the academy journal
all alumni. At the annual meeting in May, the BACAA passed the presidency to Dave Cooper, with
heartfelt thanks to Bob Heinrichs for his years of
inspirational leadership.
stay on track with our 5-year plan of topping 400
students by 2017.
Accreditation
The College spent a year writing its decennial self
study, which was submitted to the Middle States
Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) in
December 2012. An evaluation team visited campus in February 2013. In June 2013 MSCHE acted
to reaffirm the College’s accreditation and to commend the institution for the quality of its work. A
follow up monitoring report (October 2014) will
update developments in finances, faculty handbook, and assessment. The college community,
under the leadership of Allen Bedford, Dean of
Academics and Faculty, did stellar work generating the report and hosting the team on campus.
Strategic Plan
The strategic plan is available on the College
website:
www.brynathyn.edu/about/president/
strategicplan.html. In 2012-2013, the College saw
significant progress in five major goal areas: financial stability; strengthened academics with a focus
on the New Church view of freedom, reason, and
action; student life that embodies and promotes
New Church values; strengthening ties with the
alumni association; and development of facilities
and grounds to promote educational goals and reflect aesthetic and spiritual values. Enrollment fell
short of our goals but new measures and personnel
were put in place to recover the lost ground and to
BAC Research Report 2012-2013
Sherri L. Cooper
R
above all, the efforts of those who are in the sphere
of intellectual endeavor and can bring together
those things needed to produce true research for
the distinctive uses of this institution. Educationally, this means applying the doctrines through
research” (237-239).
The E. Bruce Glenn Research Fund supports
original research projects that build resources
with a New Church perspective in the academic
disciplines.
The Grant Doering Research Trust Fund is
an endowment held by the Pennypack Ecological Restoration Trust (PERT) to support research
and education projects with the College. This fund
originated to support research on PERT preserve
property in collaboration with College faculty and
esearch at the College is funded in part by the
College Research Fund, the E. Bruce Glenn
Research Fund, and the Grant Doering Research
Fund. These funds are administered by a committee that includes Dean Allen Bedford, Dr. Wendy
Closterman, Rev. Stephen Cole, Edward Gyllenhaal, and Dr. Sherri Cooper, (chair).
Part of the mission of the College is to promote
scholarship and research showing connections between the Heavenly Doctrines and secular knowledge. As E. Bruce Glenn says in A Perspective on
New Church Education, “…the true growth of the
Academy is finally to be measured in the growth
of its new vision in the realm of ideas, and the application of those ideas to the work of New Church
education. This requires time, zeal, money, and
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