24
THE NWC FACULTY
instructors who had completed their tours of duty at Northwestern, and they had provided gifts for members of faculty families who were ill. A number of faculty wives have used their artistic and creative talents to provide banners for the chapel and displays at the chapel entrance. Noteworthy services to the school are those the wives provide for their husbands in their ministry: the respect they show for their spouses' work, their willingness to support their husbands' ministry, their encouragei:nent when their spouses experience difficult days in the classroom and their dedication to the ideal of rearing a Christian family. Faculty Housing Prior to 1972 the Northwestern faculty was housed in residences owned and provided by the college. In 1971the synod's Board of Trustees and the Commission on Higher Education established a faculty housing policy that permitted the purchase of off-campus homes by faculty of synodical schools, subject to restrictions that require all on-campus homes to be fully occupied. A monthly housing allowance was set. A favorable housing market prompted four or five members of the joint faculty to acquire their own homes at the time. In 1989 eight members of the college faculty and four members of the preparatory school faculty owned their own homes. The college still provided 23 faculty residences. These families were no doubt prompted by the natural desire to own their own homes, or they saw an opportunity for an advantageous investment. In some instances they had been dissatisfied with the maintenance of their college homes. The college's residence-maintenance committee has always had a difficult assignment in trying to keep 25 to 30 different faculty families, with different tastes and standards, happy with the maintenance of their homes as the committee attempted to uphold a uniform standard of maintenance within a limited budget. The committee today includes not only representatives of the board and administration, but also two faculty couples, one representing the prep, the other the college faculty. To one who has observed changes in home maintenance over the past 25 years it appears that the standard of maintenance has gradually been raised and its scope has been broadened.