# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S171
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 171

for the schools and to the establishment of a Housemaster or
Residence Hall Counselor system.

1. It may well be that completion of the regional accredita-
tion encouraged by Synod in 1944 will accomplish some of the
desired improvements. Your Board has encouraged faculties
to take the preliminary steps of self-evaluation and is ready
to supply the relevant materials and references for this
process. The policy of checking the qualifications of can-
didates for professorships in the light of accreditation re-
quirements has also become standard practice during the
past triennium. However, your Board is aware of the com-
plexity of the many factors involved in accrediting the
schools and is mindful of the fact that no program can be
permitted to infringe upon, to condition, or to crowd the
primary program of the Synod’s schools. Nor is your Board
willing to exert inordinate pressure for advanced academic
degrees, because it is aware of our great need for effective
classroom teaching and for attitudes of consecration, neither
of which is, admittedly, one of the expected outcomes of a
normal program of intensive specialized research.

2. The Board was able to install a Counselor in one of Synod’s
Colleges within a year after the Saginaw Convention. Close
study of the experiment indicates such excellent results that
the Board has authorized a similar arrangement for an ad-
ditional school: Detailed study of this limited experience
yields sufficiently promising prospects to warrant the specific
recommendations included in the Board’s current report, but
available data are entirely inadequate for an accurate ap-
praisal-of the extent to which potential results may ulti-
mately affect our schools.

In any event, the desirable improvements and the accreditation
should, and probably must, be considered as essential factors in any
plan to establish a full Senior College, since they are required both
if the present colleges are to be brought to the highest point of
their potential effectiveness and if an accredited Senior College
is to be established. It will not be possible to operate an accredited
Senior College if the majority of its students are known to be
transfers from unaccredited schools.

Accordingly, our recommendations include a request for action
which will include specific progress toward accreditation and which
will provide for early completion of the improvements authorized
by the 1944 Convention on the basis of the Hausmann survey. It is
recognized that considerable necessary costs are involved, since the
program for improved library service, music departments, student