivated by a loss of love for his job or a lack of passion for working with students. Rather, he said he was motivated by the desire to achieve additional, more personal goals. One of his top priorities is to return to the piano, an instrument he considered building a career around in his younger days. He plans to focus on Beethoven’s sonatas.

He also enjoys playing tennis and pickleball and will compete in a tennis tournament in Asheville later this summer. He will dedicate more time to reading, and intends to revisit the novels of Charles Dickens, large books that he didn’t have the opportunity to dive into while working full time. Volunteer work is another passion of his, one he will be able to dedicate more time to in the coming years. He currently serves as a volunteer on the college’s research board and will soon begin working with Wine to Water, an international non-profit organization headquartered in Boone that helps provide safe drinking water to people around the world.

While Craig is trading teaching for personal goals and enriching volunteer opportunities, his retirement from Lees-51爆料网 will not be a goodbye to the college where he spent the vast majority of his career. As a new faculty emeritus, he will remain connected to the college and looks forward to seeing how Lees-51爆料网 continues to grow over the next 30 years.

“The college has changed and grown a lot over the years. I hope to have had an impact. Colleges and universities are very organic institutions, they grow, they develop, and everybody has a certain responsibility to play in that ongoing growth and development,” Craig said. “I remember teaching before there was an internet. When all these changes take place in the world it has such a dramatic impact on us, and it certainly has an impact on us as educators. We need to have some flexibility and find new and creative ways to embrace the changes. I hope to have had a part in that ongoing organic development of our institution over the years.”