The North Fresno Regional Center is wrapping up an exciting expansion to the facilities near Woodward Park which will add more classrooms, offices, and conference rooms. This much needed development will ensure that the center will be able to keep up with the growth that we are experiencing.

The courage of two freshman Fresno Pacific University soccer players does not surprise their coach. “They actions they took speak to who they are,” Jaime Ramirez said of Eric Velarde and Edilberto “Eddie” Cabral.

The two freshmen were running on the FPU track March 1 when Velarde saw smoke coming from a senior citizens apartment center on Willow Avenue south of campus. Both jumped the fence between FPU and the center and Velarde went to get help from a utilities employee working nearby while Cabral went to the apartment that was on fire.

Pete Menjares, Ph.D., will be the 11th president of Fresno Pacific University. The FPU Board of Trustees voted to appoint Menjares during regular board meetings March 2-3.

Francis Chan believes in just trying things—in life, in ministry and in front of 1,300 pastors, lay church leaders and nonprofit agency staff members.

 

“I look back at my life and all the great things that happened were things that just happened. I was just trying things,” the author of Crazy Love, founding pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, CA, and co-founder of Eternity Bible College said at the 2012 Central Valley Ministry Forum February 16.

A pair of FPU students won $18,500 awards from the MFT (Marriage and Family Therapy) Consortium of California. Two others were selected as first- and second-runner-up.

The consortium gives 10 awards each year, funded through the Mental Health Services Act (2005) and administered by the consortium Phillips Graduate Institute and the MFT Consortium of California. FPU winners were Kimberly Becker and David Tan. Mary Schmidt and Monica Cabrera-Pulley were the runners-up.

The Fresno Pacific University Board of Trustees has selected a candidate for the university presidency.

Pete Menjares, Ph.D., was approved by the board January 27 on recommendation of the presidential search committee. He currently serves as Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Academic Effectiveness at Biola University.

Ministry education with an Anabaptist and evangelical theme is going online through Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary. First classes planned for fall 2012.

Lynn Jost, seminary dean and vice president and dean of Fresno Pacific University, is directing the creation of a two-step online program. First will come eight courses students can take for 3 units of credit each, or audit them. (These courses will fulfill Mennonite Brethren denominational credentials for pastors.) Part two will consist of making these courses part of a 39-unit master of arts degree in ministry.

The FPU Marriage, Family and Children’s Counseling program is coming to Visalia in fall 2012—and the opportunities are wide open. “I’m excited,” said program director David Rose. “We’re going to do it well.”

“There has been a long history of demand for counseling the way we do it—Christ-centered—in the South Valley,” Rose said. Students from Visalia to Bakersfield already attend MFCC classes on the Fresno main campus, and the region has a shortage of mental health professionals. 

Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke of the future with hope. Despite the difficulties and dangers faced by him and others working for human equality, King kept faith—in God, people and the possibility of a better world. Ken Martens Friesen, associate professor of history and political science at Fresno Pacific University, examines how we’re doing 44 years later and sees hope as well in this Scholars Speak.