Dallas Christian University: A Historical and Academic Overview

Dallas Christian University (DCC) has a rich history rooted in the desire to train Christian leaders. From its humble beginnings to its current diverse academic offerings, DCC has remained committed to its mission of integrating faith and learning. This article explores the history of DCC, its academic programs, and its commitment to fostering a Christian worldview in its students.

The Genesis of DCC: A Need for Christian Leadership

Near the midpoint of the twentieth century, many Texas Christians recognized the need for leadership in their churches and for starting new churches. The seeds of DCC were sown on May 10, 1949, when former missionary Vernon Newland met with forty concerned Texas church leaders. They discussed establishing a Bible college in Texas to train leaders for Christian ministry in the tradition of the Restoration Movement (Stone-Campbell Movement). This meeting marked the beginning of what would become Dallas Christian College.

From Downtown Dallas to Farmers Branch: A Journey of Growth

DCC has flourished over the years. It has grown from two downtown Dallas locations to its third location, on twenty-two acres in the historic northwest Dallas county community of Farmers Branch. Many outstanding Christian men and women have served DCC as trustees, faculty, staff, and administration.

The College has been blessed by the following men who have served as President: Vernon M. Newland (1950-1952, 1964-1968), J. Thomas Segroves (1952-1960), Harold D. Platt (1963-1964), E. Dean Barr (1968-1973), Melvin M. Newland (1973-1981), Charles A. McNeely (1982-1984), Gene R. Shepherd (1985-1994), Keith H. Ray (1995-1998), John L. Derry (1998-2003), Dustin D. Rubeck (2004-2014), and presently Brian D.

Academic Programs: Integrating Faith and Learning

Currently, DCC offers associates and bachelors degrees with a variety of majors and minors to choose from. DCC’s curriculum combines a Bible curriculum with professional studies and general education courses taught from a Christian worldview. The College provides instruction in varying formats:

Traditional day and evening classes
The Quest accelerated format in the evening, which began in 1995
Online, providing distance students the opportunity to earn a degree via the Internet
FLEXCampus®, which in 2013 became the primary format for non-traditional (adult) students, offering the flexibility of participating in the classroom, participating live via web conference, or watching the recorded class session the next day and completing the class online.

Alternative Teacher Certification and the Bachelor of Science in Education and Bible

In 2003, the State of Texas authorized DCC to offer alternative teacher certification. Alternative Certification Curriculum to Ensure Student Success (ACCESS) allowed students with a bachelor degree the opportunity to earn public school teacher certification by attending an eight- week block of instructional courses, followed by supervised teaching in the public school system for a year. ACCESS evolved into the current Alternative Certification Program (ACP) offered online and paved the way for DCC’s current authorization to offer students the opportunity to earn Texas public school teacher certification while earning the bachelor’s degree as of 2015. The Bachelor of Science in Education and Bible was approved by the Texas Education Agency to offer Texas State Teaching Certification to students who pass state requirements.

Emphasis on Christian Service and Global Awareness

DCC students participate in an active plan of Christian service and chapel attendance. They serve in volunteer, internship, and full-time capacities at area churches and on ministry teams of praise and proclamation to churches, youth groups, and the inner city. Each year since 2008, DCC has held Kingdom Week, a missions-emphasis week in March (and sometimes an extended week in May) in which the College hosts four-six trips to other cities and countries. Through Kingdom Week, students learn about other peoples and cultures while discovering more about God and themselves. Also, DCC faculty and staff lead in their home congregations, provide counsel to Metroplex churches, and speak throughout Texas and the Southwest.

The History Program at DCC: Understanding the Past Through a Christian Lens

Dallas Christian College strives to meet the educational needs of an increasingly diverse student body and to encourage leadership of churches and Christian organizations in Texas, the Southwest, and around the globe. DBU's Department of History is dedicated to fostering students' understanding of historical events and eras through the perspective of a Christian worldview and to helping students realize their responsibilities as citizens.

Goals of the History Major

Students will possess a strong contextual structure through which they can understand the flow of American and world history, including knowledge of significant dates.
Students will demonstrate an understanding of cultures, societies, and major reform movements in American and world history.
Students will exhibit an understanding of the political institutions and military conflicts in American and world history.
Students will be familiar with significant individuals in American and world history.
Students will be proficient with the tools and knowledge needed to be successful in undergraduate historical research, as well as in preparation for future graduate studies.
Students will understand a Christian worldview perspective in the study of history.

Degree Requirements

A 120-credit-hour minimum for a bachelor's degree is required, including 42 upper-level credit hours. DBU requires a minimum institutional cumulative, major, and minor GPA of 2.0.

The curriculum includes courses such as:

Read also: DCS Tuition Information

Developing a Christian Mind
Composition and Rhetoric I & II
World Literature I and/or II
Introduction to Fine Arts
World Civilization I & II
Historiography and Historical Methods
Twentieth-Century America

Students also have the opportunity to take upper-level and lower or upper-level electives.

Minor in History

DCC also offers a minor in History.

Accelerated Degrees

DBU also offers Accelerated Bachelor’s and Master’s degree program(s) for this degree available for qualifying undergraduate students.

BA/BS in History/MA in International Studies (East Asian Studies)
BA/BS in History/MA in International Studies (European Studies)
BA/BS in History/MA in Leadership
BA/BS in History/MED in Higher Education (Instructional Track: History)

The Essence of Historical Study: Seeking Truth and Understanding

As a discipline, history is the rational and imaginative reconstruction of the past in terms of human thoughts, expressions, actions, and experiences. Its special object is change over time. The purpose of history is to seek knowledge of the human past and, through that study, an understanding of human conduct. History is a subject particularly appropriate to the University of Dallas, which defines its purpose in terms of the renewal of the Western heritage of liberal learning and the recovery of the Christian intellectual tradition. History provides a unique bridge between the two. As a discipline, it was created by the Greeks and taken up as an intellectual pursuit by the Romans, one of whom-Cicero-called it "the light of truth, the witness of time, the mistress of life." It represents the Greco-Roman cultural tradition which lies at the foundation of the Western heritage in an especially powerful way. History is also of particular relevance to the Judeo-Christian tradition, which is predicated on the significance of events in time as revelatory of the relationship of man to God.

The History Curriculum: A Deep Dive into Western and American Civilizations

The history curriculum consists of the core courses in Western Civilization and American Civilization, upper-division courses both topical and geographical and a course required of majors in historiography and historical method. This curriculum is based on the university’s stated purposes and on the Department’s view of the discipline. The core courses are designed to introduce students to history as a mode of knowing which understands men and women through the interpretation of individual instances of their activity in the past. These courses both introduce students to the fundamental elements of the Western heritage and the Christian tradition and demonstrate the contribution of historical thinking to mature and thoughtful reflection on the human condition. First, by concentrating on the essential qualities of European and American civilization from a developmental viewpoint, the courses offer a solid grounding for the more specialized treatments of Western culture confronted in other core courses.

Advanced history courses proceed from the core courses. Each course uses increasingly detailed information to involve students in more complex and demanding exercises in historical method. That method is at once critical in its attitude toward evidence and empathetic in its use of that material to understand the individuals of the past and their actions. It further engages the power of the imagination, both to comprehend the motives which lay behind the specific occurrences attested by evidence and to draw connections among various pieces and kinds of evidence. The culmination of the program for majors is a course which studies history historically. By concentrating on the development of the historical method and involving the student in the critical yet sympathetic analysis of the works of specific historians, the course also seeks to prepare students for the rigorous exercise of practicing history through extended research on a particular topic and the careful exposition of conclusions in the Senior Thesis. It is appropriate, given the structure of the curriculum and the premises on which it is based, that the comprehensive examination in history should be in the form of such a project rather than a more conventional test. The object of the major program is not merely to provide a familiarity with, or ability to enumerate, facts of the Western past; it is rather to develop within students a habit of thinking historically and to foster the ability to apply the historical method effectively to specific questions about the past and express these findings with care, thoroughness and literary expertise. This goal can best be achieved through the practice of the method in a particular instance, under the watchful guidance of one who has already achieved some mastery of it. Finally, the Department does not claim to provide a program of study which leads to the whole truth, or even to a knowledge of all history. Rather, it espouses a point of view based on the premise that the thoughtful and regular application of the historical method can attain a portion of the truth, namely truth about the past; and the Department offers all students some of that truth about the past, along with the truths about human knowing which are learned through the practice of the discipline itself. Twenty-four advanced credits in history, including History 4347 and 4348. In the following fall they register for History 4348.

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