Moms and dads stifled temporally by their work schedules and parenting duties “attend” class at home, at night or on the weekend.

Some ˛ÝÝŽÉçÇř students will earn a degree in a field even though the school doesn’t have a full department in the discipline on campus. All this is made possible by online learning, a growing segment of higher education.

“Our main job is to serve the community, so this gives us another option to serve the community,” said Bob Young, Blue Ridge’s vice president of instruction and student services. “When [online classes] first started, we thought were going to be giving these classes all over world, but most people live within our service area. They’re taking it because it’s a better way for them to get their education.”

With that mission, online learning is a big part of BRCC’s education-delivery system. Young said the school offers about 120 of its approximately 750 total courses, or 16 percent, totally online, and another 18 percent are hybrids with classroom and online facets.

Most online classes are available whenever the student wants to view them, allowing part-time students with busy lives to continue their education. Young said 60 percent of BRCC’s students take courses part time.

EMU and James Madison University offer some undergraduate courses online, but graduate education is where the technological advancement is most used.

Sarah MacDonald, interim senior director of outreach and engagement, said JMU has five master’s degrees and six certificate programs that can be competed entirely online.

EMU is using online learning as a way to add degrees without a full faculty in a field. Provost said it collaborates with Goshen College in Indiana and Bluffton University in Ohio, schools also affiliated with the Mennonite Church, to offer a and even a new undergraduate offering.

“Last year, we launched a ,” Kniss said. “We went from a faculty of two to a faculty of about six or seven [with the professors at the other colleges].

“I think for small liberal arts colleges, this is going to be part of the wave of the future, to find ways to collaborate with each other to enhance  their offerings.”

Tough To Teach

Online courses usually require students to do more than watch a recorded lecture. They can involve chat or discussion board participation, PowerPoint presentations and other methods that facilitate learning.

“The challenge,” said Greg Cook, Blue Ridge’s instructional technologist, “is to create a virtual classroom.”

While an online class might alleviate a student of the burden of being in class at a specific time, that might be the only thing that’s easier. Young said students must be dedicated to meet assignment deadlines.

“If it’s done right,” said Cook, “it’s actually a little bit harder. The instructor probably is going to give you more to do to make sure you’re engaged.”

The same goes for the professor. Instructors, Young said, must have everything for the course ready to go on the first day, respond to student inquiries sent at odd hours, and update the online classroom regularly.

Some courses are synchronous, but most don’t require a student to sign on for class at a specified time.

Just because a student doesn’t need a classroom or a desk, that doesn’t mean the classes are less expensive. Schools must buy software to host online classes, train faculty members to use it effectively, and have enough bandwidth to support the endeavor, said Young.

With education costs rising, however, university officials said online learning might help stem cost increases by allowing schools to serve students in far-flung locales with minimal infrastructure investment.

“I think of it more as way to enhance quality and access for the same price,” Kniss said. “It saves money for the student if he’s not having to move and pay room and board on campus, but it doesn’t really result in lower tuition. …   In the long run, it might allow us to grow our enrollment without growing the physical plant, give us a better product to market without expanding our faculty and staff or bricks and mortar.”

Graduate Offerings

Blue Ridge is the most advanced local higher-education institution when it comes to online education, having offered classes via the Internet since 1997. Young said some of its associate degrees can be earned entirely online with the exception of reporting for a proctored exam.

Thanks to online education, students statewide can take BRCC’s veterinary technician course and only report to the Weyers Cave campus for laboratory work. One of only two vet-tech programs in the state, Young said distance-learning students go to one of four sites in Virginia to view lectures via direct video and are under the guidance of an on-site vet tech.

At JMU, MacDonald said many of its online course offerings during the school year are for working adults. It has programs that allow adults to complete degrees as well as graduate-level courses.

“We think of it more of as a way provide access to students who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend JMU,” said MacDonald. “Offering our programs online provides access to those students and gives us greater reach.”

In the summer, she said, some professors offer courses online so students can continue working toward a degree without being in Harrisonburg, but no undergraduate programs can be completed totally online.

MacDonald said many of the people taking JMU’s online courses are former students, with the vast majority living in the mid-Atlantic region. However, the school does have international students taking classes online.

Though the school began offering online classes for seminary students about 15 years ago, Kniss said it’s “cautiously” expanded such courses over the years.

“We don’t want to be in front of the curve on this, and we don’t want to do anything that would diminish the value of the degree and the quality of education we provide,” he said. “But we do have a strategic interest in providing broader access to an EMU education.”

To do that, Kniss said the university is broadening its online programming for undergraduates and expanding its collaborative offerings with other universities. For example, by taking online courses offered by partner universities as well as classes at EMU, students can earn a collaborative master’s degree in business administration.

Summer school classes for undergraduates, he said, also another potential growth area.

, online education design specialist for the university, said a number of undergraduate online general education courses that originated at EMU’s Lancaster, Pa., campus now are being offered in Harrisonburg.

Courtesy of the Daily News-Record, Aug. 25, 2015.

Gumm, who graduated this spring from ˛ÝÝŽÉçÇř (EMU), chose the dual degree program with EMU’s and because of their practical focus. He did not anticipate drinking in the global awareness, curriculum flexibility, and integration of disciplines offered by EMU.

“I was drawn to the strong practical focus of both programs at EMU,” says Gumm, who now holds two master’s degrees, an and . “The seminary has this vibrant, beating, pastoral heart, and CJP (Center for Justice and Peacebuilding) has people who are involved in peace and justice work all over the world.”

Global Awareness

Taking some of his classes in EMU’s , Gumm was impressed with the way the institute attracts people from all over the world. He says that experience, along with studying during the year with international students in CJP and the seminary, created his new global awareness.

As part of his required practicum for CJP, Gumm and his family traveled to Ethiopia last summer so that he could teach at a Mennonite-rooted college there, Meserete Kristos College in Debre Zeit.

“I didn’t leave the country until I was 17, and that was as a tourist. My 11-year-old daughter got to spend a month on a church-college campus in Ethiopia,” says Gumm. “I couldn’t have even imagined that as an 11-year-old.”

“But the global awareness didn’t turn me into a tourist. It turned me into a pilgrim.”

Flexibility

Both of Gumm’s degree programs have multiple concentrations or tracks, so the combinations for study are vast if one combines the two.

“My track in the MDiv was academic, and my concentration in the MA in conflict transformation program was ,” he says. “But you could follow the pastoral-care track in the MDiv and a trauma-healing concentration in the conflict transformation program and come out with a focus that is completely different from mine.”

Integration

Gumm, a licensed minister in the Church of the Brethren, discovered EMU’s dual-degree possibilities via the Internet while he was living in Iowa. Once enrolled in both master’s programs, he ‘”was always trying to make connections between the two.”

“For example, I wrote a paper for a restorative justice class that was also trying to do some Anabaptist theological and historical work showing why Mennonites in Canada in the 1970s gave birth to the modern restorative justice movement.

“I never got tired of the intellectual inquiry. There were always more paths to follow and more connections to make.”

Family Investment in EMU

Gumm was not the only one in his family wearing in a graduation robe on April 28, 2012. Brian’s wife Erin concurrently completed an MA in counseling. Not wishing to part from EMU immediately after graduation, Gumm drew upon another gift he has—computer technology—and became the distance-learning technology analyst at EMU, helping EMU’s graduate programs evaluate and adopt distance-learning software.

Brian Gumm and Aaron Kauffman will likely never forget their capstone project at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

That could be because this will be the pair’s final opportunity to work together, as they have throughout their four years of college. Or it could be because their project’s final activity will call for nearly 50 people to wash each other’s feet.

The students’ project is an interactive academic conference that has already sold out, more than a week ahead of schedule.

It will bring together Christian scholars from various states and denominational backgrounds for one common goal: to learn how to serve one another – and the church – better, even while living in a secular world.

“It feels really great to be wrapping up seminary with Aaron this way,” Gumm said.

Conference Details

The two have been planning the conference, named “#Occupy Empire: Anabaptism in God’s Mission,” since the fall, when national Occupy movements were fully underway.

While one of the event’s speakers was involved with Occupy Harrisonburg, it’s not just about the movement, the organizers said.

“It was more a play on the terminology,” Kauffman said, explaining the theme of the event. “It’s sort of an age-old question in the church – how do we live in the world, but not of the world?”

The theme will tie in with the conference’s final activity, foot washing.

“How are we supposed to occupy the empires of this world? How do we operate in them?” Kauffman asked. “I think we take a servant posture.”

Registration for the two-day conference, scheduled for April 13 and 14 at EMU’s Discipleship Center, has already closed.

“I really wasn’t sure what kind of response we would get,” Kauffman said. “[I was] very pleasantly surprised. I thought we would keep registration open until the day of [the event].”

The maximum capacity, because of limited funding and space, was 40. Those dozens who have signed up are from at least five states – many of them graduate students from other universities.

The conference will feature a mesh of worship services and academic presentations, some followed by formal responses from EMU professors and more casual question-and-answer periods.

There are 10 speakers total.

“Having worship services be part of an academic theology conference was an intentional move on our part to kind of bridge the gap that’s often perceived to exist between the church and the academy,” Gumm said. “We want to close that gap.”

The Theme, Realized

The discussions and presentations throughout the conference will focus on a variety of issues – art, race, alternative forms of theological education and church history, to name a few.

Living and working in what many argue is a largely secular world has become increasingly more difficult for some Christians, and the church as a whole, according to the organizers.

“It’s very challenging to be a church in a very politically polarized environment,” Kauffman said. “It does feel like, in terms of American politics, we’ve become increasingly polarized and ideological in our commitments.”

Even though Christians might belong to the same church, there are more and more people on far sides of the political spectrum, he added. And many let that interfere with church goals.

“Sometimes it feels like their political commitments are greater than their commitment to be in church together, and to me, that’s a problem.”

Young Anabaptist scholars will gather at (EMS) April 13-14 to discuss this at a conference titled, “#Occupy Empire: Anabaptism in God’s mission.”

Brian Gumm and Aaron Kauffman, both in their final year at EMS, are organizing the conference.

“We hope to create some bridges between older and younger scholars, the church and the academy and those interested in evangelical witness and rigorous social engagement,” Kauffman said.

Emerging scholars featured

The conference will feature Isaac Villegas, Chris Haw, Nekeisha Alexis-Baker, and Janna Hunter-Bowman as primary presenters. Respondents will be ˛ÝÝŽÉçÇř (EMU) faculty, including Peter Dula, chair of Bible and religion department; Mark Thiessen Nation, professor of theology at EMS; and Carl Stauffer, assistant professor at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at EMU.

Kauffman and Gumm wanted to play on and challenge the “occupy” language made popular in the last year by protesters around the country.

“We wanted to reinterpret that word,” said Gumm. “We were thinking about it theologically as part of the incarnation. How can we faithfully inhabit the empire as Christians?”

“We also wanted to turn it [occupy] on its head,” Kauffman added. “We are asking how God’s kingdom occupies us.”

Conference part of MDiv capstone project

Gumm and Kauffman planned this conference as part of their at EMS. Both are master of divinity students in the academic track. Gumm is a dual degree student with the at EMU.

“Planning this conference is part of our continued discernment about the ministerial vocation of education,” said Gumm. “We thought an academic conference like this could help us continue to tease out this call.”

The conference is sponsored by the Anabaptist Missional Project and the John Coffman Center at EMS.  Online registration is available at . Registration will remain open until the conference is full. Cost of the conference is $15 for students and $25 for non-students.

Gumm and Kauffman received a grant from the Orie Miller Global Village Center at EMU to support the conference.

Twelve of the 23 courses offered this fall will be offered once a week or on the weekend to make it easier for students who must travel a distance to the seminary.

Over one-third of the students currently taking courses at EMS live at least an hour from Harrisonburg. Some drive two or three hours. With the new block schedule, these students may only need to come one or two days a week instead of three or four.

Commuters will travel less

“Next year it would be possible for someone from Roanoke to come and take up to six credits one day a week,” said Don A. Yoder, director of admissions.

Lee Ann Powers drives two hours one way from Bedford, Va. to attend her evening class this semester.

“With the rising gas prices I’m looking forward to a monthly weekend class next fall. It will be cheaper for me to drive up once a month and stay overnight,” said Powers. “Plus I’m hoping it will enhance the sense of community and belonging to be here more than one evening a week.”

Part-time students will be able to balance work and school

“Almost half of the students taking courses at the Harrisonburg campus are part time,” Yoder noted. “Many students hold part-time ministry positions or work other jobs along with their seminary studies.  This new schedule will make it easier for them to manage work and school. ”

The block schedule also benefits students taking courses in other at EMU. All other graduate programs have block schedules, and so students who are taking courses in multiple programs will be able to schedule classes more easily.

Dual degree students benefit

“I’m enrolled in both the seminary and ,” said Brian Gumm, a third-year student from Harrisonburg, Va. “The new schedule will make it much easier for me to take all the classes I need to graduate next year.”

To learn more about courses at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, visit the seminary website , call the admissions office at 540-432-4257, or email semadmiss@emu.edu.

“EMS collaboration with other graduate programs places seminary learning in the thick of the cross-disciplinary studies needed to make sense of today’s complex and fast-changing world,” said seminary dean Michael A. King.

“Biblical, theological and church studies are still the seminary’s foundational disciplines,” King stated, “but seminary studies unfold within the crosscurrents of cultural, social, scientific and interfaith studies as well as many other disciplines. At its best, this collaboration will make seminary studies thoroughly interdisciplinary.”

Seminary on a university campus

EMS has the advantage of being a seminary on a larger university campus. For students, this provides opportunity to experience a rich campus life while taking advantage of other graduate-level offerings.

EMS has long had with both the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and Master of Arts in Counseling program at EMU. Now, EMS is working on collaboration with the Masters in Business Administration program and strengthening ties to other graduate and undergraduate programs.

“The various collaborative efforts with graduate programs provide a unique opportunity for students to focus on both theological studies and other areas of interest on one campus,” said Dr. Lonnie D. Yoder, associate seminary dean. “It generates possibilities for creative and integrative academic work and practical training.”

Collaboration with MBA

Collaboration with the MBA program has resulted in working together to plan the an annual training program for pastors and church leaders. The theme, “God and Mammon: Rethinking Stewardship,” will provide resources for Christian business leaders as well as church leaders.  Everence (formerly Mennonite Mutual Aid), and Mennonite Economic Development Association (MEDA) will also be involved in shaping the theme and content. Theologian Walter Brueggemann will be the keynote speaker.

Seminary dean Michael A. King and associate dean Lonnie Yoder began their second full semester leading EMS in January this year.

By Tim Chapman, Daily News-Record

Before the Internet, one of the more public ways for a church to communicate to members and nonmembers alike was on its roadside sign. Today, though, pastors can tweet or update the congregation’s Facebook page.

Some churches are learning how to balance these diverse media, and Brian Gumm, an ˛ÝÝŽÉçÇř student, believes a few principles apply to both the old and new ways of spreading God’s word.

“A big part of it is to know your audience, but also know the technology, to know the medium you’re using, but also to know yourself,” Gumm said Tuesday at the , an annual convention for Mennonites. The leadership school began Monday and ends today with a closing celebration at 7 p.m.

Gumm and , a communications coordinator at the , advised a group of 12 local and out-of-town ministers on how to effectively use everything from social media to the church bulletin.

“I think the idea of critically looking at each one of the pieces of technology and understanding what are you trying to do, and does this really do that, was valuable,” said Tom Kauffman, the Ohio Mennonite Conference minister.

Find The Right Talent

The pair took turns explaining the basics of different media, while stressing the importance of finding members of the congregation best suited to and most interested in helping manage the flow of information and technology.

, EMS communications coordinator

“Know who likes to take photos in your congregation,” Amstutz said. “And don’t discount the youth. They really like to take photos and find interesting angles. It’s part of their culture.”

But Amstutz and Gumm also reminded the ministers to be wary of temptations that lead to an excess use of any medium.

Ministers should encourage families to develop guidelines for Facebook, Twitter and other Internet platforms.

“In a short amount of time, Facebook has deeply penetrated American culture,” Gumm said. “If you get sucked into Twitter, you can get stuck reading or tweeting like crazy.”

But if used in moderation, social media can be beneficial for churches to reach out to younger members about events or upcoming sermons.

Not Too Social

Gumm also discussed the benefits of churches or leaders regularly blogging with sermon brainstorming, pictures from church events, and video and audio from services.

He was quick to discourage allowing comments on blogs and Facebook pages because of the vitriol often found in comments all over the Internet.

“Comment sections … are often such a wasteland,” he said. “They can be really combative.”

Gumm also discouraged churches from trying to be too “cute” or political on their roadside signs. His PowerPoint presentation said “Please, PLEASE say No” to cheesy messages on signs, but Kauffman and others disagreed with strictly putting clerical information on the signs.

“There’s a church in our neighborhood that’s doing this and they love it,” Kauffman said. “People have really identified that church with that sign.”

Gumm worries about neighboring churches getting into arguments and trying to make points with their signs. He acknowledged that if catchy sayings on a sign do well in a certain community, a church should stick with something that works.

He also doesn’t want churches to become lazy and rely too much on this older form of communication.

“This is not a replacement for outreach,” Gumm said. “This can be an important way to communicate something, but you have to understand the limits of it and put some thought into it.”