Kyle Keefer, Assistant professor of Religious Studies, Eckerd College, St. Petersburg.
By Times Staff Writer
Published November 23, 2003
How long have you worked at Eckerd?
This is my fifth year. I actually taught high school for three years before coming here. This is my first teaching position at a college or university.
What is your educational background?
I have a bachelor's degree in English and also an M.A. in English, and then I did a master of divinity, which is a standard degree for ministers, from Princeton Theological Seminary. I have a Ph.D from Emory University with a specialization in New Testament studies.
How did you wind up in a classroom and not a pulpit?
I wanted to have a degree where I could at least test the waters, so to speak, and see if maybe I wanted to do church work. But I found that my strengths tended more toward academic stuff than pastoral duties.
What kind of hours do you work?
Professors have a fair amount of autonomy in how they spend their time, but generally I'm here close to 40 hours a week, and then I do a fair amount of studying, research and grading papers at home, in the evening as well.
How many courses are you required to teach?
I do three courses in the spring, three courses in the fall and then one course, a short-term course, either in August or January.
What classes are you teaching right now?
This semester I'm teaching an introduction to the Bible course, (which is) a broad survey of the entire Bible. I'm teaching a course specifically on Jesus, called "Jesus in Ancient and Modern Media," where we look at the Gospel accounts of Jesus and some other early Christian stories about him, and also look at how Jesus is portrayed in modern scholarship, in fiction and in film.
Do you have freedom to design your own courses?
I do. I teach courses that are related to the Bible, but they can go in all sorts of different tangents. For example, next semester I'm teaching a class called "Myths of Creation and Destruction," which is a comparative mythology class looking at the creation story from the Bible, but also looking at creation myths from Australia, the Pacific, Japan, and lots of other cultures.
Do you have any publication requirements?
I do, although those aren't set in stone. The school expects that I'll produce some sort of publishable research, but they don't say you have to do this many per year.
What are you doing when you're not in the classroom?
A lot of reading. As a professor you need to keep aware of the trends going on in your area of knowledge. Some occasional committee work is also part of the professorial duties. Planning out a course, especially if it's a course that's being designed for the first time, takes a lot of time and effort.
What do you like most about your job?
I like the interaction I have with my students. Being able to take the knowledge that I've spent years working at and sharing it with students, but also learning from them.
What is your least favorite thing about the job?
Grading papers I suppose. Not that we don't like reading what our students have to say, but the thought of having to assign a grade to it. And when you get 25 10- to 12-page papers at a time, it's pretty daunting.
Any perks of the job?
I pretty much like almost everything. I think it's both an intellectually and socially stimulating environment. I'm not competing with other people. And it's a fairly relaxed place. Obviously being on a school calendar, we have some big breaks, like summer. So I think that the schedule obviously is a big perk.
How much money do you make?
I'm salaried, but if we teach certain classes the compensation is a little bit higher. I think this year I'm making somewhere between $38,000 and $40,000.
What is your dream job?
I don't really have much desire to be anything else. That may sound hokey, but when I thought about the type of place I wanted to teach, I wanted to work with undergrads, I wanted to be at a place that was small, and I wanted to be at a place where I could teach, more or less, whatever I wanted. Eckerd allows me to do all that.
