The Charles B. Keesee Educational Fund awarded a grant of $198,000 to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) for upgrading the technology and furnishings of 10 classrooms, as well as two classrooms in the James P. Boyce Centennial Library, Crismon Hall and the Mullins Room.
“We are very thankful for the support of the Kessee Foundation and for their continued generosity to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,” said President R. Albert Mohler Jr. “This significant gift will assist us greatly as we make certain Southern Seminary is ready to seize the opportunities of the future. Most importantly, it will enhance our ability to train young ministers and missionaries in the classroom and beyond the physical classroom to the global mission field beyond.”
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SBTS administrators submitted the proposal to the Charles B. Keesee Educational Fund Board of Trustees in November 2014. The proposal detailed the seminary’s plan to create a Global Campus through improved technology in the classroom. The upgrades will allow faculty to teach students currently overseas and bring guest lecturers to their classrooms through wireless video sharing. Students will be able to collaborate online and learn how to use technology to study and teach the Bible effectively in the modern world.
“We live in serious times, we attract students who are serious about the gospel, and we are committed to equipping them to engage our technological age,” wrote Dan Dumas, senior vice president of institutional administration, in the proposal. “That begins with a seminary experience where students are equipped to use technology to study and teach God’s Word.”
The technology afforded by the grant will offer faculty members the tools to teach on a global scale, allow better student retention of the material, and permit faculty to feature scholars and ministers in their classes who are not able to travel to Louisville, according to the proposal.
Added Mohler, “I especially appreciate the Kessee Foundation’s forward-focused thinking in terms of technology and its responsible use. Our commitments are irreducibly theological, but modern technology affords us opportunities the founders of Southern Seminary could never have imagined.”
The seminary also plans to renovate the classrooms and computer lab in the James P. Boyce Centennial Library in order to provide Master of Divinity and doctoral students with more equipped rooms of study and seminars. Crismon Hall will be converted into a classroom capable of accommodating 60 students, and the Mullins Room will become a conference room to facilitate doctoral seminars.
The Charles B. Keesee Educational Fund provides assistance master’s degree students and Southern Baptist seminaries. The fund also offers grants to seminary students from Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina committed to ministering in the Southern Baptist Convention.