Charleston Southern University Dr. Dondi E. Costin, President Preparing graduates to advance God’s kingdom defines our approach to helping students live on mission and on purpose. In Great Commission terms, our role in making disciples is coordinating a comprehensive system to ensure every student has the opportunity to find and fulfill their life purpose. Our Passport to Purpose depicts each student's progression through their university years and reflects our drive to prepare servant leaders to pursue significant lives. We rejoice that more than 80 CSU students have given their lives to Christ in formal campus ministry programs during the pandemic, despite being unable to host widely attended evangelistic events early in either academic year because of COVID. There have undoubtedly been many more professions of faith on campus of which we are unaware, as the Gospel is shared routinely in every corner of our campus and in the local churches with whom we so closely partner. By God’s grace, we thrived during an academic year made all the more challenging by COVID. The CSU Pandemic Task Force diligently worked to keep the campus on track, so we could accomplish our God-given mission, and our students could make progress toward their degrees. We held face-to-face classes all year, and zero COVID cases were traced to any of our classrooms. The university graduated 538 undergraduates and 168 graduate students who persevered through the pandemic to complete their degrees. CSU students, faculty, and staff set the national collegiate record for the number of Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes packed in a single season for the second year in a row. The 7,135 boxes collected helped spread the Gospel across the globe and inspired our students to do so locally. CSU earned national prominence this year as U.S. News & World Report ranked our online undergraduate program 21st nationally in its Best Online Undergraduate Bachelor’s Programs category and 13th for Veterans. CSU will graduate its first-ever doctoral students next month (December 2021), as nearly 20 members of the inaugural Doctor of Education in Leadership cohort finish their degrees. The new Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics, Professional Pilot degree program is an accredited four-year degree in which students earn professional pilot credentials in three primary tracks: Commercial (airline pilot), Military, and Missionary. In addition to graduating with an accredited college degree and professional pilot credentials from one of only three FAA-certified pilot schools in the state of South Carolina, graduates will be eligible for the FAA Restricted Airline Transport Pilot certification, which reduces the total hours required to fly with the airlines from 1,500 to 1,000 flight hours.
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