The Whole World in its Plans
School of Intercultural Studies Celebrates its 25th Anniversary and Renames School after Clyde and Anna Belle Cook
Biola University’s School of Intercultural Studies celebrated the school’s 25th anniversary the week of, March 16 to 22, 2009. With the celebratory unveiling of the school’s new name at a special dinner Monday, March 16 for SICS faculty and guests, Biola is pleased to announce the school’s new name - the Cook School of Intercultural Studies - renamed after former president emeritus, Clyde Cook and his wife Anna Belle.
Rebecca Emenaker had spent most of her life within 10 miles of Biola University when she became one of the first graduates to emerge from its brand new School of Intercultural Studies and World Missions in 1984.
Nearly a quarter-century later, after following her calling as a missionary to the plains of Oklahoma, the Dutch-speaking jungles of Suriname in South America and the big-city life of Moscow, Emenaker became a graduate of the school again last spring, earning her master’s in intercultural studies.
The fact that it happened half a world away, at the school’s newest outpost in Lithuania, was a sign of just how far both of them had come.
Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, the School of Intercultural Studies has built up a strong reputation and a rich heritage of preparing men and women to work in cross-cultural settings around the world. Today, more than 1,600 alumni are serving in six continents and at least 50 countries across the globe — many of them working as missionaries, businesspeople, teachers, anthropologists or Bible translators.
And in an age when technology and immigration are “flattening” the world and bringing diverse cultures together more than ever, the school is playing an increasingly important role in equipping Christians to interact with and understand people from different backgrounds.
“Our world is so globalized now; you can’t avoid it,” said Emenaker, who is on a yearlong furlough with her husband from their work with Mission Aviation Fellowship. “Even if you stay in the U.S., you’re constantly coming across other cultures.”
Though officially a quarter-century old, the School of Intercultural Studies’ history actually extends back more than nine decades and stretches to the other side of the world.
In 1916, Biola’s founders established a school in China’s Hunan Province to train men and women in the Bible. Within a decade, the Hunan Bible Institute — also known as “BIOLA in China” — had developed into a half-million-dollar, 10-acre campus that served as a launching pad for pastors and evangelists into China. But then came the Communist takeover of the country in 1949, and three years later, Biola was forced to completely withdraw from the property.
All expectations were that the school was permanently lost. So it came as a surprise — and a reminder of God’s faithfulness — when the discovery of the old land title led to the Chinese government compensating Biola for the abandoned property in 1979 (albeit at 40 cents on the 1949 dollar).
For Clyde Cook — a former missionary to the Philippines who became Biola’s president in 1982 — the decision about what to do with the money that remained when he took office was simple: It had been intended for missions, and to missions it would go. He directed funding to expand and transform Biola’s existing missions department into the School of Intercultural Studies and World Missions in the 1983–84 school year, with the goal of giving students the practical and academic training needed to make a cross-cultural impact for Christ.
Marvin K. Mayers, an anthropologist with Wycliffe Bible Translators’ Summer Institute of Linguistics, took the helm as the school’s first dean. Initially, two graduate programs were offered: master’s degrees in intercultural studies and missions. Within a year, the school had expanded its program to include the Doctor of Missiology degree — the first of its kind in the nation. (It also dropped the second half of its name, reasoning that “world missions” fell into the broader category of “intercultural studies.”)
From the start, Mayers desired for the school to be holistic, training professional missionaries for overseas work but also equipping students for a variety of occupations at home, said the school’s current dean, Doug Pennoyer.
“That has continued to this day — we like to keep the Great Commission and the Great Commandment in view,” he said. “We’re tethered to the mission of reaching the lost and the unreached no matter where they are, some of our graduates are called to unreached peoples, and still others are working in areas needing re-evangelization.”
It wasn’t long before Biola was becoming known as the place for cross-cultural missions training. In a 1988 advertisement for the school, renowned missiologist Ralph D. Winter, founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission, put it bluntly: “Biola’s School of Intercultural Studies is almost embarrassingly out ahead. No Christian college I know of has moved so decisively into doctoral studies for mission and national leaders.”
The school’s growth continued following the arrival of its second dean, Donald Douglas, in 1989. A master’s degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) debuted in 1991, followed by a master’s degree in applied linguistics in 1993. In the years since, program offerings have continued to expand to include a Ph.D. in intercultural studies, an M.A. in linguistics and biblical languages, and just last year, an M.A. in anthropology. On the undergraduate side, students can choose from a degree in either intercultural studies or anthropology, with emphases ranging in everything from archaeology to international development.
Since Pennoyer’s arrival in 1999, the school has also established a presence on two other continents; extension centers opened in Thailand in 2000 and in Lithuania in 2003, allowing foreign students to earn a master’s or doctorate from Biola without ever setting foot in La Mirada.
Meanwhile, the number of students has grown steadily. In the 1983–84 school year, the school had 12 total students in its graduate programs. This past year, it had nearly 200.
Heather Snavely, who earned an M.A. in intercultural studies in 2002 and an M.A. in TESOL in 2006, is just one of hundreds of students currently working cross-culturally within the United States. In her position at a local university, Snavely helps international students get a better grasp on the English language. In the process, she’s helping to further the Great Commission, she said.
“The Great Commission means to me that no matter where I’m at, whether it’s here in the United States or it’s in some other country, I am sharing the gospel through my actions and through what I say,” she said, adding that the ability to understand other cultures is critical to that task. “When I was in the ICS program I really learned to look at things from other people’s perspectives. And that has really helped me as a teacher.”
A growing number of students, especially within Biola’s undergraduate population, are beginning to understand the value of that kind of cross-cultural training, Pennoyer said.
“In the last 20 years, the world has become so globalized. The world has come to us in the United States,” he said. “So students who don’t even major in our majors sometimes will take a minor or just a couple of classes, because they realize that in this world where we’re linked together, it’s important to understand some cross-cultural values and issues.”
As the school looks beyond its anniversary, a number of developments are in store. This summer, the school will begin publishing a semiannual academic journal, the Great Commission Research Journal, featuring scholarly research related to missions, anthropology, linguistics and more. Also in the works is an online master’s degree in TESOL — the first completely online degree offered by Biola.
The school is also planning an expansion of its home, Marshburn Hall. With help from a $225,000 donation from the Far East Broadcasting Co., the school will enclose its entrance portico to create a “missions media resource room” named in honor of FEBC founder Bob Bowman and his wife, Elaine. The state-of-the-art room will include connections to missions databases where students can conduct research. (Donate to this project.)
Meanwhile, in another sign of just how far it has come, the school is beginning to welcome some of its first second-generation students — including Emenaker’s daughter Hannah, who is now a junior in the intercultural studies program.
For Emenaker, who returns to Suriname later this year, witnessing the school’s expansion over the past 25 years has been exciting — and a reflection of God’s faithfulness to his global mission in the world.
“God’s plan from the beginning has always been to reach all the people of the earth,” she said. “It’s always been a cross-cultural ministry … and it’s important for us to not be stuck in our own world.”
A condensed version of this story was in the Spring 2009 issue of the Biola Magazine.
Written by Jason Newell, Biola Magazine Editor.