VALLEY – As students and faculty of Point University gathered Wednesday to officially start the new semester, a lone runner circled the track above the gym floor of the Sportsplex.
The relationship between the college and the community it moved to has been close since the decision to move the former Atlanta Christian College to West Point.
“In the fall of 2007, God spoke to us and aid it was time to move the college,” President Dean Collins said. “He didn’t tell us where or when. Five years later, here we are.”
Collins said the college – and its growing student body – are in West Point because God called them there, but also for another reason.
“When the righteous are blessed, the city prospers,” he said. “We will be a blessing to the communities around us.”
Point University is using the former WestPoint Stevens corporate office in West Point as its main academic building and has bought nearby buildings for a cafeteria and a performing arts building. It’s using facilities at the Sportsplex in Valley for athletics and other events and students are housed in apartments in Valley.
Collins said that although he and the college trustees felt called to West Point “I really struggled.”
The supporting data just didn’t make sense,” he said. “I believed God wanted us to grow, but we were in metro Atlanta. We were going from an area of 5 million people to an area, if you count all the cities in the greater Valley area, of about 30,000 people. It just wasn’t logical.”
But it worked. Last year the campus in East Point had about 420 traditional students. The college had aimed for 500 for the West Point opening. On Wednesday, they had between 560 and 570 enrolled.
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