# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S21
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 21

from our fifteen Lutheran high schools, while the rest are products
of a very large number of public secondary schools in many States.
While this non-Lutheran high school training has its self-evident
drawbacks, we have noted that in the course of years the varying ~
background of our students — geographic, occupational, and edu-
cational — has contributed significantly toward a cosmopolitan
spirit, a broadness of outlook, and an adaptability in our student
body which will stand them in good stead as church workers
wherever they may be placed. While the mental quality of our
entering students is considerably above average, the product of
our Lutheran high schools is definitely in the lead. We have every
reason to be thankful for the type of student we have been able
to recruit in recent years, and look forward to increased represen-
tation of carefully selected graduates of our municipal Lutheran
high schools and the academies of our various Concordias to some-
what offset the loss of our own High School on the campus. The
results of standardized sophomore tests have regularly demon-
strated that the high academic level of the incoming freshmen is
maintained in the scholastic achievements of their junior college
years.

Student morale and conduct have kept pace with the high type
of mental ability. The student counseling program, centering in
the office of the Dean of Students, has had good results and is
being progressively developed. The religious life of our students
continues to show a most praiseworthy improvement. Daily chapel
attendance is excellent. Student concern for the religious and moral
welfare of their fellow students is considered self-evident, and
personal counsel and admonition are given without embarrassment
by roommates or members of the Student Council. The comparative
scarcity of severe and unnecessary regulations, the common study
of God’s Word, and participation in activities in harmony with it,
the daily contacts in corridor and classroom, in dining hall and
chapel, in study groups and committee work, in training school
tours and mission activities, have, by God’s grace, led to a mutual
respect between the men and women and a fellowship which is
remarkable. Coeducation has done much in the twelve years of its
existence at Concordia to prepare not only our women, for whom
it was intended, but our men as well, for their places in Christian
congregations as teachers of the boys and girls, counselors of the
young men and women, and co-workers with their colleagues of
both sexes and with the fathers and mothers of their school chil-
dren. We are thankful that the synodical convention of 1938 saw
fit to establish a coeducational environment for our teachers in
training because of the wholesome attitudes it creates and the high
moral tone of the coeds we have been able to recruit.