Educational Partnerships

Here is a picture from today's Guam campus chapel. We enjoyed hearing a message from our new faculty member, Brad Boydston. It seems weird to me that Brad and I grew up only a few miles apart, he in San Jose and me in Santa Cruz, and yet we end up working together at age 50 on the other side of the world!


PIBC is working on some new partnership agreements with other educational institutions in the Pacific Islands region. Tomorrow our administration has a meeting with the president and academic dean of the College of Micronesia. COM is the community college of the FSM with campuses in Pohnpei, Chuuk and Yap. We have been working on an agreement that would allow students to seamlessly transfer courses and federal financial aid between the schools so they can take advantage of the course offerings of both institutions. The agreement would also make it easier for students to take their general education courses at COM and then go on and get a PIBC degree or to get an AA degree at PIBC and go to COM to get a degree in another subject besides Bible. PIBC currently has this kind of agreement with the Palau Community College and Guam Community College. Please pray with us that our meeting goes well and that we are able to complete this agreement.

We are also working on a possible partnership agreement with Hawaii Theological Seminary (you can view their web site at www.hits.edu) in Honolulu. I met with their VP of Development while I was at a conference in North Carolina. We have drafted a partnership document and are working through what a partnership would look like. It seems to make sense to us that since the two schools are trying to accomplish a similar mission - training of Christian leadership for the islands - that we should work together. Amazing concept for God's people, I know! Basically with HITS working from the East and PIBC from the West we could make great progress toward helping the island churches have well-trained leaders. Ultimately, I would like to see HITS have a teaching site on our Guam campus offering graduate courses while PIBC has a site for offering undergrad courses on the HITS campus. Did you know that Hawaii has the 2nd largest concentration of Micronesians in the world surpassed only by Chuuk? Again, please pray with that we can discern whether this idea is of God and then how we should pursue it.

One other issue to mention. PIBC has an urgent need for a computer person. We need someone who can maintain our hardware, software and networks and be our computer help desk. We would like to find someone who can raise at least some of their own support. PIBC could also provide some salary. We offer the opportunity to travel all over Micronesia to some of the most beautiful islands in the world - and the opportunity to face some of the most unique IT challenges imaginable. We have a diverse assortment of donated Macs, PC's and whatevers. If you are interested to be a "computer geek for God" please send me an email. You would be an answer to prayer.