They love to do their homework

The conservative leadership plans to soon offer homemaking at other seminaries. Here at Southwestern, the classes are proving popular with a broad array of women.

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Donella Cecrle, 36, spent years in the corporate world, traveling the nation to sell computer software -- and far out-earning her husband, Andy. Subservience wasn't in her vocabulary. Neither was homemaking. Most days, dinner was takeout from the Mexican restaurant down the street, or a quick meal at IHOP.

But about six years ago, the couple worked through a low point in their marriage with prayer and Bible study. Slowly, Cecrle said, she began to realize that she needed to change. When Cecrle became pregnant, she left work for good and now stays home with their two preschool-age children.

In what time she can spare, Cecrle works toward a bachelor's degree at the seminary. She started this semester with a homemaking course, which Dorothy Patterson, 63, teaches at her dining room table (artfully decorated with sprigs of autumnal berries and curls of pumpkin-hued ribbon).

Cecrle credits Dorothy Patterson's lectures on God's vision of womanhood with helping her embrace her role as helper -- and restrain her instincts to take charge. "I have to be able to shut my mouth," she said.

Many male graduate students at Southwestern take a class in masculine leadership, where they are admonished to put their wives' needs before their own even as they flex their authority. But there's no broader curriculum on a husband's role, leading Dusty Deevers, 30, to wonder what he and other male students might be missing. Labs on mowing the lawn? Trimming hedges? Balancing a checkbook? "Many, many men would be well-served by something like that," Deevers said.

Andy Cecrle, 42, takes it one step further: He would like to see a homemaking class for men, or at least a survival boot camp. He happens to know his way around the house and is proud that he changes his children's diapers. But he knows many guys don't even have a clue how to start the washer.

"What if my wife is sick and my kids need clean clothes? It may not hurt to have some basic tips," Cecrle said. Then he added cautiously: "A lot of people would take great exception to what I'm saying."

Felts is one of them. The whole point of taking college-level homemaking, she said, is to ensure that her husband won't ever feel that he has to darn a sock or do the laundry. Those are her jobs.

If she doesn't marry, that's fine, too; she'll pursue a master's in education -- and use it to teach homemaking.

"I'm not one of those out to rebel, out-to-be-my-own-woman types," she said.

Home-schooled by her mother, Felts is poised, articulate and unfailingly polite; she calls her elders "ma'am" and expresses surprise with a genteel "goodness!" She commutes to college from her family's Fort Worth home, so she has plenty of opportunity to work on her helper skills. She's sewing a pink-and-brown polka-dot dress for herself. She dusts, mops and vacuums. She often makes dinner for her family: Noodles from scratch, or quiche with a homemade crust.

Does she enjoy these tasks? Except for vacuuming, absolutely, Felts said. And if she didn't?

"It really doesn't matter what I think," Felts said. "It matters what the Bible says."

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stephanie.simon@latimes.com