by Cedarville University Faculty
A PLACE TO LOVE GOD WITH ALL OUR MINDS
By Dr. Mark Caleb Smith, Dean of Arts and Humanities
When asked for the greatest commandment, Christ replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:36–37, ESV).
The Bolthouse Academic Center at Cedarville University, and the classrooms that will fill it, will be a place where students are taught how to love God with all their minds. After all, this should be the first goal of every Christian university.
Yes, we want our students to find jobs, be faithful church members, and have happy lives, but those things do not define a Christian university. Any college can train a student to work, introduce future spouses to one another, and encourage vibrant social networks.
What Can a Christian College Do That Is Different?
My hope is for Cedarville students to walk across the graduation stage with minds that have been transformed. Paul, in Romans 12:2, calls on believers to “be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (ESV).
These transformed minds are not only captive to the Word of God, but they should be obsessed with truth, entranced by beauty, and longing for goodness. They need to be prepared for a complicated world and to have considered the biggest questions of life. The transformed mind will find purpose in God’s vision of the good life and will persevere through the challenges that find all of us sooner or later.
This new building will be made of bricks and mortar, but it should work more like a greenhouse, where godly professors cultivate growing, striving students. Our students will discern what is true by measuring past and present ideas against God’s standards. They will seek beauty by asking if this piece of art, novel, or film lifts our eyes and thoughts toward heaven or if it is degrading.
They will sift our systems of government, our social arrangements, and our culture through God’s framework for justice, community, and fulfillment.
The Christian academic community is different because we labor together as brothers and sisters. While the hard work may be done in the library, bent over a dorm room desk, or slaving over an essay’s last few words on a laptop, the transformation occurs in classrooms.
Laboratories of Learning
These little laboratories of learning should give us the best chance to sit across from a stranger. Perhaps the lady in the corner grew up overseas as the daughter of missionaries, while the man in the middle of the table was a U.S. Marine before he enrolled in college. Maybe the professor spent one lifetime prosecuting criminals and is now using another to consider God’s justice full time. They walk into the classroom as individuals, but they leave, eventually, as a community forged in the struggle for wisdom.
The truth, of course, is that loving God with our minds prepares us for the work of the Christian life. To love God is to love His creation, including its apex. Created in God’s own image, human beings are unique compared to the rest of the universe. To love human beings requires relationships, and relationships are built on bridges that we must construct with awareness and empathy.
Finally, we should love our neighbor by taking what we have learned and echoing it into the world around us. We are called most of all to be faithful in our love of God and our love of neighbor. In that faithfulness, we should gladly broadcast what God’s Word says about politics, justice, morality, truth, and beauty. This is how we reveal to our neighbor not only our own love but also God’s love. This should strengthen our witness.
This is a lot to expect out of an academic building, perhaps, but if we build it on God’s foundation instead of our own, we know it will be strong. We know that He will honor our labors so long as we glorify Him in all that we do.
A PLACE FOR EQUIPPING RECONCILERS
By Dr. Luke Tse, Chair of the Department of Psychology
I often hear our students say, "I want to learn about people," or "I want to help people." Behind these seemingly simple sentiments lie many life stories. Many of our students testify that God has seen them through personal struggles, tragedies, or broken circumstances. They speak of godly people who have helped mend the fragments of their life and instilled hope and courage in them.
The comfort these young adults have received is readying them for the work of comforting others (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). As helpers, we enter the sufferings of others, empathize with what it is like for them, and help them navigate out of their troubled situations. God invites us to “draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16, ESV). In the same way, people are pleading that we not just point them in a direction but also accompany them along the way. It is our sacred honor to go the extra mile with those hurt by the trappings of life, the betrayals of relationships, the weaknesses of the flesh.
A life verse of our program is, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself … and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18–19, ESV). Having entered our brokenness, Jesus secured a way to reconcile and be restored with the Father. In the Department of Psychology, we are equipping students to carry on the work that He has entrusted to us.
It is humbling to be a part of what God is doing at Cedarville University. We have offered Him a mere loaf of bread, and He has blessed us with bushels in return. As a new building rises from the grounds of this campus, we are eager to see the next generations being prepared to carry on the great ministry of our Lord.
A PLACE FOR MENTORING FUTURE EDUCATORS
By Dr. Lori Ferguson, Assistant Dean of the School of Education and Social Work
The mission of the School of Education is to “prepare compassionate, professional educators.” The Bolthouse Academic Center will help us invest in the academic, professional, and spiritual growth of each student so they can go out and bless their own future communities.
During field experience this semester, one of our students came to her professors’ offices looking both for resources to help connect with her reluctant students and for encouragement to persevere. Every semester, one-on-one meetings like this are a source of mentorship and growth for our students. The accessible offices in the Bolthouse Academic Center will make these meetings easier than ever.
Our faculty and staff also entertain prospective students and their families. Recently, one of my students asked if I would meet with her friend visiting campus. This quickly became a full, joyful group, as my student and her mother joined the family members of her visiting friend. We want to help our visitors make Cedarville memories, and the center will bless those efforts too.
Another part of our mission statement is to promote our students’ “commitment to the integration of faith, learning, and life.” We help them demonstrate this growth by showing “teaching competence and Christlike character through leadership and service.”
This goal is abundantly clear in our Symbiotica learning lab! This project helps local homeschooling families provide a quality education to their students. Our education students gain teaching experience and serve as leaders in the homeschooling community. The Bolthouse Academic Center will provide space to meet with these families, collaborate with professors, and better serve our community.
In all, the Bolthouse Academic Center will serve as a place where we can fulfill the School of Education’s mission: where we can foster spiritual and professional growth in both our students and our community.
A PLACE FOR PERSONAL AND NATIONAL IMPACT
By Dr. Glen Duerr, Chair of the Department of History and Government
In the Department of History and Government (H&G), discipling students is the centerpiece of what we do. Our faculty members are always thinking of ways to provide students with the academic background they will need to succeed and the experiences that will help to differentiate them from their peers.
H&G runs Cedarville’s Model United Nations and Mock Trial teams. These teams have raised the name of Cedarville University throughout the academic and wider world. The Model United Nations team, on six occasions, has been awarded the Outstanding Delegation: the highest team award category at the most prestigious United Nations tournament. The newer Mock Trial team has won the “Spirit of AMTA” (American Mock Trial Association), which is awarded to the team that displays the most honesty and fair play in competition — in essence, being salt and light. The Bolthouse Academic Center will provide the perfect place to prepare our students to literally take on the best in the world.
Every student on campus takes Politics and American Culture, or PAC, from our department. This freshman-level course is unique in American and Christian higher education because the course shows students how government, culture, and the Gospel come together in our moment in time. During their PAC semester, students attend at least three lectures from qualified outside speakers on our campus. The Bolthouse Academic Center is going to allow us to cultivate this course through new class space and a venue to welcome guest speakers from around the world to invest in our students for God’s glory.
In our current building, H&G has a War Room, named after the rooms in Central London from which Winston Churchill led the British war effort against Nazi Germany. Our War Room is a comfortable place for students to study together with easy access to professors who can answer their questions. We, the faculty of H&G, are very excited to build a new War Room in the Bolthouse Academic Center and further cultivate spaces for students to study, grow in their faith, and be discipled by faculty who earnestly want them to succeed.
A PLACE FOR PREPARING CHRISTIAN SOCIAL WORKERS FOR SERVICE
By Dr. Michael Sherr, Chair of the Department of Social Work
Christian social workers come alongside people who are facing some of life’s toughest circumstances — poverty, loneliness, abuse, neglect, and hardship — and find ways to offer healing and hope. They are ambassadors for Christ on the frontlines of sin-wrecked communities.
The heart of Cedarville’s social work program is helping these students embody both professional skill and a Christlike compassion in their work. We have a uniquely relational approach to learning in the social work program. Faculty work closely with each student to help them develop the deep, resilient sense of purpose and emotional intelligence they’ll need in their practice. It’s in the offices and classrooms in the Bolthouse Academic Center that our students will grow in their faith and empathy.
These are the spaces where our students will learn to be present and serve with humility, pointing each other toward hope. This is where they will learn to embody the principles of social work and embrace their distinct calling as Christian social workers.
The Bolthouse Academic Center is also going to be a rich space for our faculty to research and build partnerships with faculty in other disciplines. Our whole department will benefit from the guest speakers, workshops, and conferences we’ll be able to host here. And that research and learning will turn into service projects with real-world impact far outside our campus.
The center is more than a physical space — it’s a place where students will grow into compassionate social workers who shine out the love of Christ to a hurting world. Every brick, room, and interaction in this building will be a part of our story of transforming students who are called to serve in the most challenging and rewarding areas of social work in the world.
A PLACE FOR STUDY AND DISCIPLESHIP
By Dr. Stephen Schuler, Chair of the Department of English, Literature, and Modern Languages
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted my own office. I loved visiting office supply stores, and when I first had my own room, I immediately set up an office desk, complete with a desk organizer that held paper clips. I didn't know why anybody needed paper clips, but I had some anyway, because that's one of the things offices had.
For many people, office space is mundane. The word “office" suggests beige walls, stacks of binders, and boredom. But when I landed my first full-time job as an English professor, I realized that one of my childhood dreams had finally come true: I had my own office, complete with a desk and lots and lots of paper clips.
We often tell students to spend two hours studying for every hour they spend in class, but for professors, the ratio of study time to class time is more like 3:1 or 4:1. We are in the classroom for only 12–15 hours per week. We spend the rest of the work week grading tests and papers, preparing notes and slides for next week's lessons, and reading about developments in our field. Much of the real work that goes into teaching occurs not at the front of a classroom but behind a desk.
The office is also the space where we do vital mentoring work with students. Every student sits down with a professor at least once a semester for one-on-one academic advising. They share their aspirations for the future with us, and we help them mark out a career path from their first-year courses to graduation and their first job.
It's also where students come to talk to us about things far beyond academics. It’s not unusual for a student to collapse into one of our office chairs and pour out his or her heart about a difficult choice, a painful breakup, or a crisis of faith. These conversations cannot happen in the hallway outside a classroom. The office is where we can invite students into honest, personal conversations about things that matter most to them, and it's where the important work of discipleship takes place.
So while having an office may not be everyone’s childhood dream, I now see that my childhood dream was one of several God-given desires that led me to a place where I spend a lot of time in my office — not only studying and organizing things, but also mentoring and discipling college students. And I finally know what to do with all those paper clips, too.