The Global Affiliate for Christian Schools (GACS) is a scholarly Affiliate based in the Nigeria, dedicated to Christian schools, bible colleges, theological institutes, seminaries, etc. GACS members also include researchers working in non-university settings, including government, think-tanks, and advocacy organizations.
The Global Affiliate for Christian Schools is a Christian education association of more than 73 Christian institutions around the world. GACS institutions are accredited bible colleges, seminaries and Christian universities whose missions are Christ-centered and rooted in the historic Christian faith. Most also have curricula rooted in the theology and Christian digital skills. The GACS’s mission is to advance the cause of Christ-centered Schools and Institutions and to help our them transform lives by faithfully relating scholarship and service to biblical truth.
Though they are diverse in size, scope, and mission, every GACS institution shares three basic commitments:
Biblical Truth
Each GACS school or institution is committed to integrating the Holy Scriptures—divinely inspired, true, and authoritative—throughout all aspects of the institution, including teaching and research. Our professors pursue academic excellence because they are committed to God as the author of truth, and they know that truth has implications for every academic discipline.
Christian Formation
Each GACS school or institution is committed to fostering Christian virtues rooted in the Scriptures and nurtured through the institution’s curricular and co-curricular programs. Our purpose is to form students of moral commitment who live out Christian virtues such as love, courage, and humility in every aspect of their lives.
Gospel Witness
Each GACS school or institution is actively committed to advancing God’s redemptive purposes in the world by graduating students who live and share the Gospel in word and deed. Our graduates are hopeful realists who recognize the brokenness of the world but believe that God has called them to work for its healing – as doctors, teachers, marketers, engineers, parents, soccer coaches, and in a host of other ways.
Benefits
• Benefits of joining the GACS
• Participation in a network of like-minded, mission-driven, academically excellent Christian colleges and universities around the world.
• Access to GACS-sponsored professional development conferences for a wide variety of peer groups as well as specialized development institutes for new faculty members, emerging campus leaders, and new campus presidents.
• Institution-specific analysis alongside research data from GACS peers in a number of important areas in higher education, including tuition, compensation, student satisfaction and retention.
• Participation by faculty, administrators, and staff in online community groups with their peers from other GACS campuses in order to exchange questions, ideas and advice, as well as receive electronic communications and newsletters from the GACS.
• Ability to post job openings to the online GACS Career Center.
• Listing on the GACS’s website, www.gacsnetwork.org, with a link to the institution’s website.
• GACS institutions that are accredited through one of any institutionalized accrediting organizations are eligible to participate in an innovative consortium that enables institutions to share online courses to increase revenue, retention, and completion.
Categories
Our GACS institutions fit into one of four categories:
Governing Members (which are voting members as it relates to selecting members of the Board of Directors).
Associate Members, Collaborative Partners, and International Affiliates. These different categories are intended to acknowledge the variety of missions and different contexts in which GACS institutions operate and thus to allow each institution to find its best fit within the GACS.
This collective effort is invaluable not only to strengthen the voice of Christian schools and institutions in the landscape of Christian education but also to advocate for the collective good that religious schools and institutions
GACS supports researchers through dissemination of research in publications and its annual conference. GACS would own the academic journal Review of Christian Tertiary Education in four issues per annual volume. GACS would oversee several publications designed to advance the study of Christian tertiary institutions. With changes to scholarly communication and the ability to access publications electronically, some of these formats were discontinued. The GACS Reader Series would consist of edited topical volumes (e.g., governance, organizations, diversity, history) that would bring together important existing single publications (journal articles, book chapters) for use in graduate courses in Christian tertiary institutions.
GACS would also engage in supporting members’ professional development by offering opportunities for ongoing learning. Activities include workshops at the annual conference, synchronous online webinars on research topics or methods, and asynchronous learning through social media and archived materials. Some councils offer mentoring programs for early- or mid-career scholars, and periodically GACS partners with a foundation to sponsor seminars or symposia related to specific topics or research methods.