Mennonite colleges unite
WINNIPEG, MB - Manitoba's newest university opened its doors this fall, uniting three Mennonite colleges under one name and one campus, Canadian Mennonite University.
The grand opening last month coincided with the start of a five-year fundraising campaign to pay for about $30 million in renovations and ongoing operations to its central campus, which formerly housed the turn-of-the-century School for the Deaf. It featured beautiful heritage buildings which require significant repair.
While CMU is operating under one name, the institution is still technically a federation of three colleges: Canadian Mennonite Bible College (CMBC), Concord College and Menno Simons College, each with its own board, administration and constituency to report to.
"Things are going very very well. The challenge of bringing three different colleges, with different styles and traditions...has gone well," says CMBC president Gerald Gerbrandt. He says there is no intention at this point to fully integrate the administration of the three colleges into one, though all three boards meet together.
At first glance, it seems like a logical transition: three denominations, all from an Anabaptist faith, each operating its own campus property in the same city, each affiliated with Winnipeg universities—uniting into one.
But getting agreement on the ground rules of the federation was a laborious task that required approval from each constituency, some of whose decision-making bodies meet only once a year. The groups also needed a special bill to be passed through the Manitoba Legislature that would enact the university.
The idea for the merger was first proposed by Gerbrandt in 1994. It was an idea also pushed by Concord vice-chair and Palliser Furniture owner Art DeFehr. He argued that a cooperative venture would result in better use of resources, a more effective promotion of Mennonite faith and increased ability to attract non-Mennonite students.
Even with agreement in principle, a number of signifigant hurdles needed to be overcome before the merger could happen.
Concord, for example, changed ownership from the national Mennonite Brethren body to the provincial one. The board had to overcome constituent concern that Concord could lose its identity as a school reflecting Mennonite Brethren theology and that it would have trouble affording to run the institution as sole owner. It also had to abandon its downtown campus and move its contents to the new campus it bought closer to the southern suburbs.
CMBC, whose existing campus is just across the street from the new CMU campus, also had a tall order convincing its constituency—the General Conference of Mennonites—that it could maintain its identity, even as other professors and students would share its united campus.
"Most CMBC students were hesitant, skeptical of the merger. Now a significant percentage have been persuaded," says Gerbrandt, adding that there is a growing excitement since the merger.
Menno Simons College (MSC) is an affiliate college of the University of Winnipeg offering courses in conflict resolution and international development. Its board represents Mennonites from a variety of denominations, though it is not officially associated with any. It will maintain its downtown campus next to the University of Winnipeg in addition to offering courses on the CMU campus.
MSC president George Richert says enrolment at CMU exceeded its enrolment projections for its inaugural year. It now has 254 full-time and 79 part-time students studying at the CMU campus. An additional 683 students are taking at least one of the MSC courses at the U of W. The U of W will retain its Mennonite Studies Centre along with its full-time chair.
CMU has a unique program where some degrees are contained wholly at the CMU campus, while other degree programs require students to take some courses at the U of W or the University of Manitoba.
"The genius of CMU lies in its unique structure and relationships with other schools," says Menno Simons academic dean Dean Peachy. "We are not just building a strong Mennonite university, we are also strengthening the educational constellation in Manitoba."
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