MTP 48: Janet Reed, Part 1 on Finding Christian Faculty & Staff on Your Campus 🔭

In this episode of Meet The Prof, Shane interviews Dr. Janet Reed, an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Kent State University. Janet shares how she integrates her faith into her work as a nursing professor, from helping create a Christian faculty and staff group on campus to naturally engaging students in spiritual conversations. She also discusses how being attentive to opportunities can open doors to faith discussions, how she overcame struggles with perfectionism, and how technology like virtual reality is shaping nursing education.

Read more about Janet Reed online: Meet The Prof Profile

Email: jreed56@kent.edu

Main Takeaways

• Living Out Your Faith Matters – Janet emphasizes that students often recognize Christian faculty not just by what they say but by how they love and serve.
• Spiritual Conversations Can Happen Naturally – Asking students thoughtful questions and being available in everyday situations can lead to meaningful discussions.
• Faculty Groups Start Small but Can Grow – Her Christian faculty group started with just a couple of professors and has now grown to over 90 members.
• Being Attentive and Willing to Slow Down Opens Opportunities – Taking a moment to listen and engage can make all the difference in ministering to students and colleagues.
• Faith and Identity Over Perfectionism – Janet shares how she learned to find her identity in Christ rather than academic achievement.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome everybody to Meet the Prof. Hey, my name is Shane Hartley. And if this is your first time joining us, we are so glad you're here. Thanks for tuning in. What we do is we take questions from college students and we ask them to Christian professors. And our hope is to encourage Christ-centered conversations on the college campus. And the interview you're going to hear today is with Dr. Janet Reed at Kent State University. She's an Assistant Professor of Nursing. And one of the things I love about these Nursing professors is so many of them are doing research. They're doing teaching with VR, virtual reality. So I think you'll enjoy hearing some of how she's using technology in her teaching and in her research. Before we jump in, one is please remember to click on subscribe, follow, like, whatever you can on your app. And if you are a Christian professor, I want to invite you to check out our website, meettheprof.com and consider putting a profile on there. It doesn't take long and you can share some of how you've seen God work in your life to bring rescue to you and bring you to Christ even. So we'd love to give that to you as a platform. It's free and a lot of students and others, even parents can go on there. Looking for Christian professors, you can search by campus, by state, and it can be really helpful. We have over 500 professors on there now. So, well, without any further ado, let's jump in. Here's my interview with Dr. Janet Reed. Janet, this is really exciting to get to interview you. And I'd have to tell you, Dorenda and I just love you already because you're a nursing professor. And Dorenda worked as a nurse before going into ministry. So we love nurses and we love nursing professors. we both are very curious about something that you put in meettheprof.com where you said your favorite city amongst many was Hilton Head, South Carolina. That's a place near to our hearts as well. tell us what do you love about Hilton Head? Well, growing up, that's one of the few places my parents took me on vacation. So I went as a kid with my brothers and my parents. So I have some special memories there. And then I've also gone with my family to Hilton had a couple of times. So like with our kids, we've gone and we always like to stay in the different plantations. So like we'll explore the different areas of the island. And we love the, we love biking on the beach, which is like one of the... really cool things about Hilton Head, right? Because the sand is so hard and you can bike the beach. So we always run bikes when we're there, bike the island and we go to Colligny Plaza and we go to the Sea Pines Nature Reserve and we try to catch snakes and lizards. So those are some of the things we love. We haven't been in a while, so now you're making me want to go back to Hilton Head. yes. Well, very similar. My family went as kids to Hilton Head and now Dorenda and I, we try to go every anniversary we have. So it's in May, we'll go for our anniversary. fun. Yeah. Well, Janet, before we get into more personal things or serious things, I'd like to start with this light question of what is the most embarrassing moment you've ever had as a professor? well, I can think of a recent embarrassing moment. It may not be my most embarrassing moment, which I would probably not want to share because you can imagine in nursing that we see all kinds of very embarrassing things in the clinical settings. but recently, this was pretty embarrassing for me, but it was good. I had a research assistant, my undergraduate research assistant, Delaney, was helping me with something. And I had been struggling all morning. Like I had been racking my brain with this technical problem. And I have a PhD in educational technology. So I pride myself in like being able to figure out tech. So like I could not figure out how to transform this text data into numbers within Google Sheets. I like called my friend and I was like, can you help me? And he set up like a playground for me and taught me how to do this like V lookup thing. And I was I spent like hours and I was getting really frustrated because I couldn't do it. So I finally just like gave up. was like, I can't look at this anymore. I went to do the research with Delaney, my research assistant, and I was telling her how frustrated I was all morning. And she like within five seconds comes up with a simple solution that I hadn't thought of. like immediately I was able to fix the problem. And it was embarrassing because I'm like, I wasted so much time on this. And then I involved my friend, my computer friend, and I'm like, that was I shouldn't have involved him. That was a waste of his time. I should have known this, but it was embarrassing. But I'm also like, wow, like we're always learning from our students, our students that we're mentoring. I'm learning from them. They teach me so much. So it was humbling. was a good reminder to like, you know, you don't have to do everything yourself. Check with other people. And sometimes they have the idea that you are missing. yeah. Do you think it encouraged your student to see you struggle with that? I'm sure, I'm sure it did. And she felt really, you know, she was really useful. And I think I gave her big hug and was like, thank you so much. So yeah. Well, I really love how transparent you were in your profile on meettheprof.com. And it was great. This is my first time meeting you, but like I told you before we hit record, I feel like I'm starting to get to know you already from things you shared online. so I would especially love to hear about as you came to Christ, you shared that when you're younger, you struggle with perfectionism, performance. And I'd love to hear how you would say God rescued you from that and continues to rescue you from that. Yeah, so true. And he does continue because it's still something I struggle with. People who know me know that. But yeah, just growing up, I really took my identity in what I accomplished and what I could do. And that's how I found my sense of self, probably as a teenager, just like in the more I could do, the better I could perform, the more good grades I could get, that became who I was. I just eventually started struggling realizing that it wasn't filling the hole in my heart. I wasn't able to fill my spiritual need with those things, no matter how hard I tried. part of my journey was I went to a wonderful camp in Pennsylvania called Summer's Best Two Weeks, and I had Christian mentors there who just... I'm like, have something that they have this piece that I don't have that I need. So that was part of my journey and a couple other mentors in my life as like, you know, probably like a 16, 17 year old that really kind of helped me realize like that I needed to give, let go of that part of my identity, give it to God and find my identity in him. And how do you find that coming up now in your work as a professor? Yeah, so I still sometimes struggle with this as a professor because so much of being a professor that does research is about achievement and publications and grants and presentations and you can always do more and it's kind of never ending. So I have to still continually remember who I am, that my identity is not in these things and if I didn't do any of these things that would be okay because I'm a child of God and my identity is in him. So I constantly have to keep reminding myself of what's important in my life, what's most important, what priorities are really who I am so that I take pride in the right things and not the wrong things. That's helpful. Well, were there any other things that were really instrumental for you in your early Christian journey? You mentioned the mentoring and the camp and all. Were there any major turning points for you or growth moments? yeah, I, I think getting away from home, the times when I got away from home was where I grew the most as a young person and trying to figure out who am I, what makes me significant, you know, what am going to do with my life? I went on a mission trip when I was 16 to Jamaica and that was life transformational for me. then, just getting away when I went to college. went away, I went out of state when I first went to college and that was like a real time of growth for me. I I grew up in a Christian home, so my parents, wonderful people, but like it was when I stepped away that I really kind of had to make things my own and really rely on God in those moments. You're out of your comfort zone. That makes sense. Yeah. I think it still is true today. Like when I'm out of my comfort zone the most is when I grow the most. Yeah. And I mean, we, I do a lot of nursing simulations. So it's the same principle there. Like we push students out of their comfort zone with, you know, in the simulated environment and that's where they grow, the proximal zone of learning. And do you all use the Oculus at all? We had a nursing professor we interviewed early on, Elise Thompson, who talked about using the VR. Yeah, we I'm actually doing a VR research study right now. I'm using the meta quest. And we are just starting to get into that at Kent State. So we don't use it on a large scale, but I've been doing with individual students. And it's really, it's really good. They really like the individualized decision making feedback they get with the virtual reality. It's very fun. Yeah. I'd love to connect those more now, too. We were talking about your journey and now with the students. So, What are some creative ways you found to let students know that you are a follower of Christ? For me, it's really important, not just to let them know I'm a Christian, but through my actions, right? Like I think of the song, they will know we are Christians by our love. So I try to be the kind of person that emulates what a Christian should look like by loving people, especially people who Christians don't always love well. That's my goal at the university. And I think a lot of students, they are surprised by encountering a Christian faculty who is loving and accepting and not judgmental like they thought. So that's my goal. have a special heart for students who are not Christians. have extra copies. in my room of some different Christian books that I will give to students who I meet with. I have Christian art. I have like 1 Corinthians 13 art in my office that might let someone know that I'm a Christian. I also help advertise sometimes Christian clubs on campus outside my office or make announcements about those. So yeah, that's kind of how I've done it. the most important thing to me is just to live. you know, to live it out as a Christian, not just to tell it, but to be that kind of supportive person, loving person. Yeah, when is the time that you had an opportunity to love a student when maybe it would have been not natural to love? Hmm, well, that's a good question. And I'm thinking of like, sometimes it's the students who come to you that they are, they are angry about maybe a test in exam grade, or they're angry about a paper that you graded, and they come to your office emotional. And that's when I try to love, to love them the most and to listen to them and to understand them and to show concern. and just to be a supportive faculty for them when it's sometimes hard to love when that's coming at you as a faculty, but. You're not alone with that. I've heard stories similar. yeah. Well, it seems like some of the stories that Christian faculty have shared who've been most encouraging to other Christian faculty have been if God gave an opportunity for you to take some kind of a bold step of faith. And maybe it relates with what you were saying about when you've been away from home or out of your comfort zone, that's when you'll see God come through particularly. Was there ever a time that God opened an opportunity for you, specifically on campus in some way, to take a bold step of faith? Yeah, I think of a couple different things. We started a faculty staff group a couple years ago, so that was a bold step of faith that I had the blessing of being involved with the initial leadership who formed that group. And that's been a blessing. And then another thing I think of is just having just conversations with people around you, whether it's a colleague or a student, but being open to having spiritual conversations is sometimes feels like a taking a bold step of faith when that happens. So I was doing some research at a nursing home last year and we, I had student research assistants who did the surveys with the older adult participants. And one of the questions that they had to answer was on the hope, hearth index. And we were measuring levels of hope. And the question said, I have a faith that gives me comfort. And then they had to rate it on a Likert scale. So the students were like, seeing all these older adults rate their levels of faith. And so it became very natural to have conversations with my student research assistants about faith. then because they brought it up, they'd be like, did you see that patient that had such horrible chronic diseases and such a poor quality of life? And look how much faith they had. It was beautiful. Some of the older adults that we saw on this. And so it opened conversations with my research assistants about this. And at the time, I didn't know. my research assistants very well. So it felt kind of bold to talk about this with them, but I think it was, it was really good and helpful for them. And now one of them who participated in this with me, now she's coming to Nurses Christian fellowship group. And so she's kind of growing in her faith. So it's been encouraging to see that, but you know, sharing our faith doesn't have to be as hard as we make it. It's just can be naturally stepping into the things in your day that come about and then just being open to God using you and whatever, conversations and people that. about your day. So being very natural, but being available for it. Do you find that it takes being attentive? You really having to be attentive for opportunities? It's very true. Yeah. And having to kind of like, be willing to be interrupted and slow down and not like to when you see those opportunities, like to be willing to stop what you're doing and like hone in on them, which is sometimes hard for me because I'm very like task driven. I want to get it done, you know, but it's like I gotta be open to slow down. Think of that book, the Ruth. Have you read the book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry? was very good, you know? Like Jesus was never rushed. Yeah, me too, yeah. Well, so one of the things you said before this was about you starting this Christian faculty and staff group just a few years ago. I think there are a lot of Christian faculty who share that they feel little isolated at times as a believer on their campus. So what's been your experience and maybe something you would encourage them with in finding other Christian faculty and maybe anything you've learned as you all started your Yeah, well, you know, it only takes you finding one other person. And that's kind how our group started was one or two people that noticed on each other's emails that they were using the word blessing or, you know, and they were like, are they a Christian? know, they connected, they're both Christians. They decided to start meeting together and they started inviting other people. So our group went from like two or three people initially. And now we have like over 90 people. across the campus. Yeah. So they don't always come every week, but 90 people on the listserv and yeah. So, and then the word just keeps spreading that, that this group exists by word of mouth, which is pretty awesome. So start, you can start small. That's, and it's okay. We will pause right there and stay tuned next week for part two of my interview with Janet Reed. I think you're really going to enjoy some of the things she shares about her work on campus and how her faith intersects that. please remember to like or subscribe wherever you're listening and watching this. you can find out more about Janet online at meettheprof.com and search her by name. And I'll put a link here in the description wherever you're listening or watching the podcast. And if you are a Christian professor, please consider going on to meettheprof.com and creating a profile to let others know some about God's work in your life. It doesn't take long to do and we have a lot of help we can give you in the process. if you're interested in supporting this ministry financially, thank you so much. And you can do that by giving online at give.cru.org, that's CRU.org, forward slash 0 42 43 44. And we really hope that until next time, this encourages you to have a Christ-centered conversation on your college campus.