God’s Bible School and College just received formal notification from the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools that the institution was granted full accreditation with an effective date of February 14, 2008. Hallelujah!

While we fully expected this decision, it is truly remarkable. First, after achieving candidacy status in February 2006, our normal course should have been a continued candidacy visit in 2007, followed by our initial accreditation visit in late 2009. Instead, we asked that the visit in September 2007 be for full accreditation. That was leapfrogging two years ahead in the process. Admittedly, this did increase the level of scrutiny that we expected. Two more years of candidacy would have been easy. Saying we were already ready for full accreditation added a level of difficulty. However, we had a good sense about where we were, how far we had come, and what we still needed to accomplish. Plus, God really helped us! We were indeed ready.

Second, when the HLC evaluation team came to campus, we impressed them. They stated that we met all five of the HLC critera, and informed us that they would be recommending initial accreditation to the commission, and, this was the second remarkable thing – they required us to submit no reports of any kind.

There were two other steps in the process: appear before the Review Committee and then wait for the ratification by the HLC’s full board. President Avery, Aaron Profit, and I went to Chicago and met with the Review Committee on January 28, 2008. One of the committee’s final questions was directed to Dr. Carolyn Tennant, the chair of the HLC Evaluation Team. She was asked why the team did not require any follow-up reports. She replied that the team noticed that the institution was so aggressively pursuing improvement on a campus-wide basis, that they felt additional reports would have been a drain on the already productive efforts!

It is nice to hear people talk about you like that.

There will be more information concerning this new accreditation that will be posted on the website and in the Revivalist after the ABHE Annual Convention (Aaron Profitt and I are actually there now).

Rejoice with us!

Dr. Ken Farmer

GBSC-HLC Information