Academic Dean’s Blog

On May 26 we had admissions interviews for semester Fall 2008. We interviewed six applicants for four undergraduate programs. One for youth ministry, two for Christian education, two for church planting and one for pastoral-chaplaincy program. Two of interviewed applicants attended our Open House early this May and I had a privilege of meeting them already.

Kyiv Seminary undergraduate admissions interviews schedule is posted and you can read more about KTS admissions in my post from Nov 24, 2007 and on Admissions Stats page. Do not forget that we now have two more exciting and new undergrad programs, read about them here.

Undergraduate Admissions Interview Dates

• February 25-26
• May 26-27
• August 25-26-27
• September 29-October 1 (late admissions)

Also important:

Fall Classes for freshman group start on October 6, 2008.

Read also Admissions 2008

Today the Executive Council of Kyiv Theological Seminary approved two new undergraduate majors: Chaplaincy and World Missions. These two majors will expand the seminary’s offer from current five to seven undergraduate programs in bachelor of theology degree. These programs will provide evangelical churches with opportunities to train believers for service in Ukraine and other Eurasian countries.

The mission statements of the new programs are as follows:

The mission of the Chaplaincy major at Kyiv Theological Seminary is to give the students deep biblical and theological understanding, and to train them to be effective providers of spiritual and pastoral care for people who are limited in satisfaction of their social and religious needs in the armed forces, in hospitals and in prison.

The mission of the World Missions major at Kyiv Theological Seminary is to prepare students theologically and culturally to effectively serve Christ in other cultures, in order to help fulfill the great commission.

The seminary will partner with the All-Ukrainian Military Christian Brotherhood and Olive Branch International in offering Chaplaincy major; with Equippers Network International in offering World Missions major.

I am so glad that our hard work that was done over months in Curriculum Committee and with program directors has its fruition in EC approval. Today KTS Executive Council and seminary President Anatoly Prokopchuk have made another step of faith that we all pray here would bring more glory to our risen Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through service of our graduates in years to come.

Yet this approval of the Proposals is only the beginning of greater work: student recruitment, student training and then sending graduates into the fields and helping them in fulfilling their calling. Please pray for us as we walk this path of faith. Please pray for seminary renovation. We know that we need more dormitory space because God is growing us for even greater work for himself. We humble ourselves under his hand, we seek further his will and commit ourselves to walk in faith as he leads us.

Our seminary opens her door to new students who will enroll in Fall 2008 classes. What programs are available?

Master of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies (Diversified emphasis), this program is offered by Talbot School of Theology through its Kyiv extension at our seminary. We already accept applications. Admissions guidelines.

Bachelor of Theology program with 4 majors: Church Planting, Christian Education, Pastoral Leadership and Youth Ministry. We accept application now. Admission guidelines.

This is the end of work day here in Kyiv. We have processed admissions data and I now can post final numbers in regard to fall admissions at Kyiv Theological Seminary.

As the table shows we have 9 full time residential and 33 modular students. Youth Ministry major is top program this fall with total number of 20 students. Christian Education, Church Planting and Pastoral Leadership majors share same number of students – 6 in each major. Biblical Studies program has least number of students so far but the number will probably increase with addition of one international student who comes for interview next week which will give this program total of 5 students.

Just to give a quick update that we have accepted 41 new students for residential and modular programs. We have one transfer student from another Christian college. Total number of submitted applications: 47. We determine acceptance by grades received during exams and interviews. Passing score this year is the same as previous year, i.e. 125 of 418 max points. I just talked with dean of a Christian University in Kiev and he said that this number of applicants is good comparing to general tendency and situation of other Christian colleges in Ukraine. We have reasons to thank the Lord for our new students. Interviews showed us that almost all of them are strongly committed to ministry and devoted to God. Our privilege and delight to train, equip and develop their skills for even more effective ministry.

Photo: Youth Ministry Major Interview.

Admissions 07

I look to new semester with gratefulness and anticipation. This coming Monday we will have another group of applicants taking entrance exams for Bachelor of Theology programs. Our total number of good applicants approaches 45. 18 of them already enrolled for classes this Fall semester. Four were denied application, I hope they’ll make it next year. This number of forty applicants is not bad at all, though it is not what I personally wanted. Yet this still can be considered as a miracle. Particularly in light of reports I hear about other Ukrainian bible colleges that experience decline in submitted applications for admissions. It is needed to mention that we do not accept everyone in order to reach our target numbers. No. For us quality students matter over quantity of students. Of course we also want to ensure that what we offer suits the needs of church community and individual believer. Anyhow, we may have one more occasion of admission exams and interviews. This will be our alte admission days just like we did last year. The date will be set in coordination with our Program Directors.

Seminary Website

Two small banners are seen on the website in left column: NCYM website and updated banner for Calendar of MA program. They are refined to match each other in style. I guess they match. Agree? (What really concern me though is that NCYM website periodically hacked by some Turkish group. Even at this time as I am writing this. Sad. Any ideas how to secure the website? And ours?)

Front page and several sub-pages now feature direct links to program descriptions. Right side of the page, under big picture header. Potential students now can quickly access and download application documents. We added links to undergrad and graduate application packages at Future Students section of seminary website. You may want to scroll down a little and look at bottom right of your screen. Also Application for Admissions was translated into Russian. We had several applicants (nor more than all fingers of mine) in our history who struggled with Ukrainian application. But with intention to assist our potential students we made this document translated into Russian. Let’s watch how floods of students from Russia runs to us now. By the way why not? We offer quality education for affordable donation. Yes, donation. If you can not afford to pay tuition, room and board, we offer it to you for free. Donate as much as you can afford. No one will chase you down if you can not pay.

Seminary and Online Learning – ATutor

Our students and faculty now can enjoy new version of ATutor. Today we have upgraded from version 1.5.4 to 1.5.5. “What is ATutor?” – you may ask.

The change log and features are on ATutor product website. What do I like about new version? First of all now it has Ukrainian, and Russian localizations! English is there by default. That is everything on the website can be seen in these three languages – languages that seminary community operates for study, fellowship and worship What makes me glad is that we are rescued from translating and testing language pack ourselves – lots of ours saved! This also mean that any student of ours and teacher can master this online software in his or her native language – they save their time as well. Second major improvement is visual. The theme for website that is online interface is cleaner and pleasurable to browse. Color scheme is improved. You may not notice the difference I’ve mentioned if you have used it occasionally so far.

What does it have to do with Academic Office? We already created two courses: Academic Office and Faculty Office there. These two course environments will function as reference, resource and interaction places. AO – available to students, faculty and staff. FO – to faculty and staff only. So documents and information that you were looking for to have will be available in one or both of these places. Of course whatever is suitable for public website will appear on seminary main website.

A Software I Use

I’ve been using OpenOffice 2.1 and now version 2.2 for some time now and find word processing software very good. There is portable version of the software that you can put on your flesh drive and enjoy it on any computer without your favorite software programs. http://www.openoffice.org Maybe some day soon we’ll teach our students how to use this free open source software instead of teaching them expensive products that in fact only few of them can afford to buy a license for.

To let you know that Admissions Stats page has been updated.

Updated again on August 9.

Today Admissions Committee (Joel, Mary Ellen, Lena, Natasha and myself) met to finalize results for fall semester. Our of 23 total applicants who took exams so far we have 19 accepted for fall semester. Next exams we’ll plan to do in August and expect more candidates to come for entrance exams. Please pray with us for it and thank the Lord for those whom we already accepted as students.

We have 20 applicants who came for two days entrance exams aiming to enroll into bachelor programs this coming fall semester. They are from Ukraine and Belarus. Our next entrance exams will be in August 20-21. Right before beginning of the fall semester.

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