Anne Mecko's Letter To The Professor Summary

Chair’s letter supporting Dr. Anne Mocko’s evaluation for tenure and promotion to associate professor (fall 2018)

Dear Division Chair, Dr. Arnold and members of the Promotion, Tenure, and Evaluation Committee,

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to comment on Dr. Anne Mocko’s evaluation for tenure and promotion to associate professor. Since joining Concordia’s faculty six years ago, Dr. Mocko has become an integral member of our department—not only because of her indispensable expertise in Asian religions, which is crucial to our department’s program of study, but also because of her innovative and effective teaching, her enthusiasm for rigorous and meaningful scholarship, her strong rapport with students, her collegiality and ongoing

Mocko brought to the college when she was hired six years ago. Like most graduate students trained in the academic study of religion, she was taught to approach religion as “objectively” as possible—a pedagogical and epistemological pattern that reflects religion scholars’ long-standing struggle for legitimacy in modern, secular, academic environments where spiritual faith was often equated with pre-Enlightenment superstition. Modeling the kind of critical thinking we hope to cultivate in our students, Dr. Mocko began to question some of the assumptions built into her graduate school training as she immersed herself in Concordia’s culture of learning. Without compromising her commitment to intellectual rigor, she developed a more nuanced approach to studying and teaching about religion, one that makes room for students’ searches for meaning and that explores the social and political implications of diverse spiritual teachings and practices. Challenging herself to grow beyond her graduate school training in Asian religions—intellectually, pedagogically, and as an engaged scholar—Dr. Mocko has come to recognize not only that “rigorous thought could and should be blended with more personal questions of meaning” (SE, 2), but also that intellectual inquiry can and should foster students’

Mocko makes important and compelling connections between her own aims and motivations as a scholar/teacher and Concordia’s 5 Goals for Liberal Learning. I would also like to highlight the multiple ways that her work at Concordia supports key values and strategic priorities at the college. In addition to her commitment to teaching that fosters the integration of faith and learning, Dr. Mocko’s expertise lends strong support to the college’s commitment to interfaith understanding. As the college’s primary scholar of Asian religions, Dr. Mocko plays a decisive role in helping students, faculty, administrators, and staff understand and appreciate the complexity, wisdom, diversity, and value of spiritual and philosophical traditions that are very foreign to many of us. Dr. Mocko’s commitment to environmental sustainability comes through in her classes and in her scholarship, and her support for the college’s emphasis on global learning is evident both in her own global orientation as a scholar and in her interest in creating future opportunities for students to travel to Asia. As I will elaborate below, Dr. Mocko has a long-standing record of promoting integrative learning, and more generally, her approach to teaching and learning treats students as whole persons, not just walking brains. In all of these ways, Dr. Mocko’s sympathy with and support for Concordia’s basic character and mission is not only indisputable, but very