Often the first major decision teenagers face in their lives is where to attend college. A new summer program from Boyce College will make that decision easier.
The Boyce Academy, starting in the summer of 2018, promises to give rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors the chance to experience a Christian college campus while earning course credit, announced R. Albert Mohler Jr. today.
Mohler is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and its undergraduate school, Boyce College. The school is named after the founder of Southern Seminary, James Petigru Boyce, and was originally called Boyce Bible School in 1974 before it became an accredited, degree-granting institution in 1998.
“The Boyce Academy represents a particularly promising new venture in the life of Boyce College,” Mohler said. “Forming a Christian worldview is an urgent priority in this generation within our churches and the Academy has the potential to play a vital part in that effort for young adults and their families.
“I look forward to the Academy’s inaugural summer session, as students benefit from the opportunity to learn in this environment from our world-distinguished faculty. It is exactly what I would have needed and eagerly wanted as a high school student.”
According to Matthew J. Hall, who is dean of Boyce College, the one-week residential experience will give students a glimpse of what they can expect from college both academically and socially.
“The Boyce Academy is an intense learning environment intended to give high school students a taste of what the residential Christian college experience is all about,” said Hall, who is also a senior vice president at Southern Seminary.
Students will take two courses during the week of July 16-20 taught by Hall and Bryan Baise, assistant professor of worldview and apologetics at the school. The classes will explore the overarching idea of freedom, covering the theological and apologetic issues of freedom from a biblical worldview with Baise, then the ways in which contested ideas of freedom have developed in American history. After finishing the classes, students will earn two hours of college credit.
The experiences during Boyce Academy will not be limited to the classroom, however. Enrolled students will live in Boyce dormitories, enjoy a sampling of campus life, and interact with resident assistants and campus leaders. The Academy will also allow students to experience the city of Louisville during the evenings. The experience will give high school students a unique exposure to college life at a distinctively Christian institution.
“For families who are trying to discern what makes a Christian college a valuable proposition, that is a hard question to answer in a brochure,” Hall said. “In order to know the answer to that question, students need to be in the classroom and on a campus experiencing the school’s residential life for themselves. This is the optimal way to know whether a Christian college is worth investing in — even more than a campus visit and preview day, as valuable as those events are. This may be the premier opportunity to experience first-hand the value of attending a Christian college.”
The Academy is intended for especially driven high school students. A minimum grade point average of 3.0 is required, and students must complete a short essay in their application to the program. Hall believes the summer academy will be a useful opportunity for students from diverse educational backgrounds.
“The Boyce Academy will be a great opportunity for families to dip their toe in the water and find out what leaving home and experiencing a rigorous academic and social environment would be like,” Hall said. “Students will get to see what it is like to be in an academic environment in which the whole experience is permeated with a Christian worldview and biblical truth. It is tailored for these students and it is going to stretch them.”
Some high school students question whether they want to go to college — or if they even have what it takes, Hall said. The Boyce Academy will help with that decision, too.
“This will give those students a great chance to test their wings academically and see what it’s like to be in a classroom with high-level faculty and to be surrounded by a community of students doing high-level work,” he said. “My expectation is that this initiative is going to help a lot of families confirm that next step — not just for college in general, but a Christian college in particular.”
For more information about the Boyce Academy and to register, visit http://www.boycecollege.com/academy/.