Strategic Step #2: Emphasize quality scholarship.

Success story: National champions in public speaking
In the valuable skill of public speaking, it’s a meaningful claim to be the best Christian college team in the nation. Under the direction of Michael Dreher, Ph.D., Bethel brought home the 2006 team championship trophy from the National Christian College Forensics Invitational, placing finalists in a wider range of events than any other school and garnering several individual first place awards. The team is not just a one-year wonder. Bethel has earned 13 individual national forensics championships in nine years. “Forensics has taught me a lot about expressing my ideas, and how to organize my thoughts clearly and effectively,” says team member Lisa Stauter. “That is so important in life.”

People are realizing that Christian higher education satisfies the mind as well as the heart. While enrollment in secular colleges remained flat over the past 15 years, schools in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities grew 60 percent. At Bethel, we’ve added more than a thousand students at the undergraduate level, and several hundred in graduate programs in just a decade, due in large part to an emphasis on rigorous academics. God-honoring scholarship must remain at the heart of Bethel’s mission.

Bethel Steps Ahead

• Answering needs in our culture, Bethel continues to add cutting-edge programs.* Among new undergraduate majors, which have grown from 56 to 83 in 10 years, are two that train teachers of English as a second language. Journalism, communication studies, and economics and finance are also growing in popularity.
• Graduate education has exploded. Crowning seven advanced degrees are an Ed.D. program offered primarily online, and an MBA so well-received that capacity is being tripled this fall. Bethel has one of the few seminaries to offer master’s degrees in marriage and family therapy and children’s and family ministry. The latter is expanding, recognized for excellence by a $2.1 million grant from the Scripture Press Foundation.
• Bethel faculty are productive scholars. In the last two years alone, college instructors have written 20 books and 105 peer-reviewed professional articles, and have created works ranging from paintings to published hymns.
• All full-time seminary faculty have earned Ph.D.s and many are contributing important new scholarship in their fields. Jeannine Brown, Ph.D., assistant professor of New Testament, for example, is publishing a new text on biblical interpretation for seminary students without much prior theological education.
• Vital research projects thrive. Professor of Chemistry Ken Rohly, Ph.D., has student interns work with him on improved implantable devices at the Medtronic Corporation. Seminary professor Steven Sandage, Ph.D., is conducting a multi-year study to define spiritual well-being, including the importance of forgiveness.
• But perhaps the best proof of scholarship is results. Bethel alumni attending prestigious graduate schools report how well Bethel prepared them. Many physics graduates have won full scholarships to top engineering programs.

We are learners– committed to academic excellence. Every starting class in the MBA has been full with a waiting list. The innovative program stresses how all business disciplines—finance, marketing, human resources—influence each other and center in biblical ethics.

Strategic Steps

• 1: Make disciples of Jesus Christ.
• 2: Emphasize quality scholarship.
• 3: Reconcile cultures and races.
• 4: Integrate new technologies.
• 5: Serve a longer-living population.
• 6: Be relevant to society.
• 7: Remain sound and affordable.
• 8: Equip students before college.