| Union Presbyterian Seminary | |
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| Established | 1812 |
| Type | Private |
| President | Brian Blount |
| Location | Richmond, Virginia, United States |
| Website | Union Presbyterian Seminary |
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Union Theological Seminary & Presbyterian School of Christian Education (Union-PSCE), located on the near north side of the city of Richmond, Virginia, is a theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Through its main campus in Richmond, Virginia, and an extended campus program in Charlotte, North Carolina, Union-PSCE prepares men and women to serve the church as pastors, educators, scholars, chaplains, and missionaries. In 2010, the seminary's name will be officially changed to Union Presbyterian Seminary.
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History
Union Seminary was founded in 1812 as the theological department of Hampden-Sydney College, located near Farmville, Virginia. In 1898, the school was relocated to its current campus location on the north side of Richmond, Virginia. The General Assembly’s Training School (ATS) for Lay Workers was founded in Richmond in 1914 as a complementary institution intended to train “workers outside of the regular ordained ministry.” In 1959 ATS was renamed the Presbyterian School of Christian Education (PSCE). PSCE offered a Masters Degree in Christian Education, and operated across the street from Union Seminary until 1997, when Union and PSCE were joined in federation, becoming Union-PSCE. In 2002, an extension campus in Charlotte, North Carolina, began on the campus of Queens University of Charlotte, offering both M. Div and M.A.C.E degrees to part-time students. The Charlotte extension is known as Union-PSCE at Charlotte.
In 2009, Union's board of trustees voted to officially change the name of the institution to Union Presbyterian Seminary. The school will continue to operate as Union-PSCE until the 2010-2011 school year when the school will official become Union Presbyterian Seminary. In an address about the school's name change, the school's president, Brian Blount said the new name emphasized the schools history as "Union Theological Seminary" as well as the school's Presbyterian heritage.
For many years, the seminary operated WRFK, an FM radio station at 106.5 MHz. It was sold to commercial interests in 1988.
Faculty
Union-PSCE has a faculty of scholars in the fields of Bible, Christian education, theology, ethics, preaching, worship, church history, and pastoral care. While the Union curiculum teaches in the Reformed theological tradition, faculty come from a diversity of denominational backgrounds, including Baptist, Lutheran and Methodist. These scholars have written hundreds of books and articles in their respective fields of study.
Notable faculty include womanist theologian Katie Geneva Cannon, bible scholar Paul J. Achtemeier, and current president of Union-PSCE, Brian Blount.
Student Body
Union's student body is made up of about 400 students, with 300 students at the main richmond campus and another 100 students from the Charlotte extended campus. The majority of students at Union-PSCE come from the Presbyterian tradition, but the seminary draws students from more than 20 Christian denominations, including Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian and Reformed. There are a large number of international students as well from Ghana, Korea, Switzerland, Canada and other nations. The seminary is a member of the Richmond Theological Consortium.
Students at Union take part in a number of student activities and seminary initiatives, such as intramural sports (including hosting an annual ultimate frisbee tournament for seminaries), mission and service activities in the city of Richmond, and Project Burning Bush, the seminary's youth leadership initiative supported by the Lily Foundation.
Campus
Union's Richmond Campus includes two chapels, the historic Watts Chapel, located in Watts Hall, which also serves as a classroom and administration building, and the state of the art Lake Chapel, located in the campus's new Early Center, a classroom and office building completed in 2005. The Richmond Campus also includes the Belk student center, dormitories, student apartments and guest housing, as well as recreation fields, community gardens and tennis courts. Union's William Smith Morton Library was completed in 1996, and includes over 350,000 volumes and grows at a rate of about 5,500 volumes per year. Union shares its library resources with the Baptist Theological Seminary of Richmond, located across Brook Road.
Degree Programs offered by Union-PSCE
- Master of Arts In Christian Education (M.A.C.E.)
- Master of Divinity (M.Div.)
- Dual Degree Program -- Master of Divinty/Master of Arts in Christian Education (M.Div./M.A.C.E.)
- Master of Arts (Theological Studies) (M.A.T.S.)
- Master of Theology (Th. M.)
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. D.)
- Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.)
- Dual Degree Programs offered in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Social Work
- Master of Arts in Christian Education/Master of Social Work (M.A.C.E./M.S.W)
- Master of Divinity/Master of Social Work (M.Div./M.S.W.)
A Master of Divinity/Master of Science Criminal Justice (M.Div./M.S.C.J.) dual degree program offered in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Douglas L. Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs was discontinued in 2005.
External links
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