Champion moves closer to accreditation
The Liberty University football team’s upset of Baylor last weekend was at once inspirational and affirmational for Champion Christian College.
Like the school at 600 Garland Ave., Liberty was born of modest circumstances when it first hung its shingle in 1971. More than four decades later, the nonsecular institution founded by the late Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Va., boasts 15,000 undergraduates and an athletics program that can humble teams from Power Five conferences.
Champion began the third year under its new banner when the fall semester started Aug. 17. Formerly Champion Baptist College, the school has remade itself as an interdenominational liberal arts college with a Biblical world view.
It has about 40 students and 30 who live on campus, but the school’s leadership believes Champion is on a path similar to the one Liberty embarked on in its infancy. A member of the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools accreditation commission that visited the campus in June said as much.
“Liberty started just like us,” said Eric Capaci, president of Champion. “They were in a small town with 25 students. One of the members from TRACS made a comment to me that the school is following the exact same pattern as liberty.
“He said he could conceivably see this school being the hub of the Hot Springs community several years from now with several thousand students.”
The school’s leadership hopes to begin realizing that
goal in the fall semester of 2018. It expects to have accreditation from TRACS by then, making enrollees and current students eligible for federal and state aid and allowing them to transfer credits from other colleges and universities.
Champion has already met the qualifications for candidacy status, which is scheduled to be formally conferred next month at the TRACS conference in Florida.
Finding department heads with doctorates is a requirement of accreditation, and one the college has met by bringing on Shane Robertson and Tamra Barrett as deans of its Biblical studies and professional studies degree programs.
Robertson, the pastor of discipleship and assimilation at Hot Springs Baptist Church, is heading Biblical studies, where students can get a bachelor’s degree with an emphasis in pastoral, mission, youth and family or music studies.
Barrett, a local attorney, is leading professional studies. Students can focus on criminal justice, health science, sports management or business in the bachelor’s degree program. All Champion students are required to complete 12 hours of Biblical studies.
Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia has the closest accredited seminary program, but Robertson said Champion can be a more accessible alternative that grows into a training ground for the next generation of clergy in Hot Springs.
“That’s a great school,” Robertson said of OBU. “I even graduated from there. It’s a little expensive. Hopefully this can be an affordable solution for students seeking a ministry degree.
“A lot of young people in our churches are feeling calls to ministry. Why send them to universities in different towns and states when they can be a blessing here in their community, get trained and go back to churches in their communities?”
He said the school’s proximity to Gospel Light Baptist Church, which it shares a campus with, gives ministry students the opportunity to apply what they have learned in the classroom. Area nursing homes and hospices are also venues for putting that knowledge into practice, Robertson said.
“There’s a lot of different ways to do ministry here in Hot Springs,” he said. “I think sometimes there’s a disconnect between teacher and student when it comes to practicality. One of the things I want to do is narrow that gap. We’re training and sending these students out, and we want them to have a strong foundation biblically and educationally. They’ll be a lot of practical application of what we’re learning in the classroom.”
Barrett said accreditation will make Champion more prominent outside of its core constituency of private Christian schools, church youth groups and home-schoolers.
“Right now, that’s who hears about Champion,” she said. “Once we’re accredited and you can say there’s money out there and you can transfer hours, the net of who we can scoop up, so to speak, is going to be so much greater.
“The fall of 2018 is the first semester where we should see much higher numbers. That’s when we start seeing the stairstep growth, and each semester it will start going up.”
Champion is a long way from fielding a football team, much less one that can compete against the Football Bowl Subdivision, but accreditation qualifies it for membership in the National Christian College Athletic Association.
Athletics can boost enrollment and confer prestige, Capaci said. Champion is hoping to add track and field, women’s volleyball and men’s golf to its men’s and women’s basketball programs by the fall semester of 2018.
“The more sports you have, that turns into something as well,” he said. “Accreditation immediately moves us into the next level of competition. From there you go into the NAIA, NCAA Division III, Division II and I.”