From its humble beginnings as the Training School for Christian Workers to one of the top Christ-centered universities in the nation, Azusa Pacific University has been an instrument of God throughout its 125-year history to advance His work in the world. APU students graduate transformed to answer a higher calling and make a difference in the lives of others. As we celebrate this special anniversary, APU looks forward to extending its legacy of transformation to new generations of disciples and scholars. As part of this issue, three university leaders share APU’s vision and strategies for boldly advancing APU toward a promising future while living out the Four Cornerstones of Christ, Scholarship, Community, and Service.
Christ
How does APU remain deeply rooted in our God First mission as we move the university forward?
Adam J. Morris, PhD, President:
This question is at the very heart of who we are as a Christ-centered university. I believe one of the greatest risks institutions face is “going soft” on mission. It’s rarely a single, glaring decision. Instead, it’s often a series of small, seemingly insignificant decisions made over time. Examples include recruiting the wrong board members, hiring misaligned faculty or staff, changing university policy, lacking institutional accountability, and giving in to external pressures. We need to be exceedingly attentive and diligent as we steward APU’s mission, and this is what will keep us faithful as we move the university forward. It’s why I’ve told our community that faithfulness to God is our top institutional priority!
Early in my time at APU, our leadership team identified six key ingredients of a faithful Christian university:
- Mission
Faithfulness begins with clarity of mission, and answers the questions: Who are we? Why do we exist? At our Faculty/Staff Kickoff event in August 2023, we revisited our Christian identity, as outlined in our What We Believe document.
- Leadership
The Board of Trustees, administration, full- and part-time faculty, and staff must be aligned in order to effectively carry out our mission.
- Curriculum
We know that the Word of God is the source of all Truth, and therefore must be what anchors all our academic offerings.
- Faith Integration
APU must take seriously the practice of faith integration. Regardless of the academic discipline, it’s vitally important that we equip our students with a biblical worldview in order for them to be the salt and light our world desperately needs.
- Hiring Practices
We need to be exceedingly diligent in who we hire, and who we retain. Since my arrival in summer 2022, I’ve asked to have the final interview with all new faculty hires and all new full-time coaches. I’ve also asked to interview all full-time faculty who are up for their five-year contract renewal.
- Spiritual Formation
Staying rooted in our God First mission calls us to be intentional in the spiritual formation of our students. Curricular and cocurricular programs must work together to encourage spiritual transformation. We saw this happen this last academic year, resulting in nearly 40 APU students baptized, more than 500 in Discipleship Groups, and more than 400 students involved in local and global engagement.
What new opportunities lie ahead to infuse our Christian commitment into every aspect of an APU education?
President Morris:
Provost Anita Henck has initiated a complete redesign of APU’s General Education core, including the 18 units of biblical, theological, and philosophical formation required of all undergraduate students. The redesigned core weaves the very best of the liberal arts and the Truth of God’s Word together in a way that captures the hearts of our students and fosters life transformation. Aiding this effort will be the opening of an Office of Faith Integration on our Azusa campus, which will come alongside all of our faculty to provide the tools and training necessary to fully integrate God’s Word across all of our academic disciplines. I’m super excited about this initiative! We’re also expanding our discipleship efforts, growing our commitment to local and global missions, investing more in our weekly chapel programming, sponsoring on-campus worship nights, and so much more.
How is open enrollment a benefit to APU amidst the competitive landscape?
President Morris:
As you may know, open enrollment means we accept students who may or may not share our faith commitment. This means that APU is expressly “evangelistic” and accepts non-Christian students and families. In contrast, “covenant” schools only knowingly accept students who have made a clear profession of faith in Jesus Christ.
As a university with open enrollment, anyone interested in furthering their education is a prospective APU student, increasing our prospective student pool. The overwhelming benefit of APU’s model of open enrollment is the opportunity our faculty and staff have to point students to Jesus Christ. The spiritual curiosity we see among this generation of students is what contributes to the spiritual vitality of our campuses. My first two years here have been filled with story after story of first-time decisions to follow Christ, measurable spiritual growth among our students, and a deepening love for one another. This makes my heart sing!
Scholarship
How does a Christian liberal arts education equip the leaders of tomorrow?
Anita Fitzgerald Henck, PhD, Provost/Chief Academic Officer:
A commitment to the liberal arts is rooted in balancing an education focused on a particular major or discipline with a General Education curriculum that educates broadly in the humanities, arts, sciences, social sciences, theology, and more. To learn broadly and think deeply, while focusing on enduring questions of the ages—the nature of good and evil, where we can see God at work in the world, what it means to live an honorable and integrated life—shapes our undergraduate students for a lifetime.
How does APU’s status as an R2 institution set us apart from other CCCU schools, and how does this distinctive aid our academic success and the future of our programs?
Provost Henck:
APU’s status as an R2 (ranking by Carnegie as a high research activity, doctoral-granting university) is unique within the CCCU and exemplifies our institution’s commitment to financial investment in supporting faculty research, faculty investment in student research at all levels, from undergraduate to graduate student, and students earning doctorates in research-based programs. APU has long had a commitment to excellence in teaching and the student experience. The investment over time in expanding teaching and learning to include significant emphasis on research adds to the body of knowledge that makes a difference and improves the world around us.
A hallmark of an APU education is its world-class faculty. How do we continue to attract and retain such scholars?
Provost Henck:
APU is blessed with remarkable faculty, many of whom have invested decades in teaching and mentoring their students and continuing their own professional development. The launch of new programs has slowed in recent years, so recent hiring has been to replace faculty who have retired or moved on to other professional pursuits. In our work to redesign some programs and launch new ones, our commitment is to recruit broadly and hire with intentionality—first, faculty who are fully committed to APU’s faith and identity statements and able to integrate their faith across the curriculum that is rooted in their personal relationship with Jesus Christ; and second, faculty who are exemplary in their discipline, evidenced by their advanced degrees, research, and professional development.
What are new areas for growth in APU’s academic offerings?
Provost Henck:
In developing our strategy for launching new programs, we are focusing on developing new offerings adjacent to our current expertise, particularly in health care and education. For example, with the reality of an aging population, there will likely be multidisciplinary programs developed in gerontology. The recent realignment of schools and colleges established the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, bringing child life, kinesiology, and physical therapy under the same college as our multifaceted nursing programs. We anticipate incredible synergy around shared teaching, research, and professional collaborations for students and faculty alike.
With California’s renewed focus on early childhood education, APU’s School of Education secured a grant to develop an early childhood education program, again drawing on faculty and alumni expertise and partnerships with school districts and community colleges across Southern California. With the relaunch of an Advisory Board for the School of Business and Management, a review of existing programs and plans for introducing new ones are under way, as we see potential for growth and impact. Meanwhile, other programs continue their partnerships with the communities they serve, ensuring up-to-date programming to match an ever-changing landscape for employers and industries.
How does APU envision the delivery of education changing in the next several years to meet the diverse needs of our students (different ages, backgrounds, goals)?
David Shynn, MBA, Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer:
The composition of APU’s student body has changed significantly over the past decade, and we expect it to evolve as demographics, educational expectations, and career opportunities continue to shift. Over the last decade, APU has moved from being a primarily traditional undergraduate campus to a point where roughly two-thirds of our student population is enrolled in graduate or degree-completion programs. While there have been other changes, this shift alone requires us to take a step back to ensure that how we offer an APU education in 2024 and beyond is best designed for our current and anticipated mix of students.
For example, we need to be even more intentional about considering modalities and venues where we should deliver our education (i.e., when is it better to offer a program in person versus fully online versus hybrid versus at an employer/partner location?). We also need to consider operational details that affect our students, such as our service hours that are more friendly to working professionals, allocation of space, student services offerings, and spiritual formation programming.
What does it mean to be a lifelong learner and how can APU facilitate this?
Vice President Shynn:
One of the special aspects about higher education is that we have the privilege of serving students in a very broad age range: from students in their teens taking dual-enrollment courses to learners who are well into retirement. As a university committed to Christ-centered education across a variety of disciplines and life stages, we believe there’s an opportunity to offer an APU education through innovative and accessible options, whether a learner wants a full degree program or seeks to upskill or reskill for the rapidly evolving job market.
To do this well, not only is it important to consider education modalities and student service models, we’ll need to be more intentional about engaging with the community around APU, and partnering with businesses, schools, churches, and other organizations. Those partnerships help ensure that APU students across all degree levels and programs are nurtured spiritually and equipped with the relevant skills and experiences for their respective callings. We can imagine this leading to the development of options such as corporate training partnerships, boot camps, certificates, YouTube content, and other educational partnerships.
What measures is APU taking to ensure we are both financially sustainable and able to provide students with an accessible education?
President Morris:
Financial sustainability is a growing concern for the majority of private Christian universities in America, and APU is addressing the concern head on. Following COVID, an increasing number of prospective students and families are debt-averse and questioning the value of a college degree. Given the nationwide birth-rate decline since the mid-2000s, there will likely be as much as a 15 percent decline in the number of high school graduates beginning in fall 2025 and lasting for seven years. This means that Christian colleges and universities, APU included, will compete for a shrinking pool of prospective undergraduate students. The need to steward our dollars has never been more critical.
We’ve just completed an enormous project to evaluate the financial viability of all 129 academic programs at APU. Optimizing our academic portfolio is a significant step towards financial sustainability. Beginning this summer, we will conduct a similar exercise for all of our nonacademic programs, benchmarking the rest of APU against national norms in pursuit of greater efficiency.
We’ve also concluded a study of our entire digital infrastructure, looking for ways to leverage technology in order to streamline our processes and better serve our students. We’re assessing campus usage across all of our facilities in order to maximize revenue.
The Christian university of the future will require a new business model and I believe God has assembled the right team of leaders at APU to help architect the future. And of course, we’re doing all of this to make an APU education affordable and accessible to all who choose to enroll.
Community
What is APU doing to ensure that our programs meet marketplace demand and the needs of our students?
Provost Henck:
Determining the optimal academic portfolio employs a number of strategies—observing market demand for individual programs through analysis of APU and peer institutions’ enrollment trends; tracking inquiries from prospective students and prospective employers about programs that we don’t currently offer; and anticipating workforce needs of the communities we serve locally and regionally across partner industries, such as hospitals, school districts, churches, and businesses.
How does APU’s status as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and an Asian American and Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AAPI) represent a strategic advantage?
Provost Henck:
This exemplifies our commitment to provide a Christ-centered education to a student body that reflects the cultural richness of our Southern California location. Our classrooms evidence the racial and ethnic diversity of our communities, which, in turn, prepares our graduates to appreciate and value cultures and communities beyond their own. Even more, access to higher education is a transformational opportunity for all students, but uniquely significant for students who are the first in their family or community to attend college. To be a part of the transformation of individuals, families, and communities is reflective of Kingdom values.
Service
How does APU continue to lead in health care and the helping professions as society’s needs increase for these services?
Provost Henck:
APU’s healthcare programs have earned stellar reputations for the quality of our graduates and the professional reputations of our faculty. This requires deep engagement with external partners and investment in professional circles, which can range from involvement with large healthcare systems (such as Kaiser) and membership on the boards of hospitals and community health centers to advocacy at the legislative level to help shape the future of these fields. Other APU programs such as mental health/counseling and educator preparation programs have faculty and staff who invest in their professional accreditor groups and serve as experts in shaping professional standards.
How does APU remain important to California’s workforce development efforts?
Provost Henck:
APU contributes in ways large and small. We track professional preparation programs that are directly related to specific jobs—nursing, counseling, educators, pastors, etc. Yet, in educating the whole person, we graduate students at all levels who may be employed in a variety of roles that are less specifically tied to a particular degree. With our deep commitment to the liberal arts, our undergraduate students leave APU with a holistic education through their General Education requirements, values formation both inside and outside the classroom, and significant service-learning, volunteer, or internship experiences that lead to opportunities for a variety of roles across industries. Similarly, our graduate programs also include faith integration, which provides graduates the experience of having learned deeply in their specific discipline but also broadly in terms of the impact of their faith development in whatever setting they serve.
How does APU’s close proximity to Los Angeles benefit our students now and in the future? What types of key industries/partnerships does our location enable?
Vice President Shynn:
Los Angeles is a preeminent global city, renowned for its cultural diversity, culture-shaping sectors, and world-class opportunities. APU’s proximity to L.A. provides our alumni, students, faculty, and the university ample opportunities to learn, engage, and lead with a Christian perspective. Our students desire to serve through competent, compassionate, ethical leadership, and the L.A. area, and the world more broadly, can benefit greatly from APU graduates with that kind of mindset. For example, this can be manifested through savvy yet ethical business practices; compassionate and highly knowledgeable healthcare workers, social workers, and educators; or Christ-centered artists and storytellers who shape culture.
I love the fact that APU is not only close to L.A., but also situated with easy access to industries and spheres of influence within the San Gabriel Valley, Orange County, San Diego, and Silicon Valley. California itself tends to have an outsized influence in shaping culture throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world, so when we talk about a desire for APU graduates to change the world, our location is a tremendous asset for setting up our graduates to do exactly that.
Please provide an update on the strategic plan. Where are we in the process and what are the overarching goals?
Vice President Shynn:
For APU to flourish in the long term, a new model will be required—one where our passion for equipping disciples and scholars through excellence in Christ-centered education is paired with an operating model that fosters greater agility, creativity, efficiency, and intentionality.
APU’s strategic plan is in development for presentation to the Board of Trustees this summer. It outlines APU’s preferred future along with objectives, measures, and projects with clear lines of accountability. While I stepped into my role only last fall, the process of engaging stakeholders across campus started long before that.
Since the beginning of President Morris’ tenure, he has focused on hearing from groups across campus and involving diverse perspectives in strategic planning efforts. He held 17 listening tour sessions; engaged frequently with the student government team and the Faculty Senate moderator and Staff Council chair (past, present, and future); deployed nine working groups to develop and implement solutions; and commissioned several experts to evaluate key functions such as IT and enrollment management. In recent months, we’ve deployed student surveys and focus groups, as well as additional ideation sessions for faculty and staff.
All that input, paired with sound data about external realities, is assisting us in building up APU to be a place of strength, so that through the grace of God, we are prepared to not only manage national enrollment challenges, but to surpass expectations. As we think about the strategic plan for APU, President Morris and the Cabinet are inspired by the story in Nehemiah where the community is led with a focus on spiritual renewal and collaboration across areas of expertise to jointly rebuild the city’s walls. After years of challenges, and with more headwinds anticipated, this feels like a critical moment in the life of APU for the community to unite, with full reliance on our Lord, to set up APU, its mission, and its students, faculty, and staff for long-term Kingdom impact.