According to their catalog, Indiana Christian University (South Bend, IN) was founded in 1907, was chartered by the state of Indiana in 1923 as Indiana Bible Institute, and became Indiana Bible College in 1934. The present name was adopted in 1940. ICU is not regionally accredited, but is state approved, approved for training veterans and non-immigrant students. ICU offers the following degree programs: AA, BA, MA, MDiv, DMin and ThD. Does anyone have experience with, or further information on, ICU? Russell
Unfortunately, I don't. But I want to point out that the existence of religious exemptions in many states makes their state approvals almost meaningless in the case of religious schools. I don't know if that's the case in Indiana though.
In a great number of cases I agree with you totally, Bill. Since most unaccredited religious oriented schools offering higher degrees are relatively new (at least since perhaps the 70's), and since ICU goes back to 1907, I didn't know if ICU was a legitimate, albeit unaccredited, school. To be frank, I only recently heard of the school. Russell
I have no personal experience with ICU. altho' I have seen its catalogue at the public library. It's run by LeSEA ministries -- the late Lester Sumerall's ministry, now run by his son. (I know them best from watching cartoons on LeSEA's Channel 40 in my youth . . . but I digress). A friend did his funeral director training at ICU, in a short-lived program that ended when LeSEA bought it and merged it with their own World Harvest Bible College. They have a very limited website: http://www.lesea.com/ministry/index.cfm/fa/icu My impression is that they are sincere; from their catalogue, they seem to be a very solid bible college. (Those with more experience in that arena would probabaly better placed than I am to judge their offerings.) That being said, Indiana has a religious exemption, as we discovered with Trinity College and Seminary down near Evansville, but from the sort of unaccredited institutions claiming religious exemptions we have here, it seems the state does actually enforce the rules regarding exemptions from accreditation for religious degrees (altho' some of TC&S's offerings in Christian Management and Leadership seem to be awfully close to the line). I was rather concerned when I saw the paperwork for student visas included in the general catalogue: this struck me as a surprisingly wide distribution of specialised paperwork -- or an indication of the origin of any of their students. Jon Porter
Having a delt with a mutitude of Ministries involved on the educational side, I can tell that this school being involved with Les Sumaral is solid. He ran a clean shop and from what I am told now his sons are doing tthe same.
I am not sure but I think this is the same outfit that operated under the same name in Indianapolis in the middle '80's. I visited them while attending Earlham School of Religion and found them in a storefront with tables, chalkboards and typewriters. I cannot remember the "doctor's" name who was President at the time but he was a jovial fellow. They did use LeSea materials as I remember reading about their courses in their catalog and, I believe, Lester Sumerall was on the Board.
I attended Indiana Christian University. It's not regionally or nationally accredited if that is what you are looking for, as always there are universities that accept non accredited credits towards their undergraduate program (not graduate programs) depending upon the university. It was like a bible study, refresher course on the basics, was something I wanted and needed at the time. I noticed that since then the instructors primarily consist of those who earned a non accredited bachelors or graduate degree from ICU as well. So that's something to keep in mind. Don't believe for their courses in Hebrew and Greek that instructors received academic training on that and the program I was in did not require those language courses. God bless
