Gerald Kovalski, a vice president of the North American Division, oversees the entire Adventist educational system for the division. Editor William G. Johnsson and assistant editor Bonita Joyner Shields sat down with him to learn more about the man and his mission.

AR: What brought you into Adventist education?
GK: I started my career as a pastor and I think it has made me an education leader with a pastor's heart, a heart for people. When I was going through academy and college, several great teachers made an impact on my life. Teachers such as Orville Schneider, K. R. Davis, and Otto Christensen. It was at Andrews University, where I earned an M.A. degree in religion, that my interest in education was really piqued. When I was invited by my conference to pastor the academy church and teach religion classes, I fell in love with young people. I realized the tremendous impact a teacher has on the life of a student. Education has been my passion ever since.

Let's get an overview of the size of your assignment. How many schools do we have altogether? And about how many students are we looking at?
We have 1,036 institutions in the North American Division, at all levels. Fifteen are colleges and universities; and we have 104 academies and 917 elementary schools and junior academies.

Opening enrollment figures for this year total 43,452 students in elementary schools and 15,063 in academy. In the higher education institutions there are two ways to look at enrollment. One is full-time equivalents (FTEs), and the other is head count. We have an FTE of 18,719 students in the colleges and universities and a head count of 22,436.

What is the greatest challenge that you face?
Our greatest concern is probably in the area of enrollment. For the past few years we have seen our elementary enrollment declining in the entry grades, kindergarten and first grade. That is a great concern to us. We're endeavoring to find out if the dip represents disinterest in Adventist education or simply demographics.

How are you trying to obtain information about possible trends?
We are endeavoring to discover what our Adventist parents and constituency within the North American Division feel about Adventist education. To accomplish this, focus groups are being held with parents, students, pastors, board members, and educators to find out their perceptions. Do they see it as a ministry that can do something for their children? If they are using the system, why are they using it and what do they see as being celebration points? If they're not using it, why not? What can we do to fix it so they'll be attracted to it? We plan to act upon what we find.

Do you view home schooling as a significant factor in the declining enrollment at the elementary level?
Home schooling is definitely a factor. However, we respect parents who are home schooling, and encourage our schools to reach out to them. We want our schools to open the door to part-time involvement with home schools in areas such as extracurricular activities--music, physical education, etc.

How is Adventist education fulfilling the goal that Ellen White spoke about: the development of the whole person--body, mind, and spirit?
I think you have in mind Ellen White's statement in Education, page 13. That is one of three statements that are my inspiration for what Adventist education really is. The second tells us that the object of education is to restore in our students the image of God (pp. 15, 16). The third says that "the work of education and the work of redemption are one" (p. 30). That should be the driving force of the Seventh-day Adventist school system. If we lose track of the redemption part, we are spending a lot of money for no purpose, because our students could get a good academic education somewhere else. I believe education leaders across the North American Division are committed to the fact that education is a ministry focused on helping our students develop a better understanding of what their Savior Jesus Christ really means to them. In regards to the mind, we have a very sound curriculum that we are continually refining and improving to bring academics to the level of excellence. Adventist schools foster the development of the whole person. It's very important that these parts--body, mind, and spirit--are integrated in a practical way, because that's how Christians are designed to function.

In a society that demands us to be critical thinkers, how are we encouraging our children to be thinkers and not "mere reflectors of others' thoughts"?
Our teachers are expected to encourage their students to question, to search, to go to deeper meanings. We have discovered a lot about how the brain learns, and that students learn differently. All of the various learning styles will be present in the teacher's classroom. As teachers understand how students learn, they can present the information and provide learning opportunities in a variety of ways. Students are enabled to personalize learning, make it meaningful in their lives, and attach information to real-life issues and circumstances.

Education costs. Even if you go to public school, it's costing more and more. Are we pricing ourselves out of the market?
There are two ways to look at that. We are among the private school systems that charge the least amount of tuition. For families who are having economic challenges, cost is a factor. Our school boards at the local levels are very concerned about rising costs of education, and are trying many ways to deal with it. We are aware, however, that some of our parents are sending their children to other private schools and are paying higher tuition. Thankfully, at the tertiary level, the federal government has guaranteed loans with very attractive rates. It is a burden to students to have debts when they graduate. Our colleges are trying to find new innovative ways to provide work opportunities for students so that they can leave college with less debt. It is important to note that at all three levels--elementary, academy, and college--schools, boards, and conferences are working very hard to provide as much scholarship money as they can.

How do Adventist teachers rate compared to their public education counterparts as far as their training and education?
Without wanting to sound boastful--

Go ahead, boast!
I will put our teachers up against teachers from other schools any day of the week. Our teachers go through a very rigorous teacher-training program at our colleges and universities. Our institutions carry National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) accreditation for teacher-training programs. We provide ongoing inservice programs. Teachers are regularly exposed to the latest research and methodologies related to learning and teaching. The teacher certification program is either equivalent to or exceeds the certification expectations of states across the division. In addition to being academically prepared, our teachers have a love for students. They have a commitment to being Seventh-day Adventist teachers and touching the lives of students with eternal principles.

In many ways, society is on the skids. Is teaching becoming more difficult because of the breakup of homes?
Teaching is so different now from what it was when we had more intact homes; so different now that TV and other media are so accessible. Ad-ventist homes are a microcosm of society. We can't get past that. Our teachers deal with a lot of the issues that are dealt with in general society, in public schools, and other private schools. It's getting more difficult to keep students' attention. But interestingly, teachers are finding that the students are very receptive to spiritual things. They are finding them more inwardly spiritual, but less concerned about traditional Adventist standards. The Valuegenesis2 survey completed recently confirms that.

On many of our secondary and higher ed campuses students are initiating spiritual activities--Bible studies, prayer groups, and so on. I recently returned from Loma Linda University, where we met with the student leaders during an accreditation visit. The accreditation visiting team was amazed at the spiritual dynamic of those students--medical, dental, public health, hygiene students. They were sponsoring an evangelistic meeting in the community. Similar student-led spiritual emphasis is occurring on many campuses.

What would you like our readers to know about the accreditation of our schools?
That's a question I was hoping you would ask! We, of course, have the Accrediting Association of Seventh-day Adventist Schools, Colleges, and Universities. This organization in North America is a member of the National Council of Private School Accreditation (NCPSA). NCPSA represents most private school accrediting organizations in the United States. I am currently serving as treasurer of NCPSA. The Adventist Accrediting Association is esteemed as one of the best accrediting processes of all accrediting organizations for private schools in the United States. Through our association with NCPSA we also have a coaccrediting relationship with the regional accrediting bodies in the United States. These regional agencies are the accreditors for all schools, universities and colleges, public or private, across the United States. And our schools are now able to have that same accreditation.

I have sensed a trend toward day academies and away from boarding academies. Is that an accurate perception?
It is an accurate perception. Our boarding academies have had an interesting history in recent years. Some are holding on very well to their boarding enrollment, but most are finding their boarding enrollment declining, and their day enrollment growing. We also have a number of junior academies across the division that are growing (9- or 10-grade programs) to 12-grade programs. They are becoming day, stand-alone, senior academies. Each year we process a number of such applications. Parents are becoming less willing to send their teenagers away from home for years to a boarding situation. One reason for that is that as our church grows more multicultural, certain groups do not feel comfortable sending their teenagers away in their high school years. We honor and respect that.

How would you respond to this statement: Adventist colleges are in a crisis?
My response to that is that our elementary and secondary schools are perhaps in more of a crisis than much of higher education. That is because of the enrollment challenges, particularly in the early grades of elementary. However, I think crisis ought to be redefined as concerned.

Probably you are referring to the fact that people are concerned as they hear about the "slippery slope to secularism" on our campuses. I have the opportunity to be on our college and university campuses, and I am gratified by what I am finding. I attend college board meetings. I interact with college and university administrations and leaderships. I talk to the spiritual leaders on campus. I talk to faculty members. I talk to students. The thread I find running through all these conversations is that these institutions see themselves as extensions of the church, as ministries of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Yes, the faculty and the administration are concerned about academic excellence. But they have a very intentional spiritual focus. They want to make sure that opportunities for students to grow spiritually permeate the campuses. Our chaplains and other spiritual life leaders are doing a wonderful job of encouraging and enabling students, and providing opportunities for ministry. The students are out there involved in spiritual things! And faculty by and large see themselves as people who can talk to students about spiritual things and pray with them.

One of the things that may lead some to say our colleges are in crisis is that they hear we have a number of non-Seventh-day Adventist professors. We did a survey of our colleges and universities recently and found that in the traditional liberal arts bachelor degree programs, with the exception of the three medical-oriented institutions (Loma Linda, Florida Hospital College, and Kettering College), 96 percent of the professors and instructors are Seventh-day Adventist. And those three institutions are trying very hard to increase the number of Adventist professors for these specialty fields. As far as students are concerned, 83 percent are Seventh-day Adventist. Our campuses are still very much Seventh-day Adventist campuses.

We have, I think, 15 colleges and universities. Do we really need 15? The Mormons put all their eggs in one basket there at Brigham Young University.
Can we get by with less than 15? Sure we could. Should we? That is the big question. Should we intentionally close some of our colleges and focus on developing fewer larger ones? We have been more of the mind-set to try to strengthen the institutions we do have rather than think about the alternative.

Moving on to the future, what changes do you see coming down the line on how we will deliver education?
We already are involved in a number of initiatives in the area of distance learning. We have experimented at the elementary level with providing courses for full grade levels using the Internet, live interactive video, and other methods of distance education, and have done so successfully. We have a number of schools involved in a program known as AE 21--Adventist Education for the Twenty--first Century. AE 21 provides a full secondary curriculum. Secondary curriculums are also being provided by other Seventh-day Adventist organizations. On the college and university level there are a growing number of distance education courses being made available. Some full degrees are available. The Adventist Distance Education Consortium (ADEC) has been established to help facilitate these courses to students.

One last question. How would you answer a parent who came to you and asked, "Why should I sacrifice for my child's education?"
The Adventist educational system is committed to doing what Ellen White referenced long ago--to combine the ministry of the home, the church, and the school, working together for the salvation of your child. We want your young person to have an environment in which they can meet and grow with Jesus. Along with that our intention is to continue to improve our program to match or exceed what they can find in most other places. Our scores on national tests are consistently higher than those of public schools. I think we can provide for your child spiritually, academically, physically, and socially. It's a good environment in which students can spend all those hours every day safely.

I would also answer with another question: What is most important to you for your child? Your answer might be that it's important for your child to go to Harvard University. But I think that your answer will more likely be, "I want my child to be saved." I believe Adventist education can be a great partner with you in helping your student to reach that ultimate goal.