# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S759
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 61

For many years only students who have declared their inten-
tion of becoming Lutheran teachers and whose qualifications gave
good promise of attaining that goal have been admitted. Through
a careful program of guidance, students whose purpose changes or
whose general record makes them ineligible for teacher training,
are directed to other colleges or occupations at the close of the
term in order to make room for teacher-training students. During
the school year 1948—1949 alone twenty-two transfer students with
good records entered with advanced standing (sophomore or above)
from eighteen different colleges and universities, from California
to Ohio, and from Florida to North Dakota. In general, these
transfer students did good work and readily adjusted themselves
to our environment, thus speeding up our production of graduate
teachers. Not quite one half of our entering freshmen now come
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