WWC Offers New Programs
Walla Walla College is offering three new academic programs.
The college is the first Seventh-day Adventist institution to offer a bachelor’s degree in special education. The degree prepares individuals to teach special-needs students in preschool through high school. Students can complete a major in special education with approximately one extra quarter of coursework and still obtain elementary teaching certification.
According to faculty from the School of Education and Psychology, special education is an important field of service in public and SDA education. Certification in special education prepares teachers to meet the special needs of exceptional students (above or below the academic norm) in ways that cannot be met in a regular teaching environment.
WWC is also adding a biochemistry major. Biochemistry melds aspects of the chemical, physical, and biological sciences into one discipline and implements knowledge of these scientific fields in the study of living organisms at the molecular level.
The degree is designed to prepare students for graduate school but can also be useful as a background for a degree in patent law or medicine. Researchers with a biochemistry background often work in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, biotechnology, or agriculture.
Biochemistry also plays a significant role in the current debate over intelligent design. “The dialogue between theologians and scientists comparing God’s written word and special works can better stimulate our thinking about God to know Him better,” says Jonathan Neidigh, assistant professor of chemistry. “By studying God’s creation, we’re studying God. What better way of doing that than by studying the most complex part of Creation’s living organisms.”
Groundwork for WWC’s newest minor first began more than 12 years ago with the involvement of WWC faculty and students in the Madaba Plains Project, an archaeological endeavor in Jordan.
WWC is the first Adventist college or university in North America to offer an archaeology minor.
Although the minor will be listed under the School of Theology, the cross-disciplinary nature of archaeology makes it applicable in a variety of areas such as biblical studies, engineering, geology, botany, zoology, and art.
Doug Clark, professor of biblical studies, emphasizes, “Archaeology, done well, contributes significantly to our understanding of the Bible and the biblical world.” Clark points to a quote from Ellen White’s “Mount of Blessing”: “Understanding what the words of Jesus meant to those who heard them, we may discern in them a new vividness and beauty, and may also gather for ourselves their deeper lessons.”
