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.

What Is Christian University Education

A colleague has asked that I write a couple of paragraphs on the subject of what Christian University Education means. So I'll share that here too.This is written from a faculty perspective in an attempt to say why we do what we do.

Our Christian faith is the reason we study. If all of creation, not just the religious bits, belongs to God then all subjects are worthy of study. And more than that, inasmuch as God has revealed himself in creation, our academic study helps us to trace the thumbprint of God. 

Our faith is also why we teach. Teaching is a mandate for all Christians and for us in academic life that also includes classroom instruction. It is a way for us to care for our students by sharing what we have learned in our fields to help students become their best selves and make their best contribution to bringing reconciliation to their world. Our teaching can impart to students the sense that they bear God's image and that they can see echoes of that image in our disciplines.

Note that this does not mean that all our students need be Christians. King's open admission policy is based on the belief that all people carry the imprint of God from creation. Christians do have the presence of the Spirit molding them into Christ's image, but all are welcome to take what we offer. At worst they will get excellent instruction in their discipline, and a challenge to integrate all parts of their lives with their academic work. At best they will take steps to engage with the Creator behind the creation they study.

Our faith is also why we work in research. Our God is a creative God, and we derive the impulse to explore and discover and make new knowledge from Him. We are subsidiary because our creative work is built on creation; even so we are imitating our Father. Our ideal is not to be isolated in our study or labs, but to join together across disciplines in this creative effort. Our ideal is further to engage students directly in our research so that they can apprentice in this creative task.