Gordon College (Massachusetts)

This article is about the private college. For public institution of higher education, see Gordon College (disambiguation).

Gordon College
Seal of Gordon College
Motto	Freedom within a framework of faith
Established	1889
Type	Private
Religious affiliation	Non-denominational
Endowment	$27,059,080
President	D. Michael Lindsay
Provost	Mark L. Sargent
Students	1,748
Undergraduates	1,514
Postgraduates	234
Location	Wenham, Massachusetts, United States 42.589780°N 70.822880°W / 42.589780; -70.822880
Campus	Rural
Former names	Gordon Bible Institute (1889-1916), Gordon Bible College (1916-1921), Gordon College of Theology and Missions (1921-1962), Gordon College and Divinity School (1962-1970)
Colors	Navy blue and white
Athletics	ECAC, NCAA (TCCC)
Sports	Baseball, basketball, cross-country, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track & field (indoor and outdoor), and volleyball
Nickname	Fighting Scots
Affiliations	Annapolis Group, CCCU, CCC, NEASC
Website	www.gordon.edu

Gordon College (GC) is a liberal arts college located on the former Princemere estate in Wenham, Massachusetts, United States, northeast of Beverly. Founded by Baptist minister A. J. Gordon as a missionary training institute, the college is largely undergraduate and Protestant.

History

Adoniram Judson Gordon opened a Bible school named Gordon Bible Institute in the basement of his Baptist church in 1889 to train Christian missionaries for work in the Belgian Congo. It was renamed Gordon Bible College in 1916 and moved out of its church and Newton Theological Institution facilities to The Fenway, into a facility given by Martha Frost, in 1919. In 1921, it was renamed to Gordon College of Theology and Missions. In the early 1950s, a Gordon student named James Higginbotham approached Frederick H. Prince about selling his 1,000-acre (4.0 km²) estate to the college and, in 1955, Gordon moved to its Wenham campus. Gordon sold its old facilities to the Wentworth Institute of Technology, the Prince Memorial Chapel on the new campus (since razed) was named for Frederick Prince, and Prince's mansion was renamed Frost Hall after Martha Frost. In 1962, the school changed its name again to Gordon College and Divinity School. In 1970, the Gordon Divinity School separated from the college and merged with the Conwell School of Theology in Philadelphia, once part of Temple University to form the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. In 1985, Barrington College of Rhode Island went bankrupt and merged into Gordon College. Gordon College is the only nondenominational Christian college in New England.

Gordon was founded in Boston in 1889 by a small group of Christians who recognized the need for educated leadership in churches and society. They organized what was first called the Boston Missionary Training Institute. Chief among the founders, and the first president, was the Reverend Dr. Adoniram Judson Gordon, a prominent Boston pastor whose name the school adopted after his death in 1895.

Gordon developed into a liberal arts college with a graduate seminary and moved to its present several-hundred-acre North Shore campus in 1955. In 1970 the divinity school was merged with the Conwell School of Theology from Philadelphia to form the new and separate Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary located in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Barrington College was founded in 1900 as the Bethel Bible Training School in Spencer, Massachusetts, and was later located in Dudley, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island. It took the name Barrington after the campus was moved to that Rhode Island community in 1959. Gordon and Barrington were merged as the united college on the Wenham campus in 1985. In 1996 Gordon College began a graduate program in education and in 2003 added a graduate program in music education.

Academic associations

Gordon has been accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc. (NEASC) since 1961. The music program is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) and the social work program is accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). Its teacher education program is recognized by the Department of Education of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under the Interstate Service Compact.Gordon is a member of the Annapolis Group and the Christian College Consortium. It is also a member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU).

Academics

Gordon College offers the BA, BM, BS, MAT, MEd, and MMEd degrees. It offers undergraduate degrees from 38 majors and 42 concentrations. Gordon offers both a graduate degree in education and music. The Graduate Education program offers M.A.T., M.Ed., and C.A.G.S degrees. The Graduate Music program offers a M.M.Ed.degree, Licensure-only options, and workshops.

Majors

Gordon College offers the following majors: Biblical Languages, Biology, Biotechnology, Combined Languages, Communication Arts, Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, Design, Drawing/Printmaking, Early Childhood Education (ESL), Economics, English (Creative Writing concentration option), Elementary Art Education, Elementary Education (ESL, Special Education), Environmental Biology, Finance, French (Francophone Studies concentration option), German, Global Christianity, Health Professions (7 tracks), History (Public History and Museum Studies concentration option), International Affairs (International Development concentration option), Jewish Studies, Juvenile Justice Ministries, Kinesiology (Health Professions, Corporate Fitness concentration options), Linguistics, Marine Biology, Middle School Education (ESL, Special Education), Mathematics, Music (Bachelor of Arts), Music Performance (Bachelor of Music), Music Education (Bachelor of Music), Painting, Outdoor Education Ministries, Philosophy, Physics (Professional, Computational Physics, Engineering Physics concentration options), Political Science, Psychology, Recreation and Leisure Studies (Outdoor Education, Sport Studies concentration options), Sculpture, Sociology, Social Work, Spanish, Theater Arts, Urban Ministries, and Youth Ministries. Selected students can apply and become Pike Scholars and design their own curriculum alongside a mentoring Faculty Member.

Minors

Gordon College offers interdisciplinary minors and courses that lie outside the traditional departmental framework and which are administered by faculty from various departments. Some of the these minors are: American Studies, Classics, East Asian Studies, Environmental Studies, Gender Studies, Health Professions Program and Minor, Latin American Studies, Mandarin, Missions, Neuroscience, Nonprofit Organization Management, Outdoor Education, Peace and Conflict, Prelaw, Public History and Museum Studies, Sport Studies, Sustainable Development, among others.

Student life

There were a total of 1,599 student enrolled at Gordon College in 2011, of whom 1,514 were undergraduates.

Student Body and Demographics

As a product of its Baptist heritage, Gordon is largely evangelical and Protestant, but it is not tied to any particular Christian denomination. Students are required to be professing Christians to attend the school, and faculty agree with the college's own statement of faith. Students' denominational background is diverse and is not limited to evangelical Christians alone.

Students who attend the college must be Christians and are asked to fill out a Statement of Faith. Students must also sign a Life and Conduct Statement agreeing to the standards of behavior that Gordon values. Gordon College prohibits alcohol, tobacco, and narcotic or hallucinogenic drugs on-campus and has a dorm visitation policy that allows for male-female visitation only during particular hours. Chapel is offered on Mondays and Wednesdays while an academic convocation takes place on Fridays; attendance of chapel, convocation or other events (lectures, debates, presentations, films, exhibitions, etc.) are required to graduate.

In the fall of 2009 the College’s undergraduate enrollment of 1,583 was drawn from 39 states and 26 foreign countries. Approximately 14.3 percent of enrollment— including international students—are of Asian, African American, Hispanic, Native American or non-Caucasian descent.

Extracurriculars

Gordon College has a student association, student ministries, intramural sports, and a Campus Events Council. There are student-led community service and outreach organizations, ranging from drama troupes to Big Brothers Big Sisters and Habitat for Humanity. Varsity sports are NCAA Division III, The Commonwealth Coast Conference (TCCC) and Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC). Teams represent Gordon College in baseball, basketball, cross-country, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track & field (indoor and outdoor). Many other outreach programs are led by Gordon College, based in other sites, such as Lynn, MA, where the school has several partners for community development. Several student-led groups organize spring break, winter break and summer break community service trips and mission trips to different sites around the country and the globe.

Campus

A. J. Gordon Memorial Chapel
in Wenham, Massachusetts

Fowler Campus

Gordon College Fowler Campus is minutes away from picturesque beaches of Massachusetts's Northshore and 25 miles from Boston. Gordon’s main campus—situated on 450 acres of woods—is in Wenham, MA. Gull Pond

The Gordon College Bennett Centerhttp://www.gordon.edu/bennett is a 78,000 sq. ft. athletics and recreational sports facility. The Bennett Center is a gift to the Gordon community from the George and Helen Bennett family. The $8 million center was completed in October 1996 and in 1997 won the Athletics Business Magazine Top Ten New Facilities Award for its design and usability.

The Ken Olsen Science Center, named for the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation and long-time Gordon College Board member, Ken Olsen, is the College’s most ambitious building endeavor to date: an 80,000 sq. ft. science and technology center at the heart of our campus.

Gordon IN

The semester-long programs developed by the Global Education Office are intended to be more than “trips” that allow students to treat the host culture as something to be “sampled” or “consumed.”

Gordon IN Aix is a semester-long program offered both Fall and Spring (as numbers warrant), with a year-long option for advanced students of French. The program provides an immersion experience in French language and culture in the heart of southern France, with a particular thematic focus on the challenges facing the contemporary Christian church in a largely post-Christian Europe. Gordon IN Aix continues its longstanding collaboration with the Institut d'études de français pour étudiants étrangers (a sector of the University of Aix-Marseille), and enjoys close association with the John Calvin Seminary—one of only two seminaries in the tradition of French Protestantism.

The Gordon-IN-Orvieto semester program aims to foster students an attitude of responsive looking and listening for signs of new life in the traditions inhabited by artists, poets, saints, and mystics of the past, especially those of pre-modern Europe in Italy.

Gordon IN Romania uses the pioneering work of New Horizons Foundation in community development and adventure education for youth in post-communist Romania as an applied setting for themes in the social sciences. Students explore the powerful role of experiential education in rebuilding a vision for the common good in the context of post-communist society.

Gordon in Lynn

Gordon in Lynn (GIL) is a partnership between Gordon College and our neighboring city Lynn. Through relationships with various community organizations in Lynn, students can engage, learn and serve in a diverse, urban community.

Salsburg Institute

The Salzburg Institute explores Christian thought and culture and promotes critical engagement with some of the most significant intersections of religion, European culture, thought, and the arts. Through interdisciplinary symposia, music performances, art exhibits, workshops, the Institute’s yearbook, and the summer school in Salzburg, Austria, the Salzburg Institute examines how the study of artistic and cultural expressions and their intersections with Christian intellectual thought relate to contemporary issues.

Notable persons

Alumnus Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Former Gordon College president Harold Ockenga was a leading figure of 20th century American evangelicalism, part of the reform movement known as "Neo-Evangelicalism". Alumnus Pete Holmes is a stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and cartoonist. Thomas Howard, writer and scholar, is a notable former faculty member who resigned after converting to Catholicism.

External links

• Official website