Doctoral Dissertation Submitted!

You may have noticed a gap in my Katysblog posts in 2024. I was spending my time writing my doctoral dissertation, traveling to Africa, and visiting with my fascinating grandbaby, Alex.

This week, I turned my 123 page dissertation over to my committee for review. Hooray! Since 2021, I have been a Doctor of Ministry student at the Berkeley School of Theology. BST’s DMin degree is based on a project that comes out of the student’s regular work. My project was to rewrite The Transforming Literature of the Bible (TLB) class I present weekly in Santa Clara County jail. The current TLB text is about 300 pages long. The next step toward my degree is for my committee to read the dissertation and give comments. I then get to defend it. All of this should be done before 2025 (God willing and the creek don’t rise).

Here is my DMin dissertation abstract,

The Transforming Literature of the Bible scripture study and theological reflection program (TLB) provides faith-based study materials tailored to county jail inmate interests and challenges in a welcoming setting with the intention of reducing some of their disadvantages and support them in their goal to stay out of jail in the future. This project revised the 2018 TLB with a focus on supporting three groups of disadvantaged and often isolated inmates. The groups are those who are primarily-Spanish language speakers (mostly Latinx inmates who make up the majority of inmates in Santa Clara County, California), those who have reading difficulties, and those with mental health challenges. The high-level results of this project are, the TLB page count was cut in half, an image was added to each session (or chapter) with a process for theological reflection using that image as a focus, and a Spanish language translation of the TLB was developed. Mental health topics are presented in several TLB sessions in a way intended to encourage discussion without embarrassment. In response to a series of surveys of inmates and seminar observers in 2023–2024, 99% rated TLB as Excellent and overall satisfaction and 98% of inmates said that they would recommend the class. 92% of inmates said that it was important that TLB be presented in both English and Spanish and 98% said that the machine translations of TLB were of high quality and readability. This dissertation presents information on the TLB project and its methodology, background on incarceration, an analysis of the theological and biblical context for the TLB and this project, and detailed research results.

Wish me luck!

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