Appointed to Serve

Founded by the Presbyterian Church U.S. in 1914, the Assembly's Training School was the church’s first coeducational "lay workers" school. Through the school, women barred from seminary received a theological education. Among the earliest faculty were women who taught social welfare, Christian ethics, and practicum at the 17th Street Mission, Richmond factories, and parts of Appalachia. Students and professors broke gender and racial boundaries, even creating an integrated roller rink and housing participants of the Poor People’s March in the 1960s. Renamed the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in 1959, the school is now part of Union Presbyterian Seminary.