CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. (ABP) — Campbellsville University's Carver School of Social Work and Counseling is set to award its first master's degrees 12 years after acquiring the Carver name for its baccalaureate program from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The Kentucky Baptist Convention-affiliated school will award 15 master-of-social work degrees May 7, according to John Chowning, vice president for church and external relations.
The 2,600-student private school founded in 1906 established its first program of social work in 1974. The program was phased out in 1989 and reborn in 1994. In 1998 Campbellsville purchased the Carver name from Southern Seminary — located in nearby Louisville, Ky. — which the year before closed its long-standing Carver School of Church Social Work.
The legacy of the original Carver school began in 1907 when the Woman's Missionary Union established a training school on the Southern Seminary campus to prepare young women to serve in missions and social work. In the 1960s the training school merged with the seminary, making Southern the only seminary of any denomination to offer an accredited master's degree in social work.
Seminary president Albert Mohler fired Diana Garland as dean of the Carver school in 1995 after she complained to students about his decision to declare a prospective faculty member unfit because he believed God could call a woman to preach. Mohler told students that modern social work was no longer "congruent" with theological education. Accreditation problems followed, and in 1997 Southern trustees voted to abolish the Carver school.
Garland moved to Texas to become founding dean of the School of Social Work at Baylor University. Baylor's social work school offers both undergraduate and master's degrees and plans to launch a Ph.D. program in 2011.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.