CBC holds fall ceremony for 2021 grads
Graduates filed into the Columbia Bible College chapel to receive their diplomas Sept. 18, five months after completing the 2020-2021 academic year. Commencement had been delayed from the spring due to the pandemic. All 2021 graduates had been invited to return to campus for the event, with one-third attending in person. The ceremony was also livestreamed.…
‘Making plans, but holding them lightly’
As the academic year draws to a close, students and staff at Columbia Bible College are reflecting on how the college has successfully navigated offering in-person learning despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. These have included reduced class sizes, mask fatigue, teaching behind plexiglass, and keeping resident and commuter students apart. A high priority…
CBC navigates fall class restart
Life at Columbia Bible College (CBC) looks quite different than it did back in mid-March, when classes suddenly ended and students were sent home due to COVID-19. After six months of inactivity, CBC has reopened for in-person classes. Staff were busy over the summer preparing the campus for a safe return, balancing residence life, instructional…
‘A different kind of ministry’
A longtime B.C. pastor and church leader is making a transition to a different kind of ministry. After 30 years as a pastor, most recently of Level Ground Mennonite Church in Abbotsford, Karen Heidebrecht Thiessen began a new career chapter on Aug. 1 as dean of students at Columbia Bible College. “After 20 wonderful years…
Let’s go on an adventure!
Every year Mennonite Church Alberta offers education bursaries to students who attend a regional-church congregation who have successfully enrolled in a Mennonite or Anabaptist post-secondary institution. In 2019, Claire Dueck, a member of Lethbridge Mennonite Church, was one of eight recipients. Dueck, 18, just completed her first year at Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford, B.C.,…
CBC graduates class online
Graduation for Columbia Bible College’s class of 2020 looked a little different this year. Rather than proudly walking across the stage in cap and gown to receive their diplomas, the graduates took part in a virtual online commencement ceremony on April 18. The college had dismissed classes earlier in the year due to the novel…
Canadian post-secondary schools announce enrolment figures
WINNIPEG—Preliminary fall enrolment numbers at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) indicate an overall 3 percent increase in students in the university’s undergraduate and graduate degree programs. This increase reflects both headcount and full-time equivalent (FTE) course registrations. Anticipated full-year registrations for 2019-20 total 955 FTEs for all CMU programs. This includes 670 FTEs through CMU’s main…
Reclaiming the value of health-care assistants
The head of a Columbia Bible College diploma program is seeking to prove the value of health-care assistants and help raise up a new generation of them in B.C. The eight-month program is starting this month and is provincially recognized. According to the Abbotsford college, it will follow an approved curriculum for training and will…
Former CBC president dies at 81
Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford, B.C., is remembering its former president, Walter (Wally) Unger, who died May 9 at the age of 81 in hospice care in Abbotsford. Unger was born in Saskatchewan as the youngest of seven children. He grew up in St. Catharines, Ont., where he married his wife, Laura Redekopp, and began…
Columbia renames diploma and degree human services programs
ABBOTSFORD, B.C.—Students in Columbia Bible College’s two-year program will now graduate with a diploma in human services and students in the degree program will earn a bachelor’s degree in counselling and human services. The new names are intended to better reflect the goals of each program, using current marketplace terminology. Darrin Derksen, counselling program director…
