Southern Adventist University

Southern Adventist University

Southern Adventist University
Motto	Power for Mind and Soul
Type	Private
Established	1892
Endowment	$19.4 million
Students	3,053
Location	Collegedale , TN , USA
Campus	Suburban
Website	www.southern.edu

Southern Adventist University is a baccalaureate college located in Collegedale, Tennessee. It is affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The university operates a radio station, WSMC-FM, which plays mainly classical music. The station also provides live broadcasts of services from the Collegedale Seventh-day Adventist Church. The school also operates a health food store and a wellness center. It is ranked by U.S. News & World Report as a Southern Regional College.

History

Southern's roots stem from the establishment of Graysville Academy in Graysville, Tennessee, in 1892. The school moved to the community of Thatcher's Switch in 1916, renaming it "Collegedale". In 1942, Kenneth A. Wright became president of the school. During Wright's administration, "Southern Junior College" became accredited as a four-year institution. A new name, "Southern Missionary College", was adopted in 1944. Two men and four women received Southern's first baccalaureate degrees two years later. Renamed "Southern College of Seventh-day Adventists" in 1982, the school became a university in 1996. On September 9, 1996, trustees voted on a new name: "Southern Adventist University".

In mid-1997, Gordon Bietz became president of Southern Adventist University. Academic expansion has continued, with 7 Master's degrees now offered in business, education, psychology, nursing, and religion. Fifty baccalaureate degrees are offered, 20 associate degrees, 38 minors, and two one-year certificate programs. Over the past 13 years, Southern has grown by over 1,000 students, supassing all previous enrollment records. Southern is the largest undergraduate institution in the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.

In 2007, SAU released Secret of the Cave, a feature film which was awarded the Crystal Heart Award at the Heartland Film Festival in Indiana.

A fire broke out on the morning of April 26, 2005 in Thatcher Hall, a Women's residence hall at Southern, during which a student died and two others were injured. The cause has not been determined.

Names

Southern has had many names since its founding.

• 1892: Graysville Academy
• 1897: Southern Industrial School
• 1901: Southern Training School
• 1916: Southern Junior College

  (Alumni from this period are known as So-Ju-Conians.)

• 1944: Southern Missionary College (SMC)

  (Alumni from this period are known as SMC-ites).

• 1982: Southern College of Seventh-day Adventists
• 1996: Southern Adventist University

Accreditation

Southern Adventist University as a whole is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the Accrediting Association of Seventh-day Adventist Schools, Colleges, and Universities. Individual schools and programs are also accredited by various degree-specific professional organizations and accrediting agencies.

Criticism

Cottrell comments

The late Adventist scholar Raymond Cottrell commented as follows:

"Southern [Adventist University] operates as an agency of Southern Bible belt obscurantism. Furthermore it was (and still is) to an appreciable extent, dependent on the largesse of committed ultra-fundamentalists, who insist that the college operate on ultra-fundamentalist principles."

See Also

• List of Seventh-day Adventist colleges and universities

External Links

• Official website
• SAUwiki is a wiki for Southern run by students - dead link
• WSMC-FM is the radio station owned and operated by Southern Adventist University