23. A good reputation is much to be desired.

1. We became Associate Members of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) in June 2012, just as we were graduating our first batch of MDIV students. We immediately went to work on the next step--full accreditation. We would have had five years to start the process but we had been waiting to go through each next step as quickly as possible.

The first step was an "Internal Readiness Study," in which we were to go through the basic categories of the ATS standards and indicate our readiness to be evaluated for accreditation. I put together a relatively brief 16 page study by November 1. It was relatively short for such things, but covered all the bases and my impression was that the brevity was appreciated. Tom Tanner from ATS was then on our campus two weeks later (Nov. 14-15) and recommended us for candidacy status.

2. We then had two years to do a fuller Self-Study, basically a majorly elongated version of the readiness report. The document Dr. Tanner left us expected to see the study by December 1, 2014.

Not wanting to dally, we submitted the Self-Study in December of 2013. The goal was to have a site visit in good time for the Board of Accreditation to vote on us in June. The main part of the study was 85 pages with 97 pages of appendices. It covered our story, our infrastructure, our degrees, our venues.

Most of the time, this sort of work should be done by faculty. There would ideally be a single voice editing the piece, but nothing would prevent the first draft of various sections being distributed. Since we are so young and I had the longest view of things, it seemed appropriate for me to put it together. I do like to write, if you haven't noticed.

But the faculty gave feedback and editorial suggestions on the pieces as they came together. The broader infrastructure of the university gave the needed data for their pieces of the puzzle. Several of the faculty (Safiyah, Colleen, Kwasi, principally) helped with some last minute assessment data crunching.

Few will be surprised that the assessment piece was the piece I most procrastinated. Here the Chalk & Wire training Lenny and I had done in January 2011 had provided an excellent framework for how to set it up.

In what will not be surprising to anyone who knows me and most of academia, there was about four years' worth of assessment work that had accumulated. We had been saying forever that we were going to set up Chalk & Wire, and then the university decided in the Spring of 2013 to switch to a different learning platform that would have its own assessment system, thus postponing an automated assessment two more years.

As the university was slowly phasing out Blackboard, our own LMS (Learning Management System), I suddenly found that data from the past, which I had assumed would always be there to cull from, was slowly disappearing into a data abyss. We were nevertheless able to recover enough data to give across the board results which indicated that, yes, our courses were pretty much achieving the stated outcomes of our degree programs.

(Since I have no shame, I'll admit to using such tactics as contacting some students from the first couple cohorts to recover artifacts of certain assignments, as well as some professors. I even pulled some documents off the temporary internet files part of my own hard drive.)

3. The site visit went well. The team was especially impressed with the fact that whether they spoke to students, faculty, board members, broader university personnel, or administration, everyone had the same vision, the same enthusiasm, the same optimism. They did give some good long term advice.

They were concerned that our infrastructure grow to meet our volume. We needed to shift from start up mode to long term sustainability. They were concerned that our faculty were overloaded, that we needed to continue to add faculty (they'll check up on this in October 2016). And of course they would like to see in February 2017 that we have not only implemented the Learning Outcomes Management (LOM) system we said we were going to, but that we have gathered data and revised curriculum accordingly.

But they recommended seven years of accreditation (the maximum). They approved our three degrees (MA in Ministry, MDIV, and MPTh). They approved Indy North as a complete degree site. They approved 12Stone® and Instituto Biblico Wesleyano in Bogota as extension sites.

We were fully accredited in June in time to feel really good about ourselves at the 2014 biennial meeting in Pittsburg.

4. I don't think I have mentioned that our goal from the very beginning was to have 50% of our courses taught by full-time faculty and no more than 50% of our courses taught by adjuncts. Depending on where you are coming from, this may either seem like way too few full-time or too big a goal. We have never hit this ideal yet. In the 2013 year, 38% of our courses were taught by full-time faculty. Since then we have added two full-time faculty and one more is in the chute.

Suffice it to say, the contemporary college or seminary will surely have to rely heavily on adjuncts to survive financially in this day and age. There are ethical concerns here too, as adjuncts are people who need to make a living wage, have health care, and so forth. I don't know the answer, but math is math too. One key feature of a dying seminary is an outrageously low student to faculty ratio.

There is more than one way to calculate this ratio. For example, by one reckoning, you might include faculty teaching overloads, along with faculty who teach for us who are full-time somewhere else in the university. There is about a 5% difference between the ratio figured on the basis of faculty within load and the ratio figured on any course taught by a full-time faculty.

The question of overload is disputed. I believe that overload should ideally be decided by individual faculty capacity rather than blanket policy. It may be surprising for the public to know that many faculty skirt along financially, and overload and adjuncting elsewhere has become a key element in the lives of many faculty.

The question is one of capacity, I believe. There are faculty who teach crazy overload and consistently get crazy positive evaluations. If they don't teach overload for us, they will just adjunct somewhere else. And full-time faculty will generally have better evaluations than adjuncts.

In the end, and I got this from John Drury, policies often are introduced by a certain administrative personality that implicitly doesn't trust people to make sound decisions. Policies are often substitutes for competent leadership ("Policies replace people"). If your leaders can competently decide who is capable of doing a good job on overload, then you don't need to have a rigid or absolute policy.

I am always amazed at administrators who can't understand why they are in financial dookie after pushing small class sizes and limited faculty overloads.

Previously on Seminary take-aways:

Pre-Seminary
1. There are key moments of opportunity.
2. You need the right people.
3. Good leaders collaborate and navigate.

Year 1: Launch Year
4. Innovation requires some trial and error. (1)
5. Innovation requires some trial and error. (2)
6. Innovation requires some trial and error. (3)
7. New leaders bring new strengths. (1)

Year 2: Growing Pains
8. Administration never ends.
9. New leaders bring new strengths. (2)
10. New leaders bring new strengths. (3)

Year 3: The Year of Maturity
11. Complexity works against sustainability.
12. There are advantages to being embedded in a broader university. (1)
13. There are advantages to being embedded in a broader university. (2)
14. Our guinea pigs survived.

Year 4: The Year of the Faculty
15. Faculty share governance with administration. (1)
16. Faculty share governance with administration. (2)
17. Faculty share governance with administration. (3)
18. Faculty share governance with administration. (4)
19. Growth means addition. (1)
20. Growth means addition. (2)
21. Growth means addition. (3)

Year 5: The Year of Accreditation
22. Don't underestimate the power of a symbol.

Wesley Seminary - ATS Accredited!

Although we have known unofficially for about a month now, we received the official letter in the mail yesterday announcing that Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University is now fully and officially accredited by the Association of Theological Schools! How incredible it is to think that it was only five years ago next month that our first MDIV cohort arrived on campus for its first class!

We are incredibly grateful to all those who have had a hand in making this possible, from former President Smith and the countless minds who played a role in the design of the seminary to Wayne Schmidt and all the faculty who daily give their best to its future. But most of all, we have to thank the students!  They are the seminary.

I figure some 600 students, maybe more, have come through Wesley's halls, electronic and otherwise, these last five years. We're expecting our August enrollment snapshot to be somewhere around 450, surely making us the fastest growing seminary in the world right now! Hard to believe! The average seminary size is about 155.

There's no guarantee of the future. And while we are ever thankful to God, there is no sure correlation between spiritual worthiness and growth. So if you were to ask me, practically, the causes of this growth, here's my analysis:

1. An enthusiastic launching pad
Let's face it, if Indiana Wesleyan University and The Wesleyan Church had not put their full and enthusiastic weight behind the start of the seminary, including some significant financial resources, Wesley wouldn't have happened. While being embedded in a broader institution is not without its own challenges, we simply would not exist without those resources.

What genius minds had a role to play in the start of Wesley, including the likes of Keith Drury, Russ Gunsalus, Ed Hoover... so many sharp cookies!  Enthusiasm about a place is not to be underrated. It creates and maintains momentum. I believe that enthusiasm has been a key element in the growth of Wesley.

2. Accessible, affordable, practical
Former President Smith used to summarize Wesley with these three words, and there's no question in my mind that these are also essential components of Wesley's growth. The financial incentives that were put in place almost make it insane for a Wesleyan pastor to go to any other seminary unless they're just perverse. :-)

The demand for online education at a distance is so overwhelming it boggles my mind. If we had to rely on onsite cohorts, we would close our doors tomorrow. The initial floodgates of our enrollment have primarily been individuals who would not normally have gone to seminary in the traditional days of moving somewhere.

Our curriculum is overwhelmingly practical. How it warms the heart to hear students say, "I saw changes in my congregation before the eight week class was even over"! And it is "faith-friendly." Let's face it, a lot of Bible classes at traditional seminaries are professors doing therapy over their ex-fundamentalism. It's like the main goal is to show you how stupid you are about the Bible. None of that at Wesley.

3. A "yes," "can do" attitude
Wesley was started with a "can do" attitude that has always been biased toward saying, "Yes." It's not that there aren't standards. It's just that, if it is reasonable to get to point B but the path from A to B is not straightforward, we will do everything we can to get you to point B anyway. Sometimes there isn't a way, but we spend a good deal of our energy trying to get individual students where they have every reason to go.

This is a problem-solving, possibility-seeing spirit that is student-oriented. It majors on the major and is more focused on getting to the destination than on a prescribed path to get there. Function must always trump form.

4. A quality, sacrificial, gap-filling faculty
We have a tireless faculty. I vividly remember a meeting just after John Drury and Lenny Luchetti were hired where I physically sighed with relief to realize that they were revving their engines to start filling in the gaps and to "go on unto perfection" (in the words of Heb. 6:1 in the KJV). Each faculty member brings their own superpowers:

• Bob Whitesel - a true genius who as I write has a group of students in England on a Wesley's Leadership tour. They're reading Wesley and about Wesley in the most significant places of Wesley's ministry. I'm not even 50 and I'm wondering where he got the energy to do everything he does. He's become a Wesley scholar in his own right, just getting ready for these trips.
• Charles Arn - This guy has the gift of online teaching. What a great way to begin the program for students. He is full of a can-do spirit, meets students when he's just passing through town, is always coming up with some resource he found that is relevant to whomever. A true servant's heart who is always volunteering to serve, even though he lives in California.
• John Drury - Dr. Drury is a genius beyond question. He's the kind of mind that could be locked up at Harvard or Oxford writing the next step in theology. But get this, he's a tremendous teacher as well, who loves to meet with students one-on-one, not just for the mind but for the spirit as well.
• Lenny Luchetti - Dr. Luchetti is a work horse. It seems like every time I see him he is in an all out sprint. Did anyone seriously ever suggest that this was going to be a "lite" seminary? Insert condescending guffaw. They obviously haven't compared their courses to Lenny's! He has a pastor's heart and a heart for pastors. 
• Colleen Derr - Dr. Derr has stepped into the gap repeatedly. She has pinch hit for me countless times to see projects through. Our adjuncts are now more than adequately served with her as advisor, and it was she who completely revamped our dwindling youth ministry MA into a children, youth, and family concentration that is so much in demand that we're going to have to split the new group starting next month.
• Safiyah Fosua - When I heard Dr. Fosua doing a devotional last year, I wondered why in the world I was the official Bible person in the seminary. What power in the spoken word!  And she's not even the preaching prof! Dr. Fosua took over the worship component at Wesley when it was barely keeping its head above the water and made it excellent.
• Kwasi Kena - Dr. K, as the Bishop Benjamin cohort calls him, brings a level of excellence and perfection to bear on everything he does that is mind-numbing to me. He's tireless and the consummate professional with an eye for detail. He and Dr. Fosua have sacrificed to make a contextualized, urban cohort in Indy an amazing and growing success. (A real treat are the jam sessions he, Dr. Fosua, and Dr. Drury bring to bear on our convocation and consecration services.)
• Joanne Solis-Walker - She's not faculty but has sacrificially and almost single-handedly erected a Spanish MDIV program, with a quality team of gifted and dedicated adjuncts. Her half-time has been more like double time. She dreams big and works tirelessly to make it happen.
• As of July 1 we have two more full-time faculty to add to the mix. Brannon Hancock and Luigi Peñaranda are going to be two more amazing contributors to the momentum. Dr. Hancock is an extroverted practical theologian whose bow ties amaze the Nazarene eye. He can teach just about anything and is another musician. Dr. Peñaranda will finally bring a full time faculty eye to the Spanish MDIV, while bringing an intersection of leadership and Bible expertise to the table of all the students in the seminary. He has the innovative DNA with which the seminary was founded.
• Educational institutions these days couldn't survive without a significant pool of competent, faithful adjuncts. Here's to all the brilliant professors who have been willing to bring their expertise to our students' table in the first five years of the seminary!

5. A networking leader
In my opinion, the seminary would be stable but not growing if it weren't for its connection-making leader, Dr. Wayne Schmidt. Hardly a day seems to go by when he is not meeting with some new possible partner to serve and walk on a common journey. In the business of education, it seems like to stand still is to move backwards. Atlanta, multiple groups in Indy, Colombia, and who knows where next. You don't need to come for him to build it. He'll come to you!

6. A great team
Dare I say that the seminary has a knock-out admissions team led by Aaron Wilkinson. It's hard to imagine how you could beat him, Dianne Clark, Kami Mauldin, and Moses Avila as an optimistic welcome sign to the seminary. Long before our students hit their first class, they are pumped and ready to go because of the enthusiasm of this team.

And it goes without saying that the real machine at the heart of the seminary is Karen Clark, Tenley Horner, Allison Horner, Becky Perry, and Tera Teitjens? They are the ones that keep things going. What a sad state things would be in if they were not cranking the wheels and feeding the monster.

I've done a dangerous thing, mentioning specific names. Beyond the walls is the team of the broader university, countless faces that make things happen and lend their enthusiastic support--not least President David Wright, whose years of experience are a constant source of wisdom and insight. Beyond IWU are the Wesleyan leaders who share in the dream. We now have seminary alumni who are out there spreading the word, feeding the lore, creating a culture.

Happy Birthday, Wesley Seminary! Happy Accreditation! The LORD bless you for years to come!

Wesley Seminary now in ATS

Last night Wesley Seminary (@IWU) was officially voted in as Associate Members of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS).  President Henry Smith of IWU and of course our fearless leader Wayne Schmidt were here for the event.  Our MDIV degree was approved three years ago by the Higher Learning Commission, but this membership represents an important benchmark in our maturity as a theological institution.

We now begin the accreditation process with ATS.  The association recognizes that the face of theological education--and education in general--is changing and will actually consider today and tomorrow changes that coincide fairly nicely with the way we have designed our program.  In fact, the ATS magazine In Trust has mentioned us more than once as an example of where much of theological education is going.  Our own Joanne Solis-Walker is featured in the edition they passed out last night.

Many thanks to God for a seamless coming to this significant point in our development!

Link for Dan Aleshire's presentation at ATS

Here it is: http://www.ats.edu/Resources/PapersPresentations/BiennialMeetings/Documents/2010/2010Aleshire-FutureHasArrived.pdf

Final Reflections: ATS and Wesley

Here are my final reflections on the ATS meeting as relates to Wesley Seminary @IWU. I'm on partial vacation, so not sure if I will have much chance to post this week. We'll see.

ATS and Pains of Change

Today at ATS has been interesting. On a more comical note (or so I choose to take it) was parliamentary chaos. After torturous amendments, referrals I don't remember being voted on that were sometimes called reconsidering, substitute amendments to a not really so controversial paragraph suffering from lack of wordsmithing, someone stood up and called for the question. The moderator, who was a precious soul, nonetheless had no idea what the person was talking about. "What question?" or something like that was the response.

The really controversial item today was about a seminary associated with Sun Myung Moon's group. Apparently this seminary, which is actually accredited by the Middle States accrediting group, was unanimously denied associate membership at the last biennial meeting. This time they were up for affiliate status, which is a status that does not move toward membership and is reserved for non-degree granting institutions and non-Christian and non-Jewish faiths.

This motion also failed, despite the unanimous recommendation of the commission board, which included such individuals as Richard Mouw, president of Fuller. What was ironic to me is that the last vote to deny them membership was tantamount to saying they were not a Christian institution. The big objection to affiliate status was that they claimed to be Christian.

I believe these are change pains related to the procedural ones I mentioned yesterday. Over time, the association has allowed numerous evangelical and fundamentalist institutions into its membership as an indication of its generosity toward other groups. These groups are the ones who will almost certainly approve changes to the rules on residency and duration of degrees next 2012 meeting.

But as is often the case, those groups that value pluralism often find that the non-pluralistic groups they welcome into their fellowship often then try to stop pluralism when they gain power. This can be the case with conservative Islamic groups. It can be with conservative Christian groups. The openness that welcomes conservative groups can eventually empower those same groups to shut down openness.

Obviously I am not arguing for individual groups to water down their identities. I am simply affirming that it is best for the "pudding" in which such diverse groups exist to be open. This is my understanding of the non-establishment clause of the US Constitution, and I affirm it. ATS is an umbrella organization that has, for example, included Jewish seminaries since the beginning. I don't have a vote, but as far as I can tell, all the representatives from Wesleyan family schools voted in favor of granting this school affiliate status.

Daniel Aleshire: Future Has Arrived

I may post on the seminary Dean's blog on Monday if the link to his paper is up by then. Dr. Aleshire delivered a brilliant paper on "The Future Has Arrived: Changing Theological Education in a Changed World" today at the Association of Theological Schools Biennial Meeting. He is its Executive Director. I have been thoroughly impressed by all the staff of the association.

I can also sense that the association members, some eagerly and some with regret, recognize that the Association must make certain changes to its membership standards. I tweeted several of Aleshire's more striking comments during the presentation. One had to do with the future coming so fast that it has overtaken the present, to where the sun is both rising and setting at the same time. Perhaps I will expand on Monday.

But some of the changes he suggested were of the spirit that ATS has provided the gold standard for a certain kind of theological education that worked very well in the twentieth century. Now he suggests at least four areas where ATS should expand in providing the gold standard:

1. education at undergraduate level
2. education for part-time pastors
3. education for people already in ministry
4. education for lay leaders

I've translated his words into my own. Smaller denominations have been engaging these sorts of venues for years but have been scorned by the mainline power holders. For what it's worth, in my opinion the changing reality here is as much the combined diminishment of traditional power as it is the empowerment of these alternative routes. For example, it is because there are no longer enough traditional priests and ministers that Catholics and Methodists alike have had to acknowledge these others who have always been there.

The 20,000 alternative denominations have gone and continue to go gangbusters. What has changed is that ATS is now forced to consider modes of operation that they have been using for 150 years and more.

P.S. I was delighted to be present as Northwest Nazarene's seminary was granted Associate Membership. What is delightful is that their entire MDIV degree is online!

Padilla at Association of Theological Schools

I'm in Montreal this week at the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) meeting. One of the issues of great interest to many of us is where ATS will go with certain of its current requirements. Will it continue to require half of seminary degrees be done onsite somewhere (there are already exceptions)? Will it continue to require full libraries on branch sites?

Alvin Padilla, Dean at Gordon-Conwell, gave a very controversial presentation today, I thought, that pushed for the kinds of changes I think will be necessary for seminaries to survive and thrive going forward. I would be very interested, though, to know how he was received by the rest of those in the room!