Judgment Day Postponed
January 16th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Looks like the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board won’t be considering the Institute for Creation Research’s application next week after all. A Board spokesperson says THECB Commissioner Raymund Paredes has continuing concerns about ICR’s request for accreditation to grant master’s degrees in science education.
For more backstory on the ICR’s request to grant degrees see this previous Observer blog post.
The spokesperson, De J. Lozada, says concerns were raised after THECB consulted with a wide variety of individuals, and include questions about how students might expect to gain exposure to scientific experimentation in an online-only environment. Paredes has also asked for documentation of current ICR research projects and either a revision of the ICR curriculum or, alternately, an explanation as to why the current curriculum departs from the norm for a master of science degree program in Texas.
Complying may prove a tall order, considering that ICR teaches the universe was created in six days by God, who also cooked up humankind from scratch in the form of Adam and Eve. In an e-mail sent to THECB, Dr. Eddy Miller, dean of ICR’s graduate school, wrote, “It has become obvious to us that in order to do justice to the concerns you raised, we would need more time than is available to us if our Application is to be considered at the January meeting of the THECB. Thus we would like for you to delay consideration of our Application until the April meeting.”
Lozada is quick to clarify that ICR’s request hasn’t been rejected, just delayed. God may have created the universe in little more than a standard work week (though the geologic record suggests otherwise), but then Rome was hardly built in a day. For the time being, at least, ICR’s version of academic heaven will just have to wait.
