Collection X/001 - Council of Mennonite and Affiliated Colleges Records

<p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.1875px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> The Council of Mennonite and Affiliated Colleges met for the first time in August 1942, at Winona Lake, Indiana. E. E. Miller, president of Goshen College, took the initiative in calling the conference, which was attended by seven colleges. The primary purpose of the meeting was to discuss immediate problems confronting the Mennonite colleges as a result of the war. Known as the Conference for Administrators of Mennonite Colleges, it later was called the Committee of Mennonite and Affiliated College Administrators, but after 1945 was called the Council of Mennonite and Affiliated Colleges. Members of the council included these colleges: Bethel, Bluffton, Eastern Mennonite, Freeman, Goshen, Hesston, Messiah, Tabor, and Upland.

<p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.1875px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> Among the activities of the council was the sponsoring of a biennial program on Mennonite educational problems. The Conference on Mennonite Cultural Problems, sponsored by the council, met conjointly with the conference on educational problems.

<p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.1875px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> In the fall of 1946 the council in cooperation with the Mennonite Central Committee launched a student exchange program that in its first five years brought 119 young people from Europe for a year of study in the Mennonite colleges of America. Related to this undertaking was the European voluntary service program, in which American young people, selected by the council, toured Europe and spent four to six weeks working in service projects. These annual tours were sponsored beginning the summer of 1947. During the first five years approximately 150 Mennonite young people from North America participated in these programs. Meeting several times each year, the representatives of the participating colleges shared experiences, discussed their common problems, and took up matters of business related to the student exchange program and other projects of mutual interest to the group.