"Study To Show Thyself Approved"
(2 Timothy 2:15)
"Are you crazy? To have a university you must have thousands of students and hundreds of courses? And $100 million!"
Ralph sighed and patiently answered, "No, that's not true. What determines whether or not a school is to be called a university is if it is authorized to give Ph.D. degrees."
"As to the number of courses and different departments, haven't you ever heard of Dropsie University? It is one of the most prestigious universities in the world in the field of Hebrew Studies. But it has only one building and a handful of students. It is a specialized university, as we plan to be."
The shock some of our friends expressed is still clear in my mind years later. Those who knew him best couldn't easily have expected Ralph to be conventional. But perhaps they didn't realize that he had more than the usual amount of experience in designing educational programs.1
Typical of an engineer, when Ralph recognized a problem, he first looked at what the desired end product should be, then worked on how to reach it. Universities are constantly
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having to rethink their courses in order to satisfy the demands of society. They have to produce engineers, teachers, doctors, computer scientists, etc. If the courses are too far off, industry refuses to hire their graduates.
Most schools (even Christian colleges) are often oblivious of the needs of the mission world. They haven't really stopped to ask what kind of product the mission societies need. But this question was uppermost in Ralph's mind when he set out to engineer the William Carey International University.
Several streams led into Ralph's thinking:
During his ten years of teaching at Fuller Seminary, over 1,000 missionaries went through his classes, contributing insight as to local situations in countries in many parts of the world. Furthermore, he recognized the economic significance of students paying for the supervision they receive while pursuing advanced degrees. Their tuition fees become income, not expense, to the school, while the research they do is also a positive benefit to the agencies that sent them.
Then, Ralph's experience with Theological Education by Extension convinced him that an on-campus program often does not enroll the most capable students. Real leaders are usually too responsibly involved to take off several years to get a Ph.D. If the object of a school is to facilitate advance degrees for "movers and shakers," then the extension pattern must be considered.
For years Ralph had noticed how clumsy and even destructive the traditional Ph.D. educational pattern was for missionaries. The year they are allowed for furlough is inadequate to complete the degree. Yet if they take a leave of absence for a year or two in order to finish, they have to find some other means of support while their work on the field is drastically interrupted.
"Why can't we take advantage of the fact that there are missionaries with Ph.D.s in almost every major city of the world today? Studying for a Ph.D. is basically a one-on-one
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tutorial situation anyhow. Why can't these Ph.D.s overseas serve as graduate mentors for candidates who live and work in their areas?" Ralph wanted to know.
He saw other serious problems on the undergraduate level. It was the rare college that had any courses at all on missions. It was a miracle, really, that any students ever ended up as missionaries. Often, after speaking, Ralph would be engaged in conversation by some student who eagerly announced, "I feel the Lord is calling me into missions!"
"That's just wonderful," he would answer. "With what mission are you going?"
"Well, I don't know yet. You see, I am graduating in June, and before I can go overseas I will have to pay back $8000 (or $15,000 .... or $30,000) in student loans."
It was hard for Ralph not to say what was on his mind: "Forget it. You'll never make it! When you took out those loans, right then you decided not ever to become a missionary!"
Instead he advised, "Yes, you'll have to pay back those loans first. No agency will even look at you with a debt like that." But he always wondered if any of these would still want to go into missions once they were solidly ensconced in well-paying jobs, married (perhaps to spouses who were not interested), buying their homes — essentially getting settled. They would be gaining gratifying skills, security and seniority, but drifting further from their original call.
Increasingly Ralph realized that, without intending to, Christian colleges were keeping young people from becoming missionaries simply because, like every private school, they encouraged their students to take out loans to complete their education. But the typical missionary salary is basically a "living allowance." It is not intended to be sufficient to repay huge student debts.
From its founding, Ralph planned that the William Carey International University would always be on the edge of innovation. His avowed intent was that it would not duplicate
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existing programs elsewhere but would pioneer programs other schools were not pursuing, at the same time maintaining high traditional academic standards. Ralph hoped that in meeting the felt needs of the mission industry, our university would also set a pattern that Christian colleges could follow.
Early in 1978 we gained permission from the State of California to grant a Ph.D. degree in International Development with concentrations in the fields of Hindu, Chinese, Muslim, and Tribal Studies, Communications, and Religious Studies. Actually a student working toward a Ph.D. in International Development could specialize in any problem a developing country might face.
We also were given permission to give an M.A. in International Development (with its various special fields) and an M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).
It was this latter program which developed the most quickly. The University was founded in 1977, before China once more welcomed visitors from the West. In our Pat Boone earliest promotional film that year, Ralph had prophetically asked, "Should the day ever come when China opens her doors and asks for, say, 50,000 teachers of English, would the Christian world be ready?"
Just two years later China opened her doors wide. One of her first requests was for 100,000 teachers of English! And we found, to our amazement, that not a single U.S. Christian college or university offered a master's degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).
Our program was already two years old, under the capable hands of people with field experience. We found to our surprise that we had almost as many students in this program at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), which boasted the largest in the United States — only fifty students.
In 1981 Dr. Herbert Purnell, a linguist and former missionary, came to head up our program. With a Ph.D. from
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Cornell University, he was a rigorous academician. As a result, our students involved in practice teaching so impressed their master teachers throughout the Los Angeles area that some of these inquired about the possibility of taking some of our courses. And we were very pleased when, in 1982, the TESOL program not only received the "approval status" from the state of California, but was also highly commended by the examining committee. This status took the university a long way toward the private type of regional accreditation.
In any other state, we might have expected to receive such regional accreditation within a few years, but because of the state's involvement in the newly established approval process, the Western Association of Accreditation of Schools and Colleges had increased their requirements, stretching out the process enormously. Of the 200 or so schools which had gained their state approval, only five were even trying for WASC accreditation. We were one of the five.
In 1980, Dr. James Buswell from Wheaton College became our Dean of Graduate Studies. Then in 1981, Dr. Virgil Olson, newly retired, came for a few years to help us out as president and, fortunately, stayed five. Both men were highly qualified in the academic world, but both also were deeply involved in missions.
Then Dr. Bob Pickett, formerly of Purdue University and for three years a consultant to World Vision, Inc., became the head of our Department of International Development. In no time he developed a periodicals library in his field that was so complete that students from surrounding colleges and universities began finding their way to our campus to use it.
Soon Dr. Buswell was in touch with dozens of missionaries and national church leaders who were interested in our doctoral program. Because most of these were very busy people, we expected them to take longer than the usual three to five years to get their degrees. Seven years later, the first was already graduated.
It is a blessing to the university to have various specialty
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organizations on campus. International Films, on campus with us for a number of years, teaches graduate courses on film production and communication. The Zwemer Institute offers several relating to the Muslim world. The Institute of Chinese Studies teaches Mandarin as well as several other courses specifically related to the Chinese world. The Institute of Hindu Studies has a remarkable summer program which not only brings in top Christian scholars who teach not only the philosophy of Hinduism and its substantial roots in the New Age movements of the Western world but also discusses in depth helpful strategies in reaching out to both Hindus and Westerners caught up in such philosophy. FACE (Fellowship of Artists for Cultural Evangelism) has been on our campus from the beginning. This group teaches its students to recognize various art forms within other cultures which can become bridges to evangelism.
Our "central" staff do not have to be responsible for any of these programs. We only have to ascertain that the professors are academically qualified to teach and that their courses meet all university requirements. We also help package the courses into academic degrees, and, of course, provide the necessary classroom space. It is a marvelous system.
In 1983 we took the first steps to inaugurate our undergraduate program, which we knew would be the most non-traditional of all, and thus the most controversial. As Ralph envisioned it, it would include several non-negotiables:
1) At every step of the way it would be a work-study program so that the students would not need to take out loans.
2) The students would be required to study six months of every year in this country and six months of every year overseas, each time on a different continent in association with a different mission agency and supported during that time as a "short-term missionary."2 In today's world it is perfectly possible to study in English in a university in Hong Kong, India, South Africa, Singapore, Manila, Nairobi and in
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many other places of the world.
3) Before we would accept a student, he would have to be recommended to us not only by a church but also by a mission agency under whose supervision the "work" aspect of his study would be done while overseas.
4) Our degree would be rigorous. We were not interested in students who were merely passing time or looking for an easy degree. Indeed, we hoped that most would eventually go on for their Ph.D.s.
Because we were so short of staff and the B.A. program was so non-traditional, it really never got off the ground. Ralph, as General Director of the Center, was deeply involved in trying to make those exhausting $350,000 mortgage payments every three months. Even though the design of the university was his, his absence on that part of the campus made it almost certain that his design could not really be implemented, no matter how hard those involved might try. You can't design a new program and leave it for someone else to develop unless they are heart and soul in agreement with it. We could not expect that of people who had always functioned in more traditional settings, no matter how hard they might try.
In 1982, Corinne Armstrong, a very capable educator with significant experience overseas, joined us and began to implement the newly suggested B.A. program. Because the couple offering to supervise the overseas experiences of our first two student groups lived in North Africa, the first two groups of undergraduate students went there rather than to some Westernized situation as Ralph had planned. They were not only thrown into a non-English-speaking environment (such as would have been true in South Africa, Singapore or even in Kenya or India, they landed in an Arabic speaking world where they lived for several weeks with Muslim families. Such an experience would have been good for them as seniors, perhaps, but we felt it was too much for underclassmen. But it was a fait accompli before we were
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aware just what had been decided. The students all survived, but I think with some unnecessary scars even with the extravagant praise they gave for what they had learned through that experience.
After Ralph moved across the street to take over the presidency of the university in 1990, he became able at last to give personal attention to the dreams he had long had for an entirely different kind of university which would fit the needs of the mission world, not just duplicate what other Christian schools were already doing so well. But that story must be told later.
Perhaps the most well-developed educational program we offer is our four-unit course titled "Perspectives on the World Christian Movement," which operates under the name of our Institute of International Studies.
From its beginning in 1974, two years before the Center was founded, this program was envisioned as enrichment to the basic college curriculum, especially for students in secular schools. By now at least 40,000 students have taken it worldwide. Between 2,500 and 3,000 are added each year in the U.S. alone in 70 extension locations. The text compiled by the Perspectives Study Program staff bears the same name as the course and is used as a major missions text in almost every evangelical seminary and college in the U.S. It was revised in 1992 along with the study guide that directs each of the 20 lessons. All told, the book has sold more than 100,000 copies and is available in Spanish, Portuguese and will soon be available in Korean. Portions are available in other languages as well.
The Perspectives course has been truly life-changing for the students. Even we are amazed at its impact. The early core staff of the USCWM would not have been available were it not for this course and its transforming effect. Many of its alumni are now members of the missions committees in their local churches. Hundreds have gone overseas. Several have started mission-promoting organizations such as
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Caleb Project, which, as a team, monitors almost a thousand college students, helping them keep their mission vision alive.
Not only young people enroll. Nowadays pastors and mission committee members also take the course. In some extension centers grandparents sit alongside their grandchildren, each learning things they hadn't dreamed of previously. Even missionaries on furlough comment, "I thought I knew all about missions, but this course has really opened my eyes."
The William Carey International University is moving ahead, but it is still very young and faces many unresolved problems. For example, it is not easy to get well-qualified professors whose orientation is missionary and who can, like the rest of the Center community, raise their own support. Ralph says he is content to let the University be no better or worse than the quality of people in what he calls "the mission industry." For him, those are quality people!
It is even more difficult to get people who can work with something so non-traditional, still in the process of development. It is not always easy to explain why we are doing what we are doing, even to our own staff. At such times, even Ralph sometimes wonders, "Is it worth all the effort?"
Then we look at the lives that are being changed. We look at the organizations that are beginning to mobilize for a massive push to the final frontiers. We recognize the impact that our courses are making on the lives of students, even those studying at a distance. And we have to say, "Yes, God does want this done; we must persevere. Now, Lord, give us the strength to go forward and the vision to see how."
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1. Ralph's involvement in educational design includes the following:
a) One of three founders of the InterAmerican School in Quezaltenango, Guatemala, a K through 12 school for the children of missionaries and national church leaders.
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b) Founder of the Junior High school for the town of San Juan Ostuncalco, Quez., Guatemala. Ralph started this at the urgent request of the town's leading citizens.
c) Founder of an adult education program, approved by the government of Guatemala, which in three years graduated over 3,000 rural church leaders. Many of these have gone on to seminary or to university and now hold prominent positions in the national church or in civic life.
d) Member of the founding board of the Universidad Mariano Galvez, the prestigious Protestant university in Guatemala City.
e) One of two designers and founders of the Theological Education by Extension Movement. This program has been adopted by almost every mission society and enrolls more than 100,000 students in theological education around the world. The third section of Theological Education by Extension (Ralph D. Winter, ed., Wm. Carey Library publishers, 1969) is Ralph's explanation of the logistics, academic and financial, of how to inaugurate such a program. Unfortunately, the book is out of print, but may be found in many seminary libraries.
f) Between 1966 and 1969 Ralph was the Executive Secretary of the Latin American Association of Theological Schools, the accrediting association for all the theological schools in the northern half of Latin America.
g) While a professor at Fuller Seminary, he served on U.S. accrediting teams, examining other schools either applying for or upgrading their accreditation.
2. Since his work experience overseas would be in the role of a "short-term missionary," he would be supported by his church or friends at home or by some task there such as teaching English.
