Tiny Christian college nets generous federal funding

0Josh • 22nd Dec 2004 • blog entries, nome.

Covenant College in Alaska attacked on the front page of the Anchorage Daily News:

Author: SEAN COCKERHAM

Tucked away in spruce woods off the Kenai Spur Highway is a new Bible college with just 37 students. It’s a little-known enclave of evangelism, counseling and congressional spending.

Alaska’s congressional delegation has delivered more than $1 million to Alaska Christian College over the past two years. That’s more than $20,000 per student and about equal to what the school president figured is a full year’s operating costs. Most of the federal funds go to teacher salaries, student scholarships and recruitment.

The money for the 3-year-old school came from the federal Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, designed to support innovations in education. Of the 342 colleges and universities to get grants from the fund this year, Alaska Christian College was the only one that is not accredited and does not award degrees.

The Soldotna college, which has a goal of preparing rural Alaska Natives for “whole-life disciplesh! ip,” has applied for accreditation by the Association for Biblical Higher Education.

Alaska Rep. Don Young was responsible for most of the federal spending on the school. In fact, the money for Alaska Christian College was one of just nine individual spending earmarks Young claimed credit for in the 3,000-page spending bill Congress passed last month. His office said it sees the school as a good transitional program to help village youths prepare to go on to degree-granting institutions.

It is not uncommon for the federal government to give grants to religion-affiliated schools. But some longtime Congress watchers were surprised to see such big money for a college with so few students.

“I’ve never even seen a college with 37 students; I’ve never known such a thing existed,” said David Williams, the vice president for public policy at the Washington, D.C., watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste. “In our estimation this is not something federal ! taxpayers should be paying for.”

Williams said it’s an example of the reason federal education grants should go through a competitive process, rather than be stuck by members of Congress into bills that are thousands of pages long.

Other small Alaska colleges got money through the same fund in the giant spending bill Congress just passed. Figured per student, none of them is close to the $435,000 for Alaska Christian College.

Presbyterian-affiliated Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka, with an enrollment of more than 200 students, got $500,000 for an adult-learners program. Ilisagvik College in Barrow, with 318 students, received $250,000 to work on its distance-education programs. Alaska Pacific University, which lists an enrollment of 634 students, got $300,000 for its rural distance education.

Most of the federal money for Alaska Christian College have come from Young, a Republican and Alaska’s lone congressman. Pamela Day, senior legislative assistant for Young, said the federal help won’t keep coming forever and i! s meant to help the school get off the ground.

“Hopefully people can become aware of them and they will receive funds from other sources,” said Day, who is in charge of handling the requests for federal funds that come into Young’s office. She said she has visited the college and is satisfied the money is being well spent.

The “vision and plan” on the college’s Web site said: “We wish to serve where the need is the greatest, preparing disciples to return to rural Alaska to minister where there is a void of leaders.”

But Alaska Christian College President Keith Hamilton said it’s not about training ministers or missionaries. He said the school, which is built around a yearlong Bible-based program, is more to help ready its village students to go on to other colleges and get their degrees.

High dropout rates are a big problem when students leave small rural villages and go off to college. The University of Alaska has programs to help address the pr! oblem, such as the Rural Alaska Honors Institute on the Fairbanks camp us. It brings students to the campus the summer before their freshman year to get them acclimated and then provides support once school begins.

Hamilton said Alaska Christian College recruits in the villages and offers counseling, support and classes on its campus that help people make the transition from remote and tiny villages to college life.

“We provide a safe, caring community,” he said.

The roughly $400,000 a year in federal funds from Young the past two years makes up a large chunk of what Hamilton figured was an annual operating budget for the college of about $1 million a year. The school also gets church and private donations, including a large gift from the Washington-state based M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, which the school used to help build a dormitory on the campus.

Alaska Republican U.S. Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski also got the school a $200,000 federal grant last year for the New Hope Counseling Center, set up on the c! ampus to help students who come from their home villages with drug and alcohol abuse or other issues.

“Pray for a possible second federal grant that we will hear about the first of the year,” Hamilton said in a press release in fall 2003 that described the grant for the counseling center.

That grant came; it was the first of the roughly $400,000 federal grants through Young’s office.

Documents the college filed with the federal education department show $250,000 of that went to salaries for five faculty members. Seventy-thousand dollars was for scholarships. The rest was for student recruitment, a student literacy center and community service efforts.

Hamilton said the college was able to boost its enrollment by 35 percent with the federal money and hire new staff.

The college has not decided how it will spend the $435,000 it got last month, Hamilton said. It will have to prepare an accounting to submit to the education department.

! The school doesn’t offer traditional college course work such as math or English. Course offerings listed on Alaska Christian College’s Web site cover religious subjects, including Bible studies, ministry, worship and choir. Hamilton said there are also counseling classes, a transitions course to teach about college life, physical education and a course on service — teaching students to serve their communities.

Hamilton said the college in February started a second-year program, which allowed it to apply to get accredited. He said the Association for Biblical Higher Education requires three years of monitoring after the application, so it cannot get accredited until spring 2007.

The second-year program is in cooperation with nearby Kenai Peninsula College. Students pursue their degree at the public college while still living in the Christian school dorm and taking more classes there. KPC director Gary Turner said nine or 10 students from the Christian school are now working toward their associate’s degrees at his college, which ! is an extension of the University of Alaska Anchorage.

“We have a great partnership with them. … It helps to increase the diversity of our campus,” he said,

Alaska Christian College lists its student population as 90 percent Native, including a handful of students from reservations in the Lower 48. The school is affiliated with the Evangelical Covenant Church, which has churches scattered throughout rural Alaska.

The students are no strangers to Alaska’s congressional delegation. Stevens and Murkowski have visited at the request of the college, which wanted to thank them for the counseling center funds.

Murkowski stopped in last October as part of a day trip to Kenai to campaign in the last heated weeks of the U.S. Senate race. The college Web site has pictures of her visit, with students holding Lisa Murkowski campaign signs, giving her a gift and singing her a song.

Hamilton said he doesn’t know about the politics of the federal grant! s, whether it is odd for a college with just 37 students to be getting so much money. He said the school serves students who don’t have very much money, and the help from lawmakers is appreciated.

“We always ask,” Hamilton said. “It doesn’t hurt to ask, and the worst they could say is no.”

Reporters Nicole Tsong and Rich Mauer contributed to this story. Reporter Sean Cockerham can be reached at sockerham@adn.com.