Mental Health | 5
Opinion | 6
Religion | 6
Lifestyle | 7
Learning to face your fears
On boredom and creativity
Engaging with spiritualism in our everyday lives
Take a swim: My experience with water aerobics
October 30, 2024 Collegedale, Tennessee
Southern Accent
Vol. 80 Issue 07
The student voice since 1926
The six-year journey of Crosswalk
Musicians lead out in song service at Crosswalk Chattanooga. (Photo by Preston Waters)
Anaya Parker Reporter As a local Seventh-day Adventist church popular with Southern Adventist University students, Crosswalk Chattanooga, celebrated its sixth anniversary, at the end of October. According to the Crosswalk website, the multi-campus church started in Redlands, California, with Chattanooga being one of 12 locations. “We always have kind of a theme that [the anniversary] centers around, and this year our theme is ‘Always on Time,’” said Shastin Rains, the experience director at Crosswalk Chattanooga. “He [Jesus] showed up in the past. He’s showing up
now. We know He’s going to show up in the future. And He will always be on time, even if it’s not on our timetable.”
“We came back home and just felt a nudge and started talking with others in our community." According to Brooks Pruehs, the team chair at Crosswalk, the congregation started with a small group feeling restless in the church that they were attending. Some visited the Crosswalk campus in California, led by Pastor Tim Gillespie. Inspired by his church, which was exploding, they wanted to start a satellite campus. “We came back home and just
felt a nudge and started talking with others in our community,” said Pruehs. “Just one by one people were like, ‘Yes, we need to do that.’ And so that’s really kind of how it started.” Meeting in living rooms in January of 2018, the small group began watching sermons from the Redlands church. When 50-60 people were interested, the group took steps to become an official Adventist congregation. After a bit of persuasion, organizers met with Ed Wright, then president of the Georgia-Cumberland Conference, who agreed that the conference would be open if they felt called to start this church, Pruehs said. For its first pop-up service, in June of 2018, the group
met in the Ooltewah Elementary School gym. According to Pruehs, approximately 225 people attended the first service, and Pastor Gillespie, from Redlands, flew to Tennessee to join them. They continued to hold monthly pop-up services and began meeting weekly on the first weekend of November. Pruehs said the congregation grew, meeting in different local venues. Because weekly attendance exceeded the occupancy allowed by fire codes, they launched two services in the fall of 2019. But then came COVID19, which temporarily closed the facility the church was using. They continued their outreach ministries and leadership team meetings and watched
past live-streamed services from the CrossWalk church in Redlands. Several months later, they began services in an outdoor venue before moving, in September of 2021, to a Hixson church for monthly services.
"It was an absolute miracle to raise $2 million in 15 days. I mean, we never thought that would happen." In the fall of 2022, Crosswalk, still growing, did not yet have a pastor. They found a church in the Chattanooga area that they wanted to buy, but the conference was reluctant to make an See CROSSWALK on page 2
New school of business building faces delays
Engineering program beats enrollment goal
Alissa Flores Reporter
Eva Resz Reporter
The new Ruth McKee School of Business, which is under construction near Southern Adventist University’s entrance, will cost more and take longer to complete than originally anticipated, according to Southern President Ken Shaw. “Our initial estimate was [for it] to be completed by December of 2025 so it would be operable in the Winter 2026 term,” Shaw said in an interview with the Accent. “The new estimate is that the building will be completed in the summer of 2026. The delay will have minimal impact.”
Southern Adventist University’s Bachelor of Science and Engineering (BSE) program surpassed its four-year enrollment goal, according to Tyson Hall, dean of the School of Engineering and Physics. The original prospectus for the BSE program estimated a freshman enrollment of 25 engineering students in Fall 2024, bringing the total enrollment to 45. However, this fall, the program welcomed 47 engineering freshmen, for a total engineering enrollment of 97, according to Hall.
“I was looking forward to the new building and utilizing it. I feel disappointed expecting a date that was promised to be pushed back more than a year.” Marty Hamilton, associate vice president of Financial Administration, reiterated this sentiment. “It causes no disruption to our current academic programs within the School of Business,” Hamilton said. “The only impact would be seniors graduating who missed being part of the grand opening and taking classes during their last year.”
“We [collectively, all of the Adventist universities] hesitated to start a four-year engineering [degree] for a long time because we didn’t want to compete with our sister institution, Walla Walla,” Blake Laing, professor of engineering and physics, said in an interview with the Accent. Laing said that, in the past, among Adventist universities, Walla Walla University was the only institution offering a four-year engineering degree. Southern offered a two-year program and Southern’s engineering students would often go to Walla Walla to complete their degree.
The dump truck and excavator being used on the construction site for the new business building. Thursday October 24, 2024. (Photo by Hannah Johnson)
In contrast, Sharon Duque, a junior majoring in finance and accounting and Vice President of Operations for the SMARRT Fund, stated, “I was looking forward to the new building and utilizing it. I feel disappointed expecting a date that was promised to be pushed back more than a year.” According to Shaw, administrators from the School of Business, Academic Administration and Financial Administration met to re-evaluate the original plans for the building. After careful examination, the group
decided to add 11,000 square feet to the building. When asked how this affected the project’s budget, Shaw said, “We had estimated the project to be $20 million. The project amount was to include the construction of the building and to have funds be placed in an endowment to support the School of Business. Adding the additional square footage moved the construction portion from $15 million to $18.8 million, so at the time this was still within the $20 million [estimate], projected for the overall See DELAY on page 3
Laboratory equipment in Southern's School of Engineering classrooms.
(Photo by Shengzhe Zhao)
See PROGRAM on page 3