When we interview someone for a vacancy in my office, one of the parts of the interview is to ask the applicant what they know about King's. Often the honest answer is that they know very little, so I have taken to giving the candidate a thumbnail sketch of King's. This is what follows.

King's started as the dream of a number of people in the late 1960s. Predominantly but not exclusively from a Christian Reformed background, this group saw the need for a Christian University in western Canada. This group dreamed not of a bible college that serves only Christian students, or of a college that delivered exactly what students would find at the public universities. Instead they dreamed of a place where Christian faith shaped the curriculum and the classroom, with sufficient academic rigor to earn the respect of academia, and that welcomed any qualified student regardless of faith commitment.

That dream came to partial fruition when King's opened its doors to students for the first time in 1979. That first group of students had no idea what they would be able to do with their study at this new institution, but bravely chose to enter into university study on hope that their work would transfer. By the middle of the 1980s, King's was part of the Alberta Council on Admissions and Transfer and was offering predominantly 2 year transfer programs. King's also entered into an affiliation arrangement with the University of Alberta in 1983.

But there was more to this dream than 1 or 2 years of study and then transferring elsewhere. So when the province of Alberta created a system for accrediting private institutions to offer degrees, King's eagerly followed that path, being authorized to grant 3-year BA degrees in 1987 and 3-year BSc degrees in 1988. A couple of years after that, King's was admitted to membership in the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada (AUCC) membership in which provides recognition for King's degrees nationally and internationally.

Since then we have added 4 year BA, BSc, BCom, and BMus degrees and we have added 2-year BEd After Degrees. We also added the areas of study in the 3 year degree programs.

King's has been very overt about being a Christian institution. All our faculty and staff agree to King's broadly framed statement of faith. We come from a wide variety of denominational backgrounds. But we have equally been open to having students of any faith, or no faith, attend and to participate in our faith directed university education.

So is the dream fulfilled? Although we are grateful for how far we have come, we think there is more to come even though we may not be totally clear on what that is. More majors at the undergraduate level? Almost certainly. Graduate programs? That seems sure to come eventually. However, the thing that will mark the future is programs aimed as equipping students to bring renewal and reconciliation to their worlds.