Home : The Voice : October 2002 

College and Seminary News

Rhodes College completed its 4th Servant Leader Summer, an eight-week immersion for students in urban ministry and servant leadership, sponsored by the Rhodes Chaplain’s Office. Servant Leader Summer combines spiritual formation and community living with internships in social services and urban ministries in Memphis. This summer, the class of thirteen completed a servant leader course on “Urban Poverty and Call to Compassion,” which included seminars with the Church of the Savior’s Servant Leadership School in Washington, DC. The Rhodes program was designed and led by Chaplain Billy Newton, Urban Ministry Coordinator Kristin Fox, and Ministry Advisor Julie Murphy, and has been supported for four years by a grant from the Bonner Foundation.

The academic life of Maryville College was particularly active during the summer months. Students were involved in learning experiences that ranged from on-campus frontiers biological research supported by the National Institutes of Health to wilderness adventures in Yellowstone National Park. Under a new administrative structure called the Summer Institute at Maryville College, Summer School 2002 expanded the range of offerings and enrolled the largest number of students in nearly two decades. The Center for English Language Learning (CELL) completed its summer programming by hosting 21 teachers of English from Seoul, Korea, in this country to polish English-speaking skills and learn about methodologies in American K-12 education.

“We Believe in God: A Hymn Festival” is scheduled for October 25, 7:30 p.m. at Caldwell Chapel, Louisville Seminary. Renowned organist Bruce Neswick will lead a program of hymns based on the theme of the Nicene Creed. The free event will feature a new hymn for the church, commissioned by Louisville Seminary for its anniversary year. “There Is a Dream that Thrills God’s Heart” was written by Thomas H. Troeger and set to the tune, “Bray”, an indigenous melody of rhythmic vitality from the Kentucky Harmony collection. The event is cosponsored by supporting grants from the Presbyterian Association of Musicians (PAM) and the Louisville Chapter of the American Guild of Organists (AGO). Free tickets, which are required, are available.

A ribbon-cutting celebration was held Aug. 27, for the Tusculum College Knoxville Regional Center in Centerpoint Park, located near the intersection of Pellissippi Parkway and Lovell Road at Knoxville. The new 30,000-squarefoot facility is being used by Tusculum College’s Graduate and Professional Studies program, which offers higher education options designed to fit the needs and schedules of working adult students. Notable features of the center are its 12 large classrooms, technology work room, a library/learning resource room, and computer laboratory facilities. Each classroom is designed to incorporate state-of-the- art technology.

Tusculum College also celebrated an Aug. 2 ribbon-cutting at its newly expanded center in Morristown, TN, a site utilized by the College’s Graduate and Professional Studies program.

The addition of three large classrooms, a computer lab, two faculty offices, and a lobby area during the past year has more than doubled the size of the Morristown Center. With the addition, the center now has six classrooms.

Courses have been offered in Morristown since 1984 as part of Tusculum’s Professional Studies program, specifically designed for working adults.

Columbia Theological Seminary has been selected to receive a grant of $1.3 million from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc. to support a new project of Columbia’s Continuing Education and Spirituality Programs.

Named S3 for the three components that seminary leaders have identified as important in sustaining pastoral excellence — Sabbath, study, and service — the grant will allow the seminary to bring together more than 200 pastors who will work together in cohort groups for 30 months. Cohort groups will be aided and directed by the seminary’s Continuing Education and Spirituality Programs.

Three respected and beloved seminary professors recently passed into the Church Triumphant. Dr. Arnold Black Rhodes, who taught Old Testament for nearly four decades at Louisville Seminary, died August 15 at the age of 88. Dr. George D. Carter, Jr., who retired in January 2002 as Director of Field Education and Clinical Pastoral Education and Professor of Ministry at Louisville Seminary, died September 3 at the age of 67. Dr. John H. Leith, Professor of Theology at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, died August 12 at the age of 82.