# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S190
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

190 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

tive leadership in these congregations will require a high degree
of college training.

The evidence contained in the files of the Rev. R. W.
executive secretary of the Student Service Commission of oy
Church, makes it entirely clear that the educational progress x
our present membership parallels that of the general America, -
public. Note the following comparative figures for the last five
years alone and see clearly that the number of our own Lutheray
students in public universities has increased almost 200% in the
last five years:

1944-45 6,029 194748 15,138
194546 ___.._ 8,008 194849 16,065
194647... 14,016

It is only natural to conclude that the longer our Churd
works in the American scene, the more necessary it becomes for
us to approach the national educational patterns which influence
the American public so that our workers will be well equipped to
understand the environment in which they do their work and that
they will be qualified to lead the majority of the parishioners who
are in their charge. This requires that we make progress toward
shifting our professional education from the high school to the
college level and that we provide for full offerings on the college
level. It is not possible to establish a full senior college immedi-
ately, but it is possible and necessary to conclude the necessary
preliminary adjustments now so that the stage is set for progres
toward the objective. Policies established today will achieve m
significant outcomes for a period of ten years.

Having, therefore, a clear sense of the direction in which we
must go, a conviction that our need is real, and the mathematic:
evidence that immediate action is required to achieve desirable «
results a decade hence, there remains the need for a decision a
initiating a program which will eventually lead us to the desired’
goals. . :
Definition and Curricular Aims of the Senior College

In its Centennial Convention, Synod instructed -the Board for
Higher Education to proceed with studies and plans for the intro-
duction of the senior college. The convention resolved: ‘
Synod establish a senior college as an additional unit in the
fessional training of ministerial students. (The term senior cole:
lege is understood to designate the academic level of the junit
and senior years of the standard American college.)” In addition,
the convention decided that the present system of colleges shoul
be retained, but that the changes necessary in the present junit
college program to achieve complete articulation and integratid
of the two divisions are authorized. ,