NEW ORLEANS (ABP) — Seminaries all across the theological spectrum are offering help to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, which temporarily has moved operations from its flooded campus to a satellite site in Atlanta.
Theological schools as diverse as ultraconservative Dallas Theological Seminary and liberal Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va., have offered help, including waived tuition and streamlined enrollment, to students who want to transfer for a semester or a year. Even Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Nova Scotia — 2,817 miles by car — offered to waive international fees for New Orleans' students.
Moderate Baptist schools, such as Baylor's Truett Theological Seminary, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, and Gardner-Webb's M. Christopher White School of Divinity, have invited students from New Orleans Seminary to enroll temporarily while the Southern Baptist school gets back on its feet.
BTSR is offering to pay tuition costs for students who enroll in Web-based or on-campus courses until normal operations resume at the New Orleans campus. At least one student has accepted a similar offer from Truett Seminary.
Dan Aleshire, executive director of the Association of Theological Schools, wrote New Orleans president Chuck Kelley to relay the offers of help. “We cannot comprehend the extent of personal losses to students and faculty, not to mention the institution's losses,” wrote Aleshire.
But officials at New Orleans hope to keep most of their students connected to the Southern Baptist school.
About 1,500 of the seminary's 3,400 students are enrolled in one of 17 extension centers across the Southeast, which means almost half of the student body can continue study uninterrupted. The 1,900 New Orleans-based students are being encouraged to enroll in the Atlanta extension, where the seminary administration has moved temporarily, in other extension centers, Internet classes or other alternatives.
Although the New Orleans campus will be closed until at least January 2006, most of the scheduled classes will be conducted as “directed study” with Internet enhancements, a seminary official said.
“Therefore, all of our on-campus students can complete this semester and keep on track toward graduation,” said Provost Steve Lemke in a letter to Aleshire. “Although a few of our students have transferred to other institutions who generously offered free tuition and lodging, we hope to keep the overwhelming number of students enrolled at NOBTS through these diverse delivery systems.”
“Although most of our academic buildings survived with only modest damage,” Lemke continued, “all 40 of our on-campus faculty residences and many of our student apartments were flooded from between four feet to 10 feet, essentially destroying all the earthly possessions of many in our seminary family.”
Most of the damage to faculty and student residents will not be covered by insurance, Lemke explained.
“Most of us were advised by our insurance agents not to purchase flood insurance because our campus is the highest point in Orleans Parish, and had never flooded,” he wrote. “If our campus flooded, the advice went, it would only be a catastrophic event that destroyed the whole city. Unfortunately, that's just what happened….”
Some churches and seminaries are offering free or affordable housing to seminary students left homeless by the flooding.
“Our concern and prayers are with you,” Aleshire wrote, “as the shock of the storm's destruction gives way to the multitude of efforts to serve students, faculty, and staff; to resume the seminary's educational programming; and to rebuild a damaged campus.”
Among the seminaries offering various types of assistance are Virginia Protestant Episcopal in Alexandria, Va.; Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, S.C.; Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind.; United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio; and Lexington (Ky.) Theological Seminary.
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of six Southern Baptist schools, welcomed the New Orleans faculty to its Fort Worth, Texas, campus for a hastily scheduled retreat Sept. 9-11, during which the New Orleans faculty made plans to continue the fall semester.