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The Mission of Seaver College
Seaver College exists to provide a link between the knowledge and wisdom of
the past and present with the challenges of the future. The college is
essentially a community within the larger Pepperdine University community which
integrates several groups: teachers committed to a life of instruction and
scholarship; students preparing to assume responsible roles in contemporary
society; staff members, volunteers, and donors committed to advancing the goals
of the community; and administrators and regents charged with helping to achieve
these goals.
Seaver College is primarily undergraduate and residential. It is selective in
enrollment and committed to high academic standards. Its task is to prepare
persons of diverse economic, social, ethnic, and religious backgrounds to become
moral and intellectual leaders and to challenge them to value service above
material success.
To accomplish this task, Seaver faculty members, administrators, and staff
members serve as role models, both as professionals and as human beings who are
committed to excellence and motivated by personal faith in God. Students benefit
from many small classes, a nurturing campus environment, opportunities for
diverse social interaction, and individual attention from these teacher-mentors.
Seaver is a liberal arts college. As such, it nourishes and transmits the
noblest ideas of Western culture – the achievements of science and technology as
well as the artistic, intellectual, and ethical heritage of the Western world.
At the same time, the Seaver curriculum and co-curriculum also reflect a modern,
global world view much broader than that of the West and more complex and
egalitarian than in former times. Nor does it isolate itself from the nature of
life and the economic realities of our own age. Therefore, many subjects are
studied that are not included in the traditional categories of the liberal arts.
Nevertheless, the college is completely committed to the spirit and intent of
the traditional baccalaureate: the sharpening of the mind, the ennobling of the
heart, the broadening of the vision, and the cultivation of the arts of speaking
and writing which result in civilized and fruitful discourse. It is likewise
devoted to the relentless search for truth in an atmosphere of freedom of
inquiry: to think, to question, to doubt, to believe, and to affirm.
Seaver College places the students’ total development at the heart of its
educational strategy. The college therefore recognizes the importance of both
the curriculum and the co-curriculum. It strives to effect the total development
of the student – intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual – and
to lay the foundations of lifetime learning. It recognizes that learning takes
place constantly, in every facet of the student’s life, and therefore seeks to
integrate and direct this complex of experiences toward its developmental goals.
Since there is a significant correlation between the degree of individual
student involvement in the life of the college and success in effecting student
development, concerted effort is made to maximize the involvement of each
student in the larger life of the college.
Seaver is a Christian college. As such, it affirms in undergraduate and
graduate programs that there are sources of truth deeper than those of secular
culture: Moses, purveyor of divine laws; Amos, crying out for social justice and
unfeigned piety; Paul, overwhelmed with both the reality of sin and the joy of
forgiveness; and ultimately, Jesus of Nazareth, in whom God is uniquely
revealed, and by whose death and resurrection all humankind can receive
reconciliation with God. The study of religion and the opportunity for corporate
worship are integral elements in the Seaver experience. A commitment to
Christian beliefs regarding the origin, nature, and destiny of humanity
permeates the curriculum. The college’s ties to the Churches of Christ call it
to a serious commitment to Biblical Christianity. Thus, in its mission, Seaver
College seeks to remain true to the most profound insights of the religious
movement which constitutes its heritage. |
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