2017-2018 Catalog 
    
    Mar 18, 2024  
2017-2018 Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Make Olivet Your First Choice!


Your choice to build your life on a solid college education can bring dividends for the rest of your life. Some things in life may be repeated, but you only have one first year in college. The time you invest cannot be regained.

Many educators agree that the freshman year is the most important for choosing personal values and study and work habits; making social adjustments and commitments; and claiming the promises of God for your life.

We invite you to consider Olivet Nazarene University, a private, Christian, liberal arts university in the Village of Bourbonnais just south of Chicago, Illinois, as your choice for a quality education with a decidedly Christian perspective.

Olivet offers you a community distinguished by enriching personal relationships, Christian values, and the highest standards.

Olivet’s first-quality academic programs combine a foundation of liberal arts study with a variety of career-focused majors, concentrations, and minors. Our emphasis on career preparation through over 100 areas of study equips young men and women for a lifetime of effective and satisfying living.

Olivet students have access to state-of-the-art technology. Numerous computer labs provide each Olivet student access to the Internet; ONUnet, the Olivet fiber optic network; and all classroom applications. Multiple SMART classrooms exist across campus. Every student room on campus is wired with two network ports, allowing students to do electronic research from their residence hall rooms 24 hours a day. Olivet also has its own cable TV system with 41 stations, including three University channels, in each room.

We are clearly focused on education with Christian values and hold an uncompromising commitment to Jesus Christ. We all share a common view - a view that not only binds us together, but enriches our lives as well.

Olivet’s faculty of more than 150 men and women are carefully chosen for their proficiency in teaching, character-building influence, and Christian dedication. They are your partners in an “Education With a Christian Purpose.” These professors can become your close friends as you work to integrate and organize your life and career with Christ in first place.

The Christian perspective on learning encourages you to look at the deeper meanings in life. This perspective on learning begins with a view of God as our Creator and Lord rather than an attempt to consider humanity as the center of the universe. The result of God’s creation is a rich area for study. It leads us back to ultimate reality. God created each member of the human race in His own image, and declared all His creation to be good. God entrusted the care and safekeeping of His creation to the human race. We also see humanity in a fallen condition, the result of the fall of Adam, which is evidenced in human rebellion against God and righteous living. As humans, we find ourselves estranged from God, and the image of God is marred by the pervasive effects of sin in the world. This fallen condition, however, is redeemable through the grace of God because of the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. Through that grace, Christian higher education works to prepare students for a life of service and fulfillment in the work of God in the world, as He continues to reveal Himself to people everywhere. This Christian perspective develops an approach to personal behavior based on sound principles, resulting in creative and preventive social actions. Students and alumni become part of the solutions in life, not part of the problems. To do this, we teach students how to blend the liberal arts and professional training into “The Living Arts.” Liberal arts means a free and complete study of all of life, combining understanding from all branches of knowledge into a coherent view of life. The “Living Arts” lead students to find answers based on a firm and reasonable faith in God. Olivet professors generate a rich learning environment that enables students to express their questions, and discuss them from a view of God as revealed in the Bible, so they may comprehend and experience the “Living Arts.”

At Olivet, serious students increase their appreciation for the past and prepare diligently for a creative future. Employers continually seek out Olivet graduates, for they know a college diploma has greater value when the person who earns it has gained the interpersonal skills, self-knowledge, self-esteem, and personal integrity to put that college education to its best use. Can you afford an education at Olivet? The better question may be, “Can you afford not to attend Olivet?” Affordable excellence is provided on the basis of careful financial management at Olivet. The total costs of education, meals, and housing at Olivet are reasonable among the private colleges and universities in the Midwest, and comparable to that for a student living on campus at a major Midwestern state university. Financial aid available to an Olivet student may be far greater than the amount offered to the same student to attend a community college or state university. The generous support to Olivet by Nazarene churches every year creates a “built-in” scholarship for every student. And the value you receive from an education at Olivet is so much more as you commit yourself to the highest principles and spiritual values. Dollars alone cannot measure the true cost or the value of a college education. Figure in also the immeasurable value of the spiritual dimension of education at Olivet that is essential to bringing out the best in you. College is more than classrooms, books, and study. The life experiences you share with students, faculty, and friends become an invaluable part of building your life on Christian principles. These may be among the strongest reasons why Olivet becomes your first choice! We sincerely hope you will want this vital and valuable experience of an “Education With a Christian Purpose.”