# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_1969_S289
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

HIGHER EDUCATION 289

Student Body

Enrollment Report 1967 1968
College
Pretheological 68 66
Teacher Education ——--_____._ 135 102
Deaconess 7 4
Social Worker 8 10
General 207 239
Total 425 421
Prep School 1967 1968
Church Service 25 13
Teacher Education ____—Ss—<—~ST 4
General 70 34
Total 102 51

At this writing in February, applications for next
September are running higher in every category than
last year.

In September 1967 Rev. Clyde Kaminska, director
of physical education at Concordia for 12 years, re-
linquished some of his former duties in order to serve
as director of college relations and recruitment. This
enabled Concordia to give greater continuity and con-
centration to the planning, as well as the activities for
recruiting new students.

The college took note of the 450th anniversary of
the Reformation and brought to the campus, among
others, such notable scholars as Doctors Roland Bainton,
E. G. Schwiebert. and Lewis Spitz. Noteworthy also
in life on the campus is that 40 to 50 students travel
to a number of our New York inner-city churches to
work with minority groups of underprivileged children
and youths week after week.

Concordia Preparatory School

The New York convention included in its statement
on Bronxville’s role the directive to assist the Board
for Higher Education in determining the future of the
high school. In the light of that suggestion the Board
of Control put under review in its fall meetings the
continuation of the prep school and invited to its meet-
ings members of the administration of the prep school
and the college, as well as the Executive Secretary and
a member of the Board for Higher Education.

As a result of these deliberations, which extended
over several months, the board reached the decision
in January 1968 to close the preparatory school after
one more year of operation, that is, at the end of June
1969. This arrangement provided time for the necessary
adjustments and enabled the school to graduate a rather
sizable senior class.

Considerations which led to this decision are sum-
marized in the record as follows:

a. a steady decline in enrollment of pastoral stu-
dents, as well as total enrollment, which continuous
promotion did not arrest:

b. a decrease in local concern and interest in direct-
ing pastoral students to the prep school;

c. the establishment of three Lutheran high schools
in the Greater New York Area (Long Island Lutheran

High School, Martin Luther High School in Queens,
Our Savior Lutheran High School in the Bronx) and
one each in Philadelphia and Baltimore;

d. the action of the Synod in 1965 and particularly
in 1967, giving discretionary authority to the Board for
Higher Education to discontinue synodical high schools
where the enrollment of pastoral students no longer
yields reasonable results;

e, the counsel of the advisory committee, which for
a number of years expressed itself in favor of closing
the prep school;

f. resolutions of pastoral conferences recommending
closing.

In regard to the future service of the prep school
faculty, the Board of Control and the Board for Higher
Education joined in the determination to be as helpful
as possible in any relocation of staff members. Some
of them will join the college staff; one already has.
Two accepted calls to other positions in the church last
fall, and others will be available for reassignment and
calls after the close of the school year.

It is with mixed emotions that Concordia closes this
institution. By the time of the Denver convention, Con-
cordia will have tied the ribbon of history around the
preparatory school, remembering with gratitude to God
her loyal and faithful service of 88 years.

Development of the College

The future of the Bronxville Concordia has been the
subject of careful and searching study over the past 7
years. Out of that study the recommendations emerged
to expand the college to include a 4-year teacher-educa-
tion program for Lutheran elementary teachers. These
proposals were presented to the Detroit and New York
conventions.

After commending the college for its research and
studies, the New York convention in 1967 called atten-
tion to the financial stringency in the Synod to the
further development of faculty and facilities, to the de-
sirability for study of the need of additional 4-year
colleges, and then solicited the assistance of the col-
lege in studies relating to the development of the
Synod’s educational system.

The Board of Control and the faculty at this time
place before the Synod the request for authorization
to move from a 2-year to a 4-year college, except in
the area of upper pretheological training, and to do so
with the criteria in mind which the Board for Higher
Education presented to the Synod at the New York
convention.

In making this request, the board is especially in-
terested in maintaining the present purposes and ob-
jectives of the college. These are:

A. To prepare our youth for the pastoral and teach-
ing ministry and for other Christian service such as
that of deaconess and social worker. This purpose is
to remain dominant and the chief one for which the
Synod would give its support, as in the past. The college
would: