Slicing through the curriculum

Integrating Christian faith into a new college

Abstract

If one could start a new Christian college, what would faith integration look like? Without decades or centuries of institutional history, how would the faculty craft a distinctly Christian curriculum from scratch? What steps should be taken to evaluate the depth of such integration and promote accountability to the institutional mission? How does an institution ensure missional fidelity as it increases enrollment, hires new faculty, and changes leadership over time? While such questions can serve as effective prompts to promote faculty discussion about curricular improvements, they were part of the lived experience during the past two decades as Regent University created its College of Arts & Sciences (CAS) to bring undergraduate education to an institution that had been exclusively graduate focused. This paper offers a description of the process that CAS used, including its challenges, with an emphasis on the process used to integrate faith throughout the curriculum. The authors’ intent is to provide a useful model for other Christian institutions wishing to pursue a similar integrative approach for forming or reforming an academic endeavor.