“If the Business as Ministry approach to business education is so unique and needed in society today, then why should students have to move to La Mirada, Calif. to get that type of education?”

This was a question I posed to the Crowell School of Business faculty nearly five years ago in my first year as dean.

We then discussed a hypothetical scenario of a young woman, the mother of two who had at some point discontinued her education, but now needed to complete her degree to qualify for the promotion she was so capable of securing but was just out of reach without her degree.  She’s working, married with kids, active in her church and excited about her faith, her family, and her career, and she would love to study at a university that understands who she is and doesn’t negate her faith as an integral element of her life, learning, and career.

In fact, if she’s going to add pursuing a business degree to her already busy life, she imagines the fellowship she’d experience with faith-sharing classmates might just be the encouragement she’d sometimes need to persist to graduation. As we discussed this scenario- making it personal by focusing in on the profile of one target “customer”- we started to expand our idea of who a Crowell School of Business student could be, including those beyond our flourishing traditional on-campus programs and students. 

Fast forward five years, and this fall we welcome not only our online undergraduates but also our online graduate students, in both our MBA and Master of Management in Non-Profit Organizations. We launched our undergraduate programs online two years ago, and we already have graduated our first four B.S. in Business Management students in May 2019. These online business undergraduates were the first to experience five newly developed and highly acclaimed courses, team-designed for in-depth biblical integration by Crowell School of Business and Talbot School of Theology faculty members.

This semester we now welcome our new online graduate students, eleven brave trailblazers drawn to Biola University, where the strengths of a leading Christ-centered business school coupled with the renowned Talbot School of Theology makes possible biblically integrated business education like no other.

I hope you will join us in thanking God for our online students, and that you will pray for and support the Crowell School faculty and students as we take our business-education-from-a-Christian-worldview online and around the world.

Sincerely,

Dr. Gary Lindblad