# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S183
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 183

not cause any great inconvenience and should not provoke im-
patience. For at best, two years will be required to make final
adjustments and requisite accommodations before such a Senior
College can be opened anywhere. A new faculty must be as-
sembled, the curriculum carefully arranged for the college itself as
a terminal course and articulated with a revised course of studies
at the Seminary. Indeed, it is very likely that a new method of
control will have to be instituted, different from the present Board
of Control arrangement.
THE PROPOSALS

Although all of the specific proposals mentioned were given
thorough consideration, it seemed to the Board that only the fol-
lowing merited detailed analysis in this Report. All except one of
them (Valparaiso extension on the campus at River Forest) have
been suggested for the consideration of some prior convention, but
it was felt worth while to restudy each individual situation in the
light of current developments.

A New College

The Board first gave detailed study to the possibility of estab-
lishing an entirely new and separate two-year Senior College, with
new staff and plant, and completely separated from any existing
faculty.

Such an arrangement would indeed prove attractive from the
point of view that it would create an opportunity to most readily
achieve the accepted Objectives of Ministerial Training. The
absence of existing patterns of thought and of traditional educational
and cultural practices would make available conditions conducive
to a clean, fresh start which would leave the administration free
to retain the viewpoints of distinctive and proven merit, but to
eliminate what experience has demonstrated to be less desirable.

Since the school would actually be an extension of the curricu-
lum of the existing junior college system, it would not be an isolated
two-year program. As a result, regional accreditation would be
conditioned upon the corresponding situation in Synod’s Preparatory
Schools since these would supply the students for the Senior
College. The same formidable accreditation problems would apply
to any plan which would utilize the existing schools as feeders
for the Senior College.

Of all the proposals under consideration, this plan appears
to involve the largest immediate cost. While your Board believes
that the possibility of achieving conditions in -which the vital
objectives of ministerial training may be readily reached may
well make the most costly plan also the most desirable one, it has
become aware of a Jack of popular enthusiasm and professional
support for the proposal.