© 2009 David Nash (see note at footpage)
© 2009 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| The Limitless Spectrum of Education | Volume 10, Number 1, 2009 (Summer) — Index | Our Creative Deities—A Supreme Relationship |
If this is your first awareness of Urantia-University, we welcome and encourage you to visit www.urantiauniversity.org. Or read the manual to Urantia-University found on the website to gain a better understanding of the goals, directives, and vision in providing a foundation to create scholars and emissaries of the revelatory teachings of The Urantia Book.
Urantia-University is for those who have picked up The Urantia Book for the first time, for those who have read it multiple times and have devoted their lives to deciphering its meaning, and for those who enter with defined concepts and are looking for scholastic footing from which they can launch their thought progressions.
Urantia-University offers an extraordinary opportunity
To study and be recognized for your understanding of the knowledge in the book
Guide you as you embark on the greatest and most challenging journey of your mind’s eye
Give you the scholastic background in order to have your own ideas and opinions taken seriously
Help you become an emissary having received an education in The Urantia Book
Legitimize your abilities in leading a study group, teaching, lecturing, or writing.
In order to achieve the benefits to be derived from a deeper knowledge of the fifth epochal revelation of truth provided in The Urantia Book, Urantia University is offered as a multi-level, progressive study, student-teacher educational regime designed as a blend of revealed educational models and the best of human higher education models. Urantia University is an educational initiative designed to offer students and teachers of the book an opportunity to better understand its revealed teachings about God and his reality, to integrate them more fully into their minds, hearts, and souls, and to enable them as emissaries of revealed truth to share these teachings with their fellow human beings.
This training of mind and education of spirit is carried on from the worlds of human origin up through the system mansion worlds and the other spheres of progress associated with Jerusem, on the seventy socializing realms attached to Edentia, and on the four hundred and ninety spheres of spirit progress encircling Salvington. On the universe headquarters itself are numerous Melchizedek schools, the colleges of the Universe Sons, the seraphic universities, and the schools of the Teacher Sons and the Union of Days. Every possible provision is made to qualify the various personalities of the universe for advancing service and improving function. The entire universe is one vast school. [UB 37:6.2]
Urantia University has been designed to provide students of The Urantia Book with the opportunity to pursue the deepest understanding of the teachings of the revelation possible for each unique student. Its motivating principle is that, inasmuch as the teachings of the book are imparted in the passive form of the written word, its recipients are tasked with the educational imperative to inform themselves and others of its revealed truths, and its purpose, meaning, and value. But this education is not for its own sake. Rather it is a means to deepen one’s relationship with the Father and our fellows, to more fully comprehend God’s reality, to participate in the actualization of the potentials of this fifth epoch, and to consciously accept the responsibilities of cosmic citizenship.
In its attempt to blend revealed and human educational models, the design of Urantia University has two primary purposes:
To provide each student with as much depth of knowledge of the truths revealed in The Urantia Book as he or she seeks and is capable of understanding.
To gain human academic respect, not only for the value of the material studied, but also for the depth, breadth, discipline, and integrity of its educational structure and purpose.
We have been told in the book that one day the universe broadcast circuits will be reconnected and a return of standard planetary government will once again provide dimensional, spiritual leadership to our isolated world. Though the time of that transaction is not known to us, we nevertheless have a responsibility to prepare ourselves for that eventuality—either to better serve in the event that it occurs in our lifetimes or as a legacy for those who follow us. Urantia University’s mission is to offer a means for its students to accomplish that preparation, gaining personal transformation and training to serve/teach others.
The didactic design of Urantia University is based on a number of principles:
Each teacher, no matter the level of proficiency, is also a student.
One is not deemed to have learned what one is unable to teach to another.
Sufficient flexibility is built into the University’s supporting structure and curriculum base to enable a student to design his/her own course of study; however, it will be counseled, based on each student’s potential, that spiritual wisdom is attainable by beginning the search for comprehension from the complex and infinite towards the simple and finite (i.e. top-down instead of bottom-up.)
While primary study will be facilitated over the internet, opportunities for person-to-person contact and collective study will also be developed.
The paper-by-paper study regimen facilitated by Level 1 Teacher-Students will be augmented by Level 2 (Master) and Level 3 (Elder) Teacher-Students who have attained multiple-paper proficiency in order to provide broader context and meaning to enhance comprehension of the teachings of a single paper.
As a requirement for undertaking study at Urantia University, each student will take an “Overview of The Urantia Book” course which will include a review of the major new teachings of truth not previously revealed in whole or in part in past epochal revelations.
Each teacher will be instructed in an educational model format to ensure consistency of curriculum and question configuration designed to move students from factual knowledge through spirit understanding to a cosmic reality viewpoint within the assigned paper(s). The educational model will never lose sight of the principal focus of encouragement of diversity of teaching styles and an encouragement of teachers to develop their own resources and techniques.
Each teacher will have a principal voice in the continued evolution of university affairs.
The faculty structure is straightforward. Two Teachers (Level 1) will qualify and commit to work with students on 1−2 papers. Their direct involvement with the students is to ensure student growth and awareness toward cosmic reality within their assigned paper(s). Twenty-four Master Teachers (Level 2) will develop teaching and exam formats in a range of papers or segments linked naturally by subject matter and will be available to students to offer greater understanding and meaning linkages to relevant paper segments. Twelve Elder Teachers (Level 3) will develop teaching and exam formats in a larger, natural grouping of papers or divisions and will be available to students to offer a broader cosmic reality perspective of relevant paper divisions.
Teachers at all three levels will be rotated to other papers/ groups of papers (based on their predilection) on an agreedupon schedule in order to keep the teaching fresh and dynamic. Teachers at the Master and Elder levels will also be required to teach a single paper as well as to provide support for Teachers and students and to offer a broader context to facilitate a deeper comprehension of the material in each paper.
David Nash has been a Urantia Book reader since 1974. He is a professional master scheduler specialist/consultant who has personally worked with hundreds of major corporations, and is the founder of the National Association for Shiftwork Health being further supported by the United States government. David also holds the rights to PRISM, a module program that captures persons at risk and prevents accidents.
Correction:
David Nash has requested a correction concerning the article about Urantia University that appeared under his name in the last Fellowship Herald [this article]. The article was not written by David Nash alone. It was the collaboration of several dedicated Urantia believers working together on Urantia University and should have been listed as such. He wants to make it clear that he can take very little credit for the article and hopes you will excuse this mistake and know that the project is absolutely a team effort.
| The Limitless Spectrum of Education | Volume 10, Number 1, 2009 (Summer) — Index | Our Creative Deities—A Supreme Relationship |