by Cathryn Lien, Features Editor
Dr. Sydney Penner may be the poster-child for a liberal arts lifestyle. His titles include philosophy professor, farmer and birdwatcher. The dual career he’s made in agriculture and academia reflects the mantra he’s founded his life upon: “Be weird.”
“Anyone who has met me knows I like weird people,” Penner said. “I’m drawn to people with quirky hobbies, and I appreciate diversity and variety.”
As he reflects on the unconventional path his life has taken, Penner is certain that standing out from the crowd results in a more fulfilling life.
Penner was born in Belize to Canadian parents and raised in a Mennonite community. “Mennonites come in all sorts of avors, but generally all hold a tradition of nonresistance,” he said. “Many outside our community took advantage of this stance. Because our community was wealthy, we were frequently attacked.”
Penner’s family fled from the danger to a farm in Nova Scotia, Canada, where their faith community prohibited higher education. Children were expected to drop out of school at grade seven or eight, as higher education is traditionally viewed as “corrupting,” though fewer Mennonites maintain this belief today. From age twelve to twenty-one, Penner worked on the family farm.
“I filled the gap in my formal education with reading,” he said, and his love of learning eventually usurped his love of nature.
Being the first in his community to pursue a degree, Penner said he had no clue how the college education system operated. He quickly realized that enrolling at a university without a high school diploma would be di cult. A small religious college in Ohio accepted him on academic probation.
He proved himself by completing his associate degree with an A average. Still, this wasn’t enough for American four-year institutions.
“I tried transferring to Asbury University, but I was told I could not be accepted without a GED [diploma] despite my academic standing,” Penner said. “As a hot-headed male, I resented the school. Funny how life stories take their twists and turns.”
He studied history and philosophy at Acadia University in Nova Scotia on scholarship. ough this was his best option nancially, he had a hard time connecting with his classmates.
“I was irritated with the anti- intellectual culture. I thought people who went to college loved reading, but most people who go to college love partying.”
Penner decided to transfer once more. He researched Ivy League schools by reading the student newspapers. “I wanted to gauge which student body was most intellectually active, and I figured the campus papers would reflect that,” he said. After deciding that Yale’s newspaper was the best, he transferred there.
During those undergrad years at Acadia and Yale, Penner admits to being “the obnoxious, talkative kid in class. at student.” When he realized that a few of his comments sounded ignorant, he resolved to sit in silence.
“I grossly overcorrected,” Penner said. “To be a good student, you need to nd a balance between speaking up and listening. It’s hard to become mentally invested in a topic without actively participating in discussion. It was unfair of me to dominate the conversation with extended arguments, but it was equally unfair of me to remain silent.”
Perfecting his ability to dialogue was important for Penner’s career in philosophy. He enjoys respectful discourse and said that his best teaching experiences have been when students challenge him. He describes his temperament as skeptical, but his faith is steadfast. In fact, his tendency to question everything served to strengthen his belief in Christianity.
“One of the important things philosophy taught me is that even perfectly ordinary beliefs are questionable,” Penner said. “Any belief can be challenged. Atheists will often suggest that Christian arguments are not persuasive because they do not lead them into theism, and therefore there is no rational foundation for Christian faith. The mistake I see there is that the bar is being set too high. Few secular arguments can meet the bar we set for theistic arguments. You can challenge the belief of material objects and most people will not be able to o er a decisive argument, yet it is rational to believe in the existence of material objects.”
According to Penner, asking questions is fundamental to our faith and education, which is why he encourages free discussion in his classes. “We are all going to say something stupid anyway, and it’s not the end of the world,” he said.
“A lot of what you discuss in college is di cult and you won’t understand it right away. It’s ok to ask a question that might sound ridiculous. Sometimes students are worried how professors perceive students based on class discussion, but I don’t know any professor who grades on how ‘smart’ a student sounds. The important thing is that students speak up.”
While at Yale, he met his wife Erin during an astronomy class…or astrophysics, he can’t remember. “The important thing was that we both decided we wanted to hang out outside of study group,” Penner said. By grit and chance, they were able to complete their doctoral studies side by side. e Penners married a few weeks before they started graduate school at Cornell— he in Philosophy and she in English—and both received research fellowships at the University of Oxford, England. By the time they began searching for permanent teaching positions, the job market was still suffering from the recession.
“We decided that whoever got the job offer, the spouse would follow,” Penner said. His wife secured a full-time faculty position in Asbury’s English department, so he followed her to Wilmore, Kentucky.
As if raising two children, researching and teaching part time did not keep him busy enough, Penner farms on rented land down Clear Creak Road. He sells his produce to local restaurants and businesses in the Lexington area. “I’ll always be interested in nature. If you find me in November, I’m more than happy to sit inside all day reading books. Come spring, I get cabin fever, and everything in me tells me to get outside and plant something.”
Teaching philosophy and being a farmer is already an odd combination, but Penner is no ordinary farmer. He’s known at the farmer’s market for bringing in weird vegetables, like red turnips, white bell peppers and yellow beets. He grows seed for harvest, a rare practice. He also enjoys birdwatching as a hobby (he’s seen 638 species in his lifetime) and studies trees for fun.
Penner appreciates people who explore areas outside their career and would like to see Asbury students engage in more hobbies. is seems like it would divert students from their career goals, but it can lead to success. He’s convinced he got his research fellowship at Oxford because of his interest in trees.
“I was told my interviewer was notorious for asking di cult questions,” he said. “The first question she asked me was if I had any questions about the school, and I casually mentioned that I noticed a southern magnolia tree in the front courtyard. I didn’t know that species could survive England’s climate. It turns out she was an avid gardener and loved this particular tree. is conversation had nothing to do with my academic qualifications, but we [bonded over our shared interest], and I got the job.”
Penner has noticed that evangelical culture emphasizes tting in, but he wants students to know that you can still stand out while being part of a community. “At a certain age, it seems important to stay on a straight career path,” he said. “It takes a lot of self-assurance to do things your classmates aren’t. The best way to achieve success is not to shoot at something directly. At some point, the things that make us weird turn out to be useful.”
Photo by Brody McKinnon