Vietnamese student program sees first graduates

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Twenty-one Vietnamese students recently graduated from Boyce College as the inaugural class in a bilingual education program at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s undergraduate college.

According to the program’s founder, An Van Pham, these students, 60 percent of whom hail from Georgia, will play a vital role in bringing much-needed theological education to ethnic congregations in the United States. As director of language missions for the Atlanta Baptist Association, Pham conducted a 1993 survey, which discovered that 75 percent of ethnic pastors in the Atlanta area had no seminary background. A full 50 percent had not even completed a four-year college degree.

So motivated by the need to educate pastors of non-English-­speaking churches, Pham contacted Bob Johnson, then the dean of Boyce College, about starting a bilingual education program for Vietnamese ministers. In the fall of 1993, 42 Vietnamese students began working toward an associate of arts degree in biblical studies. By 1999, the program had been modified in order to permit the students to earn a bachelor of science degree. May 16 the first 21 students received their bachelor’s degrees.