How Ascent College equips an ever-expanding student body.
Enrolled Students
Students in Ghana
Degree Programs
The name Ascent College may be new, but the school itself has been around for a while. Founded in 1996 by Dr. John Mannion as Bethel Bible Institute (BBI), it was established to offer practical ministry training for current and future pastors and missionaries. BBI was a training institute for the Assemblies of God’s Potomac region, and it eventually moved from a Bible institute to a four-year college called Bethel College.
Ascent College decided it was time to rebrand and reimagine its educational model, including:
With twelve degree programs available through online learning and on-the-ground ministry, students can pursue certifications and degrees wherever they currently serve.
“We’re still a relatively small school, with about 180 students spread around,” Dr. Morgan said. Of those 180 students, nearly 20% live in Ghana—a recent expansion that’s required Ascent to adapt its processes for a global student body.
One of the biggest problems Ascent had to solve as it grew was finding a workable textbook solution.
Shipping directly to US-based students was one thing—a cumbersome but passable process.
But with students in Ghana starting at Ascent, school admin faced a whole new problem: how to get books to students overseas. Dr. Morgan explained, “At first, our coordinator of African studies literally hand-delivered textbooks every semester by plane, then drove them into the jungles of Ghana. That clearly was not sustainable.”
Once again, the administration pivoted to another option: digital textbooks via Kindle. But they quickly found Kindle to be unreliable and difficult for transactions in Ghana’s cash-based society.
The school’s administration—primarily the president and director of African studies—were running out of options when they turned to Logos. Once they began giving students the free edition of the Logos app and preloading required textbooks into it, everything changed.
“The Logos platform has been of tremendous help to us in Ghana,” said Abraham Aguriba, a Ghanaian student pursuing an Associate of Science in Ministry Leadership. “Prior to the introduction of Logos, it was very difficult for Ghana students. Some students wanted to quit because they could not submit their assignments for lack of access to the books. However, with the introduction of the Logos platform, all we need to do now is to guide the students through the sign in.”
With Logos, Ascents students and administration traded their problems for answered prayers, including:
“Our students are just starting to explore some of the benefits of the Logos platform,” said Dr. Morgan. “I’ve been a Logos user for many years, so it was an easy sell for me, since I understood the power of the search engine and what it’s able to do for their studies.”
Ascent's pilot program with Logos started in 2022 and included required textbooks for around half its courses. Today, Ascent still uses Logos as their primary textbook provider for all courses that require books offered in Logos.
“As an academic dean, I want people to have the resources they need to succeed in their courses and be set up well for the future,” said Dr. Morgan. “Logos is a wonderful resource, and I hope that students can continue to learn to use it and build their personal library while they are at Ascent College.”
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