In today’s cut-throat business world, can
a student learn to be successful at a
Christian-based school? Can classes on ethics and morality be taught alongside
classes on how to close a tough business
deal?
“We have worked hard to clarify our
brand as well as our message and now are
customizing it to better serve our multiple
markets across Ohio,” says Frank Johnson,
associate vice president of the adult and
graduate studies program at Mount Vernon
Nazarene University in Cincinnati. “Regardless of attention to brand and market-targeted messaging, we remain an intentionally Christian higher education enterprise with nearly 40 years of unwavering
commitment to our founding mission and
market.”
Smart Business talked to Johnson about
how a Christian institution can teach
morality in a business world.
How are students attracted to a small
Christian-based business school?
I learned a long time ago not to presume.
Schools like MVNU have to get out in the
field. I’m on the road as many as three or
four days a week traveling to our nine campuses across the state. We would be poor
stewards of the trust companies and individual clients have placed in us to merely
put a perceived innovative program in a
can, spray it across the state of Ohio, and
hope it sticks. Institutions like MVNU
desiring to be a vital partner as opposed to
convenient vendor must strive for synergy
rather than superiority.
Do Christian-based schools attract only
Christians?
There is an incredibly robust higher educational market for employers, employees,
believers and nonbelievers alike.
Especially in the adult and graduate arena,
a majority of students don’t have a church
background but desire an education rooted
in community and integrity. An overwhelming majority of our students seek to
encounter authentic professionals who
can help foster self-discovery as much as career advancement. Though often misconstrued, sound ethical principles and
career advancement are anything but
mutually exclusive. Yet the latter shorn of
the former leads not just to burn out but
profound inefficiencies which undermine
productivity and profitability.
When companies send employees to one
of our adult or graduate programs, they are
less concerned about the Christian angle
because they know their investment will
yield significant return. Schools like
MVNU, of necessity, must be transparent
every day with every constituent.
What should a Christian-based institution
offer its students besides an education?
Ethics is first and foremost. It should
teach real-life business skills that are relevant and are rooted in relationships: colleague to colleague, client to client, parent
to child/child to parent, and so on.
Christian schools like MVNU are living laboratories where people can explore,
enrich, and/or better deploy their ever-expanding skill set and immediately leverage these real-world skills at work and at
home even as they progress through the
program.
Are personal ethics as important as business
ethics?
A holistic approach to life can be easily
forgotten in the business world. This is
compounded by the fact that many educational providers promoting themselves as
“distinctly Christian” offer little more than
a faith-based veneer to volume-discounted
programming. One can neither deliver nor
engage in the highly esteemed and desperately needed holistic, transformational programming short of a firm grounding in
ethics. This must not be an value-added
component, but an intrinsic attribute to an
institution’s DNA.
Who uses the adult and graduate study programs the most?
You’d be surprised at the number of senior-level people that enter our undergraduate programs. These often are people that
have proven themselves in the business
world but never had the chance to go back
to school.
Career-transition people and others that
just want to get their initial or advanced
degrees also select our programs. The
same is true for people on their way to a
doctoral program—we get the whole mix.
But anyone who walks away from a school
like MVNU will know they had the opportunity to explore the inner self as much as
the professional self.
Does a Christian-based theme draw more
ethically inclined people?
That’s a hard question with an easy
answer and the answer is no. Everybody
thinks about God at some point. Even
those who say God is irrelevant to their
lives, have, just in reaching that decision,
engaged the very God who supposedly is
irrelevant .
FRANK JOHNSON is associate vice president of the adult and
graduate studies program at Mount Vernon Nazarene University
in Cincinnati. Reach him at (740) 392-6868 ext. 4701 or
[email protected].