John J. Fry

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT JOHN J. FRY

I grew up on a farm in western Pennsylvania. I now live half a block from the city of Chicago. For the last twenty-plus years I have taught at Trinity Christian College. I have served as a history professor, Chair of the History Department, Academic Dean, Director of Foundations, Dean of Faculty, and now Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs. I regularly teach courses on American History, historical methods, thinking and writing, and vocation. I am most proud of my successful leadership of Trinity’s effort to revise our Foundations curriculum between 2017 and 2022. Together, faculty members approved new learning outcomes, designed a new course structure, created the new courses, and developed new ways to assess achievement of the learning outcomes.I love reading documents from the past and thinking about what they tell us about the people who lived before us. I love getting young people to read materials from the past and seeing what it does to their horizons. And I love providing resources and support to higher education faculty members. I want them to be able to continue to study God’s creation and to bring their students into conversation with the areas of creation that they teach.I also believe that to help students write and speak, I need to be doing research, writing and speaking. In my own research and writing, I have been drawn to people like me who lived in the country. My second book, Almost Pioneers: One Couple’s Homesteading Adventure in the West (TwoDot, 2013) was named Best Nonfiction Book on Wyoming History Published in 2013 by the Wyoming State Historical Society. My third and most recent book, A Prairie Faith: The Religious Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Eerdmans, 2024) was positively reviewed by Christianity Today and received a Forward INDIES Award in 2024.I welcome connections with students, historians, higher education leaders, and people who live in the country.