Twelve of the 23 courses offered this fall will be offered once a week or on the weekend to make it easier for students who must travel a distance to the seminary.

Over one-third of the students currently taking courses at EMS live at least an hour from Harrisonburg. Some drive two or three hours. With the new block schedule, these students may only need to come one or two days a week instead of three or four.

Commuters will travel less

“Next year it would be possible for someone from Roanoke to come and take up to six credits one day a week,” said Don A. Yoder, director of admissions.

Lee Ann Powers drives two hours one way from Bedford, Va. to attend her evening class this semester.

“With the rising gas prices I’m looking forward to a monthly weekend class next fall. It will be cheaper for me to drive up once a month and stay overnight,” said Powers. “Plus I’m hoping it will enhance the sense of community and belonging to be here more than one evening a week.”

Part-time students will be able to balance work and school

“Almost half of the students taking courses at the Harrisonburg campus are part time,” Yoder noted. “Many students hold part-time ministry positions or work other jobs along with their seminary studies.  This new schedule will make it easier for them to manage work and school. ”

The block schedule also benefits students taking courses in other at 91¶ÌÊÓƵ. All other graduate programs have block schedules, and so students who are taking courses in multiple programs will be able to schedule classes more easily.

Dual degree students benefit

“I’m enrolled in both the seminary and ,” said Brian Gumm, a third-year student from Harrisonburg, Va. “The new schedule will make it much easier for me to take all the classes I need to graduate next year.”

To learn more about courses at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, visit the seminary website , call the admissions office at 540-432-4257, or email semadmiss@emu.edu.

Sims, a part-time student, looks comfortable jotting down notes and engaging her professors and classmates, even if some are less than half her age.

The 65-year-old social worker from Sugar Grove, W.Va., humbly acknowledges that the classroom is not easy after more than 40 years away, but she isn’t alone. Sims is among the 20 percent of American seminary students older than 50, according to the Association of Theological Schools.

“Seminary’s hard. It’s really hard,” Sims said Tuesday following her Christian Traditions II course. “When you’re older and haven’t been in a study mode for many, many years it complicates it.

“I’m here and still here, clearly, because God called me.”

Don Yoder, EMS co-director of admissions, wasn’t surprised by the 2009 ATS findings, an 8 percent increase from 1995.

Last year, EMS had 47 students 50 and older – accounting for 35 percent of the 132 students in the program.

Yoder noted the significant growth among that demographic in the last decade, as only 20 percent of the students in 2004 were at least 50 years old.

“What I hear from people is everything from, ‘My Sunday school teacher or my religion teacher told me when I was 12 [that] I should be a preacher, and I’ve been running from it ever since,'” he said. “Then at age 52, they say, ‘Maybe, I should go into a ministry.'”

Yoder believes other key motivations for older students include career changes and “simply looking for a place to exercise the brain in an academic setting again.”

Generations Embrace

At 50, Karen Kiel is a tail-end baby boomer with grown children and more time to focus on her calling to the ministry. Kiel lives in Drake Branch, about three hours south of Harrisonburg, but rents an apartment near campus to use during the week.

“I felt a real call in my life to be a part of ministry,” she said. “God is the center of my life and it’s what gives me strength and it’s what gives me purpose.”

Kiel believes it’s good for her to be around the younger students because of the different perspectives they bring.

“The dynamic is healthy,” she said. “They grew up in different ways and different places, maybe even different cultures some of them, and it gives me a different lens to peer through.”

Randy Keener, 26, is a classmate of Kiel and Sims and also enjoys learning with people of different ages for the first time.

“It was actually a surprise for me coming in,” Keener said. “I was actually expecting it to be more younger people, but through just my first year here I’ve already seen the rich benefits in an older generation that brings experiences.

“I’m also a firm believer in inter-generational growth and learning from each other and I’m a strong advocate for mentoring.”

EMS professor Nate Yoder (no relation to Don Yoder) values discussion from the older students as a way to enhance the learning of younger students. Yoder, 55, also focuses on making sure older students are comfortable.

“Sometimes, older students can feel intimidated, especially when it comes to the strictly academic part of the work,” he said. “I try to channel it to what my goal is for my students’ learning. What is it that assists and enhances their learning?”

By Tom Mitchell, Daily News-Record

Harrisonburg resident Charlene Davis, who works full time, is taking an online class in Mennonite history at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. Photo by Michael Reilly

Charlene Davis is e-mailing her way to a degree in pastoral care at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

“I work full time and wasn’t able to take courses in the classroom,” said Davis, 55, who works at 91¶ÌÊÓƵ as an assistant for advancement and takes an online class in Mennonite history. “I love the flexibility of my course.”

Davis is among a growing number of students whose academic needs are being met by a modern approach to teaching at EMS: making education at the seminary available to people besides on-campus students.

Recent figures at EMS show a sizable portion of students who are enrolled in EMS courses away from the seminary.

More than half of the pupils enrolled in courses at EMS for the first time this fall study from afar, according to numbers released by the seminary. Of the 33 new students currently taking classes at EMS, 18 are enrolled in what officials at EMS call “distance learning” courses.

The total enrollment at EMS this fall is 130 students. EMS’ distance-learning program consists of 10 pupils who are taking online courses and eight more who signed up for classes at EMS’ satellite campus in Lancaster, Pa.

Lonnie Yoder, director of online studies and professor of pastoral care at EMS

Distance learning has been part of the EMS program for 11 years, said Lonnie Yoder, director of online studies and professor of pastoral care at EMS. Yoder, who teaches an online course on leadership at EMS, sees distance learning as “a growing trend” in higher education.

Yoder cites the arrival of the Internet, the way it makes off-campus courses more accessible to students and its flexible format for classwork as three reasons that more of today’s college and seminary students find distance learning appealing.

“Years ago assignments would be mailed out, sent back and the professor would grade them,” Yoder said. “Obviously, we’ve come a long way. I think, today, students are saying ‘I want education to be where I am.'”

Able To Stay Put

Staff at EMS point out that distance learning negates a need to relocate, once a problem for prospective students. And online classes tend to be smaller and, therefore, more personal, they say.

Don Yoder, EMS director of admissions

“We don’t have more than 12 students in a class and I think that helps,” said Don Yoder, the seminary’s director of admissions.

EMS’ Lancaster campus now offers a curriculum that serves students away from EMS. Last year, Don Yoder said, the campus at Lancaster earned the accreditation required to offer a full master of divinity program, and four new students enrolled.

This fall, 11 new students have enrolled.

Some classes offered by EMS reach people out of the country. Lonnie Yoder said that the seminary’s online courses have students from as far away as Lithuania and Japan. Laura Lehman Amstutz, seminary communications coordinator, said others take the online program while on missions.

“We have faculty members who spend a lot of time in various places in the world,” Amstutz said. “Some of the contacts they have [abroad] give them an insight and sources they wouldn’t normally have, and enhance what they do there.”