A Message From President Viji George
Welcome to Concordia!
We are excited to announce the Concordia Experience, a strengthened and enriched curriculum designed to even better prepare our students with the skills, knowledge and values essential for the future. As the College enjoys its largest enrollment in decades, this far-reaching plan builds on our areas of greatest strength and student interest to provide a distinctive, all-encompassing educational experience. Endorsed by our Board of Regents and unanimously recommended by the faculty and administration, our transformed curriculum offers experiential, individualized and focused programs tailored to each student’s interests and goals. The Concordia Experience is the most significant curricular change in the history of our four-year College, and we are enthusiastic about its promise.
The Concordia Experience is comprised of seven dynamic new educational programs, all of which reinforce traditional classroom academics with hands-on, real world experiential learning and leadership development for life and career. Six of the programs—education, business, social work, English/communication, social science and biology—are outgrowths of the areas that engage most of our current students. The seventh program, Liberal Studies, challenges students to create their own individualized educational experiences, working one-on-one with advisors to concentrate their studies across fields of their own choosing, such as religion and music, math and chemistry, or art, history and Biblical languages—to suggest a few combinations.
Our enriched curriculum allows us to strengthen the depth of study in each of our seven new programs and, by offering innovative options, to attract students interested in more individualized programs of study, close interaction with faculty advisors and greater opportunities for "real world" learning to prepare them for life after college. Above all, it ensures our students a breadth of exposure to the important disciplines that are basic to the faith-based, value-oriented, liberal arts education for which we are known. Throughout, we are capitalizing on our close-knit residential atmosphere and our proximity to one of the most vibrant, diverse cities in the world. In short, the Concordia Experience will allow us and our students to take fuller advantage of our distinctive location, affiliations and resources. For more details about this important step in our Journey of Promise, see the enclosed answers to common questions.
To help expedite the transformation, the Regents Strategic Planning Committee chaired by Dr. Jack Pietruski, former Vice Chairman of the Board and former CEO of Sterling Drug, is moving swiftly to focus financial and operational support for the Concordia Experience. With this curriculum change fully implemented by the fall of 2006, Concordia’s core mission of engaging and nurturing students for lives of service to community and church is assured for the future.
Sincerely in Christ,
Viji George, Ed.D.
President
