Gordon College (Massachusetts)

Gordon College (GC) is a liberal arts college located on the former Princemere estate in Wenham, Massachusetts, United States, northeast of Beverly. Founded by Baptist minister A. J. Gordon as a missionary training institute, the predominantly undergraduate college is largely Christian.

History
Adoniram Judson Gordon opened a Bible school called the Boston Missionary Training Institute in the basement of his Baptist church in 1889 to train Christian missionaries for work in the Belgian Congo. It was renamed Gordon Bible College in 1916 and moved out of its church and Newton Theological Institution facilities to The Fenway, into a facility given by Martha Frost, in 1919. In 1921, it was renamed to Gordon College of Theology and Missions. In the early 1950s, a Gordon student named James Higginbotham approached Frederick H. Prince about selling his 1000 acre estate to the college, and in 1955, Gordon developed into a liberal arts college with a graduate seminary and moved to its present several-hundred-acre Wenham campus. Gordon sold its old facilities to the Wentworth Institute of Technology, the Prince Memorial Chapel on the new campus (since razed) was named for Frederick Prince, and Prince's mansion was renamed Frost Hall after Martha Frost. In 1962, the school changed its name again to Gordon College and Divinity School. In 1970, the Gordon Divinity School separated from the college and merged with the Conwell School of Theology in Philadelphia, once part of Temple University to form the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. In 1985, Barrington College of Rhode Island went bankrupt and merged into Gordon College. Gordon College is the only nondenominational Christian college in New England.

Barrington College was founded in 1900 as the Bethel Bible Training School in Spencer, Massachusetts, and was later located in Dudley, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island. It took the name Barrington after the campus was moved to that Rhode Island community in 1959. Gordon and Barrington were merged as the united college on the Wenham campus in 1985. In 1996 Gordon College began a graduate program in education and in 2003 added a graduate program in music education.

Academic associations
Gordon has been accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc. (NEASC) since 1961. The music program is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) and the social work program is accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). Its teacher education program is recognized by the Department of Education of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under the Interstate Service Compact. Gordon is a member of the Annapolis Group and the Christian College Consortium. It is also a member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU).

Academics
Gordon College offers the BA, BM, BS, MAT, MEd, and MMEd degrees. It offers undergraduate degrees from 38 majors and 42 concentrations. Gordon offers both a graduate degree in education and music. The Graduate Education program offers M.A.T., M.Ed., and C.A.G.S degrees. The Graduate Music program offers a M.M.Ed.degree, Licensure-only options, and workshops.

Student life
There were a total of 1,599 student enrolled at Gordon College in 2011, of whom 1,514 were undergraduates.

Student body and demographics
As a product of its Baptist heritage, Gordon is largely religious, though not tied to any particular Christian denomination. Students are required to sign the school's Statement of Faith, though the religious conclusions and commitments among students and faculty remains diverse. Students must also sign a Life and Conduct Statement agreeing to the standards of behavior that Gordon values. Gordon College prohibits alcohol, tobacco, and narcotic or hallucinogenic drugs on-campus and continues to uphold a dorm visitation policy that allows for male-female visitation only during particular hours. Chapel is offered on Mondays and Wednesdays while an academic convocation takes place on Fridays; attendance of chapel, convocation or other events (lectures, debates, presentations, films, exhibitions, etc.) is required to graduate. All full-time students must obtain 30 "Christian Life and Worship Credits" per semester. This policy is strictly enforced. Students who do not meet the requirement for one semester will be placed on academic probation, and a second semester of non-compliance will result in suspension from the college.

In the fall of 2009 the College’s undergraduate enrollment of 1,583 was drawn from 39 states and 26 foreign countries. Approximately 14.3 percent of enrollment— including international students—are of Asian, African American, Hispanic, Native American or non-Caucasian descent.

Extracurriculars
Gordon College has a student association, student ministries, intramural sports, and a Campus Events Council. There are student-led community service and outreach organizations, ranging from drama troupes to Big Brothers Big Sisters and Habitat for Humanity.

Athletics
Gordon College's varsity sports compete in the NCAA Division III, primarily in the Commonwealth Coast Conference (TCCC) and the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC). The Gordon College teams, known athletically as the Fighting Scots, sponsor baseball, basketball, cross-country, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, and track & field (indoor and outdoor).

Many other outreach programs are led by Gordon College, based in other sites, such as Lynn, MA, where the school has several partners for community development. Several student-led groups organize spring break, winter break and summer break community service trips and mission trips to different sites around the country and the globe.

Campus
Gordon College is minutes away from picturesque beaches of Massachusetts's Northshore and 25 miles from Boston. Gordon’s main campus, situated on 450 acres of woods, is in Wenham, MA.

The Gordon College Bennett Center is a 78,000 ft2 athletics and recreational sports facility. The Bennett Center is a gift to the Gordon community from the George and Helen Bennett family. The $8 million center was completed in October 1996 and in 1997 won the Athletics Business Magazine Top Ten New Facilities Award for its design and usability.

The Ken Olsen Science Center, named for the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation and long-time Gordon College Board member, Ken Olsen, is the College’s most ambitious building endeavor to date: an 80,000 ft2 science and technology center at the heart of the campus.

Video
http://www.gordon.edu/aerial

Salzburg Institute
The Salzburg Institute explores Christian thought and culture and promotes critical engagement with some of the most significant intersections of religion, European culture, thought, and the arts. Through interdisciplinary symposia, music performances, art exhibits, workshops, the Institute’s yearbook, and the summer school in Salzburg, Austria, the Salzburg Institute examines how the study of artistic and cultural expressions and their intersections with Christian intellectual thought relate to contemporary issues.

Notable alumni

 * Comedian Pete Holmes attended Gordon College, where he was a member of the campus comedy group, The Sweaty-Toothed Madmen.
 * Kenneth Lee Pike, American linguist and anthropologist.
 * Christian Smith (sociologist), American Sociologist

Notable faculty

 * Bruce Herman - Visual Artist who has exhibited works all around the world and has works housed in the Vatican Museum of Modern Religious Art
 * Marvin R. Wilson, author and Old Testament translator and editor of the New International Version Bible
 * President D. Michael Lindsay - Pulitzer Prize nominated author and sociologist