Central Nazarene College
Former names | Central Nazarene University |
|---|---|
| Type | Private |
| Active | 1909–1929 |
| Affiliation | Nazarene |
| President | B.F. Neeley |
| Location | , , |
| Campus | Rural |
The Central Nazarene College was a junior college located in Hamlin, Texas. It closed in 1929.
History
The school opened as a grammar school, academy, and junior college[1] in 1909[2] under the leadership of Reverend W. E. Fisher, superintendent of the Abilene and Hamlin districts of the Church of the Nazarene to serve the Hamlin, San Antonio, and New Mexico Districts, with J.E.L. Moore as its first president.[3] Central became the only Nazarene college in Texas when the Nazarene Bible Institute at Pilot Point, Texas was merged with it in 1911.[4] President B.F. Neeley later agreed to a consolidation with Bethany-Peniel College at Bethany, Oklahoma in 1929.[5]
Campus
The college was located southwest of downtown Hamlin and consisted of a grey stone administration building and two wooden dormitories on a 23-acre (93,000 m2) campus. Library and laboratory facilities were inadequate for standard work, however. After the college merged with the school at Bethany, the former administration building was used as a church by the local Nazarene congregation. It burned in 1934, and a new church was built to replace it in 1936.[5]
Academics
The curriculum was primarily for the education of ministers. As a "holiness" school, the charter required faculty to meet church requirements for the teaching of "sanctification."
Notes and references
- ^ Handbook of American Churches
- ^ HistoricMarkers.com
- ^ Moore left in 1917 to be principal at Pentecostal Collegiate Institute (PCI) in North Scituate, Rhode Island. He also became the first president of Eastern Nazarene College when PCI became a liberal arts college in 1918. When the college moved to Wollaston, Massachusetts, however, Moore took the presidency at Olivet University. See James R. Cameron, Eastern Nazarene College—The First Fifty Years, 1900-1950, Nazarene Publishing House (1968).
- ^ See Southern Nazarene University: History
- ^ a b The Handbook of Texas ONLINE: Central Nazarene College