Gift to Midwestern Seminary, record enrollment celebrated

KANSAS CITY, Mo. Assembling for its spring meeting, members of Midwestern Seminary’s board of trustees celebrated the announcement of a significant gift and received reports of enrollment growth.

President Jason Allen announced to the board during its April 4-5 meeting an anonymous gift of $500,000 toward the institution’s student center. He also reported that the spring semester enrollment reached another record level. 

“Year-to-date comparisons with the 2014-15 academic year indicates another year of robust enrollment growth,” Allen noted. “Our August 1 through April 4 total headcount last year was 1,789 students. Over the same time period this year, our unduplicated headcount rose to 2,193. In that we’ll add more students the remainder of this academic year, we anticipate our overall headcount to rise even more. Already, though, this year we’ve realized the largest enrollment in the history of the seminary.”

In other seminary news, Allen informed trustees about the development of a new Chinese Studies program to be launched next academic year. Within this program, Midwestern Seminary plans to offer courses and degrees in the Chinese language as a means of serving Chinese-speaking people in the U.S. and around the globe.

“With an already robust Korean Studies program, adding Chinese Studies will expand our offerings and, together, they will constitute our Asian Studies department,” Allen said. 

In other business, trustees approved the coming year’s budget of nearly $15 million, elected and promoted faculty, and elected board officers.