Highlands College unveils newly opened campus on U.S. 280

Men and women visiting the new campus of Highlands Faculty might remember it as the previous company headquarters of HealthSouth, but it has been transformed substantially by a $50 million renovation project.
Highlands University very last month commenced holding lessons on its new campus, located south of Grandview Clinical Middle just off U.S. 280.
On Thursday, Chancellor Chris Hodges and Highlands Faculty President Mark Pettus led a ribbon-cutting ceremony and grand opening of the campus with much more than 1,000 supporters in attendance.
“Highlands Higher education is here to increase up leaders,” Pettus mentioned. “That’s seriously what this setting up represents.”
He claimed there are presently 370 common learners enrolled in ministry leadership lessons, in the 18-22 age variety, attending working day lessons. There are also much more than 400 grown ups enrolled in courses a person night a week, bringing the whole enrollment to just below 800.
Pastime Foyer CEO David Inexperienced and his family members previous yr donated $20 million to develop the initial home hall, which is currently under development on the 70-acre campus. It will dwelling 252 pupils on campus. A different residence corridor is prepared up coming to it that will double the housing capacity.
When Hodges was a youth pastor in Colorado Springs, prior to shifting to Birmingham to come to be the founding pastor of the Church of the Highlands in 2001, he taught a religion class at the Air Power Academy.
Hodges mentioned he was amazed with how the Air Power Academy blended in lecturers with navy instruction and character formation. From his yard, he could watch paratroopers in teaching, jumping from airplanes.
“The army academies are developed on lecturers, but then there is navy education,” Hodges explained. “They’re jumping out of airplanes. They jumped out of airplanes every day.”
That gave him the inspiration for what grew to become Highlands Faculty.
“What if we modeled it like the army academies — not armed forces education, but ministry instruction?” Hodges stated.
Alternatively of leaping out of airplanes, the ministry pupils would understand each and every factor of producing worship expert services at the Church of the Highlands, which has come to be Alabama’s greatest church with more than 20 branch destinations.
That thought of a ministry academy led to the founding of Highlands Faculty in 2011.
“It’s absolutely new in the Christian room, this academy-style model, this means that you are not just providing them academic instruction and schooling,” Hodges said. “Academics are important, but they need to have so substantially extra than that.”
The transformation of the previous HealthSouth headquarters into a faculty contains a college student centre, 19 discovering studios, eight hands-on ministry schooling labs, a number of collaborative locations, eating amenities, café, library, fitness and recreation amenities, a multi-objective auditorium and the hottest in audio-visible technological know-how.
The purple wallpaper on the partitions around the stairwell includes the overall text of the Bible, from Genesis to the Reserve of Revelation. The university has a coffee bar and a cafeteria that contains a spherical desk that seats 16 people, in which Hodges meets with students 15 at a time. Hodges said there is a approach to open a white tablecloth restaurant on campus the place college students will make appointments to dine at the time a month in business attire to assistance them discover eating etiquette.
Modern school rooms
The lecture rooms concentration on staying technologically savvy.
Pupils learn all factors of songs generation and video enhancing for worship providers at a megachurch. There are songs studios and camera-teaching lecture rooms that aid college students find out technological facets of audio-visual presentation. It’s that type of arms-on finding out tactic that Hodges experienced in intellect.
“Could they go to course, and then get guiding a digital camera?” Hodges said. “Could they go to class and then hold a guitar? Could they go to a course and be in a video-modifying suite to develop the information bundle that we’ll enjoy this coming Sunday? Could we give them ministry schooling, and then character development, and religious enhancement? So, we begun dreaming how we would do this.”
Sunday is regarded as a course day, with products and services at The Church of the Highlands major campus and various department destinations these as McCalla and Alabaster in the Birmingham space serving as classrooms.
“They’re graded on what they do on Sundays,” mentioned Church of the Highlands Government Pastor Layne Schranz, who oversees pastoral education. “The church delivers the functional schooling.”
In the higher education classrooms, learners follow talking on stage, performing music reside and video-editing. Their function is saved on online video and becomes element of a visible resume that they can use when they utilize for work.
“The skills that are taught in these follow environments obtain immediate apps in the real-world operations of Church of the Highlands,” reported Blaine Lindsey, govt vice president of communications for Highlands Faculty. “Our students are not just studying competencies in a classroom surroundings. They are implementing those people in what we connect with the living laboratory of Church of the Highlands. They get over 400 hrs of arms-on education. They get the feeling of getting completed this just before when they phase out into that to start with entry place.”
The Affiliation for Biblical Bigger Schooling Fee on Accreditation previous calendar year authorized Highlands University to get started awarding a 64-credit rating associate of arts diploma in ministry leadership within three to 5 decades, the university may start off featuring a bachelor’s degree, claimed Gina Cox, government vice president of teachers. Tuition is at this time $3,950 for every semester, with scholarships available. Its strategic plan phone calls for advancement to 1,000 pupils by 2029 with a eyesight for all pupils to graduate debt-free of charge.
“No college student is going to graduate with any type of personal debt,” Hodges reported. “We’ll elevate up scholarships. We never want their monetary obligation to be a barrier to their contacting.”
See also: Passion Foyer founder donates $20 million to Highlands University
Church of the Highland’s 500-university student college or university ideas to move, grow at Grandview
Church of the Highlands purchases extra land for long term campus