As universities face growing pressure to demonstrate the market value of a liberal arts education, Religious Studies and related departments are exploring new pathways to prepare graduates for the job market. This episode of Religion & examines emerging models for career-focused bachelor’s and graduate tracks and partnerships designed to connect students with professional opportunities. While these initiatives aim to respond to increasing demands for career readiness, they also raise important questions as to how departments balance the promise of employability with the value of critical, humanistic inquiry. Join us for a conversation about the opportunities, challenges, and debates surrounding this shift—and what it means for the future of Religious Studies in higher education.

Host: Rachel Wheeler

Rachel Wheeler is Chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Indiana University Indianapolis. She is a leading scholar on missions and Native American Christianity in early America. Her current project is developing an app for faculty that helps to make the invisible work of academic service and domestic labor visible on academic CVs in hopes of creating a more just climate for women faculty and faculty of color. She has published essays in The Washington Post, Women in Higher Education, Religion and Politics, and other venues, in addition to scholarly articles in leading journals.

Panelist: Julie Byrne

Julie Byrne holds the Monsignor Thomas J. Hartman Chair in Catholic Studies and serves as Professor in the Department of Religion at Hofstra University. She is the author of The Other Catholics: Remaking America’s Largest Religion (Columbia, 2016) and O God of Players: The Story of the Immaculata Mighty Macs (Columbia, 2003). In addition to Catholic Studies, she writes and teaches about topics in comparative religions of the Americas, focusing on contemporary communities and connectivity to current events.

Panelist: Amy DeRogatis

Amy DeRogatis is Chair and Professor of Religion and American Culture in the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University. Dr. DeRogatis’ research focuses on the multiple ways that religious groups, people, and communities in North America express religious ideas, commitments, beliefs, and knowledge through embodied practices. For ten years Dr. DeRogatis co-directed with Dr. Isaac Weiner the American Religious Sounds Project, a collaborative digital sonic initiative. She has recently begun a research project on Edith Cold, a twentieth-century American missionary who witnessed the atrocities in Hadjin, Turkey in spring 1920.

Panelist: Russell McCutcheon

Russell T. McCutcheon was, for 18 years, the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, responsible for reviving a unit that was once scheduled for closure. He publishes and teaches broadly in the field, on its history, theories of religion, myth, and ritual, and has produced a number of resources for instructors as well as those leading Departments. He is also the current chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Academic Relations Committee.

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