# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S161
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

C. REPORT OF THE BOARD
FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

(Report 136)

As the Board for Higher Education herewith submits its
triennial report, it does so with sincere and humble gratitude to
God for the countless blessings which in His grace He once more
bestowed upon the colleges and seminaries of our church as the
training schools for its professional workers. His grace, guidance,
and benediction have been clearly evident in all the work of your
Board in behalf of Synod and its colleges and seminaries in the
past three years.

Your Board for Higher Education is pleased, also, to express
publicly its gratitude to the college and seminary presidents,
boards of control, and faculty and instructional staff members of
Synod’s institutions, without whose willing co-operation not much
can be accomplished. The Board is grateful, also, for the oppor-
tunity to work together repeatedly with the President of Synod
and with other Synodical officers, boards, and agencies.

These three years witnessed great changes in the membership
of the Board for Higher Education as well as in its staff. Three
men, as new appointees, replaced men of long service as members.
Dr. Walter C. Birkner of Fort Wayne succeeded Dr. Henry Grueber
of Milwaukee as member and chairman of the Board; Dr. James
G. Manz of Chicago succeeded Dr. O. P. Kretzmann of Valpa-
raiso, Ind.; Rev. L. W. Heidemann of Hinton, Iowa, succeeded
Dr. Martin Walker of Buffalo, N. Y. In the reorganization of the
Board for its triennial work, Mr. Walter Gast succeeded Dr. O. P.
Kretzmann as Board secretary.

On January 31, 1955, Dr. Martin J. Neeb left the service of
the Board as its first executive secretary to become first president
of Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, after almost ten
years of faithful and effective work. Rev. Walter F. Wolbrecht,
who had left the presidency of Saint Paul’s College of Concordia,
Mo., to become the Board’s assistant executive secretary, succeeded
Dr. Neeb as executive secretary on February 1, 1955. Mr. Robert
P. Hopmann continues as research assistant for the Board. After
careful and lengthy search the Board was successful in per-
suading Dean Arthur M. Ahlschwede of Concordia College, Saint
Paul, to accept appointment as assistant executive secretary,
effective June 15, 1956.

The Board’s report is briefly summarized in the following few
pages. The weighty and increasingly complex issues confronting
the church in the area of the Board’s responsibility do not permit