Taylor University


Taylor University is a private, interdenominational, evangelical Christian university in Upland, Indiana. Founded in 1846, it is one of the oldest evangelical Christian universities in the United States.
The university is named after Bishop William Taylor. The university sits on an approximately campus on the south side of Upland. It also preserves a arboretum and an additional of undeveloped land northeast of campus which has more of arboretum space.
As of 2022, Taylor University has 1,798 undergraduate students, 33 graduate students, and 395 distance learning students. The student body hails from 38 states and 26 foreign countries, with 44 percent from Indiana. Taylor is a member of NAIA with 16 men's and women's sports teams. The university is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and is a member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and the Christian College Consortium.
In August 2021, D. Michael Lindsay was named as the current president.

History

Founding

In 1846, Taylor University was originally established as Fort Wayne Female College in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In the first full year of the school, about 100 women were enrolled, paying $22.50 per year. During this time, it was common for women to obtain an M.E.L. degree, the Mistress of English Literature. Fort Wayne Female College was founded by the Methodist Church as an all-female school.
In 1850, Fort Wayne Female College started admitting men coeducationally and changed its name to Fort Wayne College.
In 1890, Fort Wayne College acquired the former facilities of nearby Fort Wayne Medical College that were vacated after Fort Wayne Medical College's merger with Indiana Asbury College, another Methodist-affiliated college. Upon completing this acquisition, Fort Wayne College changed its name to Taylor University in honor of Bishop William Taylor. The original Taylor University campus was on College Street in Fort Wayne.

Move to Upland

In 1882, a guest-preaching engagement in the Upland Methodist Church afforded Fort Wayne College president Thaddeus Reade the chance to meet the minister of Upland Methodist Church, Rev. John C. White. Because the school was having financial difficulties at its location in Fort Wayne, White and Upland citizen J.W. Pittinger worked to bring the school to Upland.
In the spring of 1893, White negotiated an agreement between the trustees of the now-named Taylor University and the Upland Land Company. The university agreed to move to Upland, Indiana, and the company agreed to provide Taylor with $10,000 in cash and of land. That summer, Taylor University relocated to Upland. White was able to find the resources to support Taylor University because of the recent discovery of large deposits of natural gas in the area.
In 1915, Taylor paid seven thousand dollars to purchase more from Charles H. and Bertha Snyder.
Early in the 1920s, the university added another to its present location when the Lewis Jones farm was purchased. After 1922, Taylor University was no longer formally affiliated with Methodism.

Summit Christian College and Fort Wayne

In 1992, ninety-nine years after moving to Upland, Taylor University acquired Summit Christian College located in the city of Fort Wayne. The college was subsequently renamed Taylor
University Fort Wayne. Summit Christian College was founded in 1904 as the Bible Training School of Fort Wayne, later becoming Fort Wayne Bible Institute, and eventually, in 1950, Fort Wayne Bible College. In 1989 the school was renamed Summit Christian College. Prior to acquisition by Taylor University, Summit Christian College was affiliated with the Missionary Church.
With the urban setting of the campus in Fort Wayne, the academic programs tended to be more vocational and its student body more non-traditional. Reflecting this, of TUFW's 1,040 member student body, approximately 224 students lived on campus with the rest commuting or taking courses online. Popular majors included Professional Writing, Biblical Studies, Christian Ministries, Education, English, and Business.
The Taylor University Fort Wayne Falcons participated in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association. The school offered basketball for men and women, soccer for men and women, and women's volleyball.
On October 13, 2008, the university announced plans to discontinue traditional undergraduate programs on the Fort Wayne Campus. Programs that remained after the closure or were transitioned to the Upland campus included the MBA program, the online program, and the radio station, WBCL.

2006 Van accident

On April 26, 2006, Taylor received national attention when a university van was involved in a fatal accident outside Marion, Indiana, while traveling between the Fort Wayne and Upland campuses. The accident happened when a northbound semi-trailer truck driver fell asleep at the wheel, crossed the median and struck the southbound passenger van on I-69. Four students and one staff member were killed, and three staff members and one student were injured. The accident occurred two days before former university president Eugene Habecker's inauguration ceremony. The truck driver was convicted of reckless, involuntary manslaughter and received a four-year prison sentence.
The Grant County coroner and Taylor officials failed to positively identify all the victims. The incident made international headlines when there was a case of mistaken identity between two of the victims. Senior Laura Van Ryn, who died on the scene, was mistaken for surviving freshman Whitney Cerak. A funeral was conducted with a closed casket for Whitney Cerak, and the mistake was not discovered until Cerak identified herself after waking up from a coma over a month later.
On May 23, 2009, Cerak graduated from Taylor, and the two families remain close.
On April 26, 2008, the second anniversary of the accident, the university dedicated the $2.4 million Memorial Prayer Chapel as a memorial to the victims: students Laurel Erb, Brad Larson, Betsy Smith and Laura Van Ryn, along with Taylor employee Monica Felver. As a result of this incident, Indiana changed its procedure for identifying victims involved in accidents.

Vision 2016

Upon inauguration President Eugene Habecker unveiled his Taylor University Vision 2016 plan for the university. The initiative involved the creation of several centers of excellence on campus. The Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence was established and endowed. The center for Scripture engagement was partially endowed. And centers for Missions Computing, Ethics, C.S. Lewis and Faith, Film, and Media are in the process of being created. Programs were created in Ireland and Ecuador. The initiative involved the construction of several buildings around campus:
  • 2008: The Prayer Chapel, built in memorial of the 2006 van crash was completed;
  • 2008: Campbell Hall, an off campus university apartment complex completed;
  • 2012: The Euler Science Complex, an addition to the Nussbaum science complex completed;
  • 2012: Wolgemuth Hall an off campus university apartment complex completed;
  • 2013: Breuinger Hall a residence hall connected to Gerig hall completed; and
  • 2016: LaRita Boren Campus Center, a replacement for the old student union was completed.
  • 2016: As well, as upgrades to athletic facilities, landscaping, and other buildings were also undertaken.

    Res Publica controversy

In 2018, several professors who believed their fundamentalist and conservative viewpoints were not well represented in the student newspaper published an anonymous underground newspaper called Excalibur. The student newspaper responded by asserting that they had not refused to publish any submitted articles and that when the associated professors published a piece in the newspaper the prior year they received pushback from the student body. The university president Lowell Haines criticized the publications, citing the targeted distribution of the paper in rooms of minorities and supporters of social justice, along with the unaccountability and inability to create and maintain dialogue with anonymous publications. At this point the authors of the newspaper, Jim Spiegel, Gary Ross, Richard Smith, and Ben Wehling, came forward, apologized for any perceived slights due to distribution, and stated that their goal was to create dialogue about viewpoints they felt were under-represented Several open letters were published, with one addressing the newspapers arguments directly, and another criticizing what it saw as the president's harsh response.

2019 Commencement controversy

On March 24, 2019, university president Paul Lowell Haines announced that Vice President Mike Pence would be delivering the commencement speech at the 2019 graduation ceremonies. Controversy was immediate, the faculty voting on a motion of dissent, with 61 against the Pence invitation, 41 in favor and 3 abstaining. Competing petitions were organized, calling for the invitation to be rescinded or supporting the invitation. Student and faculty organized protests to walk out before the commencement speech, or to sit silently during the speech. Students and faculty expressed several reasons for protesting: the lack of faculty and student input into the decision, concerns that Pence's invitation was an endorsement of specific political and religious views, Pence's affiliation with President Donald Trump, and the belief that Pence did not represent the same Christian values the university endorsed. On May 18, 2019, dozens of students and several faculty members walked out of commencement ceremonies shortly before Pence delivered the commencement address. The majority of students and faculty remained seated. At the end of his speech, Pence received a standing ovation, during which the majority of students and faculty that remained stayed silent and seated. Afterwards, students linked hands and sang the doxology in an attempt to show that even if they have different viewpoints, they can still respect and love each other. On June 24, university president Haines resigned, effective August 15, 2019.