I just noticed that the web site for the American Christian College & Seminary has been disabled. I know that they lost their TRACS accreditation, but have they closed-up shop for good?
They are still there....but things with ACCS are winding down. Web site is down and I imagine it will stay down. They had what should have been the last of the mini sessions a month of so ago and as I understand it they are preparing for the last graduation. Staff are basically donating time and there are clerical volunteers working very.....very....hard to finish up students paperwork etc. Cannot even imagine what Dr. Simmons & Drs. Walton & Hambrick are going through at the moment. I kind of imagine some very desperate students trying to finish before the May deadline. Under the teach out agreement, students who qualified (i.e. 75 % of the way through their program) were allowed to finish by May 05 and receive an accredited degree. This agreement was worked out with the accreditor, Dept of Ed, and ACCS and there were to be no exceptions and no extensions. Therefore if the students are in the midst of the last class and the end of May roles around, they are out of luck. I believe Dr. Beville is no longer at the school. My understanding here from Dr. Schwartz is that ACCS intends to reconstitute itself eventually as strictly a seminary (i.e. graduate school) and work towards accreditation again. They obviously have the course material and library, etc but whether or not they will get it all together to make it work remains to be seen. One thing is for certain....ACCS as we know it is in the death watch stage. North
That they were. Disorganized profoundly and academically underpowered, but no longer weird as they had been (under another name) many years ago. It would be very good to see them up and running again as a seminary only, no undergrad, offering only an MDiv and perhaps, once they felt they could cope administratively, a DMin. Ye ol' nomenclature kook also thinks they would do well to ditch the grandiose name: OKC Seminary or something similar would sound more modest and more respectable.
I agree, Unk! Perhaps something like Carpathian Seminary of the Mid-West would be a bit more modest and respectable......
I once suggested to Floyd Shealy that they should have chosen another name for the seminary. Corvin Seminary in my opinion would have been a better choice than American Christian College and Seminary. Shealy said it had been considered and they had decided against it. ACCS was an improvement over ABCS. Whoever thought ABCS made good sense was not IMHO taking all things into consideration. The University of Biblical Studies and Seminary was an awkward name. But.....I suppose the same could be said by critics of the University of Sarasota that changed to Argosy. The Graudate School of America was criticized as sounding like it was a subsidiary of the Mall of the Americas. It then changed its name to Capella and that did not sit well (many jokes). North
Sorry for being so late to jump in here, but I don't make it over to DegreeInfo very often anymore. North is correct, and Uncle Janko should be pleased. The plan is for "Oklahoma Theological Seminary" to be organized after the closure of ACCS. The ACCS board is committed to providing quality and affordable theological education in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, and by distance learning as well. If and when anything noteworthy happens along these lines, I'll drop in and post the news.
Thanks for the information, Thomas. Are there plans for the Oklahoma Theological Seminary to apply for regional, TRACS, or some other recognized accreditation?
