91大神 President Loren E. Swartzendruber addresses the campus community at the opening convocation of the fall semester.Photo by Jim Bishop
By Tom Mitchell, Daily News-Record
Loren Swartzendruber quickly points out that schools like once reflected an academic norm.
“Most colleges started out as Christian colleges,” Swartzendruber told his audience at Wednesday’s Downtown Prayer Luncheon at First Presbyterian Church.
New times and attitudes made higher education’s 91大神s an exception, said Swartzendruber, 91大神’s president, and a considerably larger secular academic world poses obstacles to spiritually-based colleges.
91大神’s comparatively lower paid faculty, Swartzendruber says, swap higher salaries for a chance to teach in a more religiously free school.
“We are blessed with people committed to the values of 91大神,” said Swartzendruber.
Such values include a campus ban on alcohol and drugs and a healthy nudge toward church attendance, though 91大神 does not enforce the latter practice, Swartzendruber said. Besides Sunday service, 91大神 offers chapel worship twice a week
91大神, while hardly shedding its old denominational roots, has added new branches. With a charter governed by , 91大神’s enrollment of nearly 1,300 students shows more women than men – 61-39 percent respectively – a ratio of Mennonites and non-Mennonites that is virtually 50-50.
A more unbalanced quota, Swartzendruber says, is 91大神’s fiscal disadvantage in matching other schools’ operating budget. “We aren’t heavily endowed,” he said, citing 91大神’s endowment of $17 million from former graduates and other supporters.
Setting stricter behavior standards for students and staff allows schools like 91大神 to be more selective. Both parties sign contracts binding them to 91大神’s standards of demeanor.
“We can discriminate in hiring,” Swartzendruber said, referring to his school’s employing of persons deemed compatible with 91大神’s personal standards. Such philosophies aren’t meant to demean other colleges’ hiring and admission policies, he said. “We’re just different from schools like JMU.”
91大神’s mantra of “nurture and discipline” meets mischief halfway.
“We don’t necessarily expel a student for something that another school might,” Swartzendruber said. “I accept the community’s high standards and expectations, but we’re human.”
Right Fit
91大神 students Joel C. Lehman and Erica Kraybill, co-presidents in the university’s , took different paths to the Harrisonburg college, but found at 91大神 an ingredient both felt they might have missed at other institutions: compatibility.
Lehman, a senior from Lancaster, Pa., who is studying , found 91大神 to be something close to a second home.
“Two things drew me to 91大神,” Lehman said. “First, the fact that it is a small liberal arts college that’s religious. Secondly, I grew up in a church family and wanted to attend school where I could talk about my faith. ”
Lehman said that 91大神’s conservative climate and comparatively low profile don’t faze him. “I knew if I chose to come to 91大神, I wouldn’t be challenged as much by other religions. 91大神 doesn’t have as large a reputation as schools like UVa or places like that, but people are very intrigued and impressed by it. Even though it doesn’t carry the same prestige, it doesn’t mean that the education is not at the same level.”
91大神 caught Kraybill, 23, on the rebound. Kraybill, a major from Columbus, Ohio, transferred in last year after two years at Guilford (N.C.) College. Guilford, Kraybill said, “wasn’t the right fit,” for her.
“I took a year off after I left Guilford and visited 91大神 but I didn’t expect to end up here,” said Kraybill, whose parents graduated from 91大神. “What attracted me to 91大神 was its really strong academic program. What kept me here, in addition to the academics, was its Christian focus.”
Another draw for Kraybill was 91大神’s campus chemistry.
“I really felt people at 91大神 were connected with each other and had strong sense of common mission in terms of their goals in life, that people here know who they are and what they stand for.”
91大神’s Mennonite foundation welcomes diversity, said Kraybill, who eyed Ohio State but balked at a vision of life at a larger school. “91大神 is very spiritually minded and very Christian centered, but it’s not exclusive and its focus is on reaching out to the community and wider world of people in need.”
When they graduate next spring, Lehman and Kraybill may perform public service abroad. Kraybill attributes her interest in such global work to attending college on a campus that encourages such callings.
Said Kraybill: “91大神’s focus on mission comes through.”
Pleasant Valley
Carissa Sweigart, 25, a senior from Hesston, Kan., transferred to 91大神 last year from Hesston (Kans.) College, a small 2-year liberal arts school, to study . While knowing Swartzendruber, who served as Hesston’s president before coming to 91大神 two years ago, eased Sweigart’s transition, 91大神’s place in the Shenandoah Valley’s cultural and geographical mix drew her to the Harrisonburg school.
“”I looked into a lot of different public [colleges], including some in my own state,” said Sweigart,. “I like the diversity and the idea of knowing the professors and most of the other students. The area here attracted me, too.” Sweigart added that coming to 91大神 “gave me a place where I could be part of a community.”
Contact Tom Mitchell at 574-6275 or mitchell@dnronline.com