PREMIERE OF FILM ON ADVENTIST EDUCATION

September 1. About 85 people were present for the premiere showing of the new PBS documentary on Adventist education titled The Blue Print: The Story of Adventist Education. The theme for the showing was “Opening Night” and was complete with klieg lights and red carpet. The filmmaker Martin Doblmeier was present to give the history of the film and to answer questions.

The film was made possible by generous donations from foundations and private individuals committed to the advancement of Adventist Education.

More About The Blueprint: The Story of Adventist Education – the first film for public television about the Adventist educational system.

Martin Doblmeier, an award-winning filmmaker of documentaries focused on religion and spirituality, unveiled his latest cinematic creation that came as a follow up to his previous films The Adventistsand The Adventists 2. Appropriately titled, The Blueprint: The Story of Adventist Education, the documentary takes us through the history and generations of continued excellence within our educational system that has been the legacy shaped by church visionary, Ellen White. Doblmeier spotlights an inclusive spectrum of Adventist schools from the Bronx-Manhattan Adventist School to Oakwood Adventist Academy. This film represents our philosophy that regardless of cultural differences or school sizes, Adventist schools implement White’s distinctive model of holistic education, and well-rounded and high-performing students continue to leave the halls of Adventist schools and enter a life of global service.

The Blueprint will be available to Adventist audiences for sneak previews in November at select locations across the NAD. DVDs of the film may be purchased at the screenings. In the spring of 2014, the film will make its national television debut on PBS to a projected audience of 30 to 40 million people.

BUILDING SUPPORT FOR ADVENTIST EDUCATION: THE BIG GOAL

The Center for Research on Adventist Education (CRAE) has acquired a proprietary software Agent-based Stakeholder Model (ASBM) and is piloting its use in the Southeastern and Central California Conferences. The ABSM offers, to SDA leadership, decision-making capabilities for better identifying and addressing the current challenges to the Adventist education system.

Using ASBM can help conferences/unions in making informed decisions affecting the schools. The ASBM will track the interactions of those involved in the educational landscape to identify both strategic opportunities that would help achieve desired goals and conditions that would prevent or inhibit desired goals from being realized. Among its over 450 users are agencies such as the Department of Defense, CIA, World Bank, DARPA, and the United Nations.

More specifically, ASBM can assist conferences/unions in the following:

  • identifying the most influential stakeholders in the conference education arena
  • analyzing the various stakeholder groups and coalitions and their relationships and methods for creating stronger coalitions to build support for Adventist Education
  • determining what stakeholder activities would most effectively boost support and enrollment
  • providing information for data-driven decisions/ strategies within the conference educational landscape
  • simulating real-time impact of proposed scenarios and their real-world outcomes

Preliminary results indicate that pastors are a critical group in building support for Adventist Education.

CURRENT CRAE ACTIVITIES

CognitiveGenesis. The results of the research are being used throughout the North American Division as a source of information on Adventist schools and to:

  • provide empirical evidence about student academic achievement that schools can use to acquaint parents and community with the facts about Adventist education
  • assist in curriculum improvement and administrative practices
  • provide a database for further research that deals with analyses of topics not yet explored (See Quarterly Report, April-June 2013, for doctoral research that has used the CognitiveGenesis database).

PLOT. PLOT is a joint research project with Loma Linda University that aims to develop an accurate and reliable survey instrument that can be used to determine the influence of life-style and personality traits on life decisions. The survey is currently in the validating stage.

ALCANCE. CRAE is partnering with the Pacific Union in helping conferences institute a program (ALCANCE) that identifies outstanding Adventist Hispanic students in public schools and endeavors to recruit them to attend Adventist academies. These students are assisted with scholarships and mentoring in an effort to help more Hispanic students attend Adventist academies, graduate and then attend an Adventist college/university. The first “ALCANCE Scholar,” Lynn Lopez, attended La Sierra Academy her last two years of high school and is now a sophomore Business major at La Sierra University and a valued member of the CRAE staff.

Adventist Graduation Rate Report. CRAE does an annual data collection of the number of students graduating from Adventist Schools who go on to higher education. In 2012, 93.7% of seniors in Adventist academies graduated and 91.3% planned to enroll in college/university.

Geographic Information System (GIS) Mapping. Since one does not currently exist, CRAE is developing a GIS map indicating the location of every Adventist church, hospital, and school (pre-school through university). It also will include census data and geographic and socio-economic-status information for each location. The data from this project will be used for research that will inform the NAD education system of factors influencing the education landscape in any particular locality.

PRESENTATIONS/LECTURES AND SERMONS

August 11. Vista Ridge Academy, Erie, CO. Elissa Kido gave a presentation for parents, board members, and teachers.

August 11-12. Rocky Mountain Conference Pastors Meetings: Elissa Kido gave two presentations during the conference. Pastors and their families were in attendance

September 5. The CRAE ABSM team of Dr. Kido, Noemy Cruz, and Udo Oyoyo met with Southeastern California Conference leadership to collect data.

September 9. The CRAE ABSM team met with the Central California Conference leadership to discuss and test various courses of action based on the analyses of conference ABSM data.

NEW STAFF

We welcome Andrea Gilkey who is returning to La Sierra University to finish her baccalaureate degree after a number of years working in the offices of Southeastern California Conference.