Celebrating Adventist Higher Education
The Value of a Lifelong Investment
Interview with Dr. John McVay, AACU president
by Jacque L. Smith
Dr. John McVay, president of the Association of Adventist Colleges and Universities and president of Walla Walla University, remembers his first moments on a Seventh-day Adventist college campus. At the start of his college experience, he found his way into a huge gymnasium for registration. When he sat down in front of his academic advisor, his knees were knocking.
“I was scared to death,” said McVay. “Then the wonderful Christian gentleman looked from my paperwork and up into my eyes and said, ‘You know John, you can be anything you want to be.’ From that moment on there were people on that campus who looked into my eyes and said ‘You can be whatever God calls you to be. You can do it.’ They saw more in me than I saw in myself. For me that repeated experience from a variety of prayerful, wonderful people made a real difference in my life.”
And now more than 30 years later, as McVay explains in the interview below, this same transformational commitment to helping students find their God-inspired future still permeates Seventh-day Adventist higher education.
What makes an Adventist higher education worth the investment?
When are you the most inspired by the value of Adventist higher education?
What do you think is the biggest misconception about Adventist higher education?
How does AACU's collaboration function among institutions that are also competitors?
Beyond the spiritual setting, what sets apart the Adventist higher education experience from other institutions?
In a word: opportunity. As I mingle with colleagues from other secular as well as faith-based campuses, I have realized something. In Adventist higher education, students have an unparalleled level of opportunity to exercise their leadership gifts and participate in cutting-edge scholarship. And this is in comparison to schools that usually are much larger. The “average” student on an Adventist campus experiences person-to-person mentoring, opportunities for campus leadership, engagement in social issues, opportunities for research, and so much more.
When are you the most inspired by the value of Adventist higher education?
I see the value most clearly when I watch Seventh-day Adventist students and faculty members carry their faith commitments into the world and make a difference. One of the most inspirational events on our campus is the hooding for our Master of Social Work students. I am always moved when I see what these students have accomplished in their clinical assignments and projects. In any discipline, a Seventh-day Adventist education is at its best when a dedication to excellence in the academic endeavor is twinned with a desire to make a positive and real impact in the world.
What do you find most surprises families about the experience at an Adventist colleges or university?
I repeatedly hear about friendliness, the way students and their families are served on an individual, customized basis. Parents are surprised how their student is valued and treasured while faculty and staff connect with them one-to-one. This is especially noted by those who have had encounters with other types of higher education.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about Adventist higher education?
It can be easy to assume that because schools are large or financially well-endowed or have shinier buildings or football teams, that the education they offer is better than a smaller school with strong faith commitments. The data tells us that is not the case. What happens on Seventh-day Adventist higher education campuses is true excellence. The academic education is excellent. The experience is excellent. The customer service is great.
What has the combined efforts of AACU member institutions helped accomplish for families considering Adventist education?
In the last few years, Seventh-day Adventist higher education campuses have banded together in a new ways to make the case for Seventh-day Adventist higher education. Rob Weaver, AACU’s vice president for marketing, was hired last year as the consortium’s first full-time employee. Rob leads a vigorous set of research, awareness and recruiting initiatives to help each school connect with more potential students, with a focus on young Adventists who did not attend the church’s academies. Through college fairs, publications, electronic and phone communication, families should be clear on the good news about Seventh-day Adventist higher education; it is a superb opportunity, a high quality, great experience that equips you well for life.
Once students are attending an Adventist college or university, this robust system of higher education puts forward a slate of opportunities and resources for students. The opportunities we offer are much more robust than they would be if we were individual, separate institutions.
For example, most Adventist campuses send students out each year to participate in volunteer positions around the world. That is an opportunity that we as a system create together, allowing students a wide array of places to perform a year’s service. By contributing their energy, creativity and expertise, students gain tremendous experience and enrichment. No one of our campuses could craft so rich a range of opportunities.
A second example is Adventist Colleges Abroad, which provides wonderful opportunities for students from our higher education campuses in the North American Division to spend time on the campuses of sister institutions around the world, studying various languages and cultures. Again, it would be difficult for any single institution to create that array opportunities.
There are number of things that AACU institutions do behind the scenes that lead to a better, higher quality experience for students. Increasingly, we depend on one another for benchmarking data and for good advice. So when a student experiences excellence on one campus it is often due to collaboration and counsel that they have received from their sister institutions.
We should not miss the obvious benefit of a system. Many students move from campus to campus for sheer variety or for other reasons. They might take preliminary year or two or three on one of the Adventist campuses and then move to another for to complete an advanced degree program. The way students move from campus to campus in the Adventist system with relative ease, while still following the trajectory of their chosen academic program, is quite amazing.
How does AACU's collaboration function among institutions that are also competitors?
Most of our campuses attract a clientele that is heavily Seventh-day Adventist, which means we are recruiting from the same pool of students. Of course, that can have its challenging moments. But alongside this inevitable competition is a commitment to Seventh-day Adventist values and worldview. To ease the challenge, the college and university presidents get together as many as three times a year to compare notes, reflect and pray together, and build the kind of partnership that benefits the system as a whole. Other administrators and student leaders also gather annually to collaborate. So, amid the reality of competition, there is a high level of commitment to join forces to do our very best for the church and for our students.
As a representative for the leaders of the Adventist colleges and universities in North America, what do you and your peers most wish prospective parents understood about Adventist higher education?
We wish that parents of prospective students could gain a good understanding of the diversity of our institutions, of the various strengths that we have to offer, and of the overall excellence of this group of Seventh-day Adventist higher education institutions. This system is a treasure trove of value for parents of Seventh-day Adventist students and for those students. It is excellent. It is available. It is accessible. It is wonderful.
 About Dr. McVay … Dr. John McVay is in the middle of a two-year term as president of the Association of Adventist Colleges and Universities. He has served as president Walla Walla University since the fall of 2006. McVay came to the Northwest from Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan where he served as professor of New Testament and associate dean (1998-2000) and dean (2000-2006) of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. No stranger to the West Coast, he served at Pacific Union College in Angwin, Calif., for 13 years in the religion department and, for a time, as senior pastor of the campus church. Prior to his ministry at PUC, he served as a pastor in the Iowa and Georgia-Cumberland Conferences. He earned a Ph.D. in New Testament from England’s University of Sheffield in 1995. His family includes his wife, Pam, and children, Marshall, 23, and Macy, 18, both students at Walla Walla University. |
 About the author … Jacque L. Smith, MS, ABC, graduated from Southern Adventist University (Collegedale, Tenn., she attended during the Southern College era) with a Bachelor of Arts in English, a minor in public relations and teaching certification for grades 7-12. She attended the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and graduated with a Master of Science in communication. She is thankful for the 16 years of Adventist education (grades one through college) that her hard-working and persistent parents provided as the springboard for her life. An accredited business communicator who is passionate about Adventist higher education, she served for 10 years at Union College (Lincoln, Neb.) in communication, development and marketing as director of public relations. In her current fulltime home-based role as vice president for motherhood operations, Jacque hopes and prays her two-and-a-half-year-old son will eventually find as much joy and value in Adventist education as she did. |
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