"C" is for Columbia International University

"C" is for Columbia International University. Founded as an undergraduate college in 1921, Columbia International University has been one of the symbolic centers to which fundamentalists and conservative evangelical Protestants in South Carolina have gravitated. What was then called the Southern Bible Institute opened in 1921. When Robert Crawford McQuilken became president in 1923, he changed the name to Columbia Bible College. Under his leadership the college expanded its undergraduate curriculum to four years and added graduate programs. The major focus remained training persons to be pastors, missionaries, youth and children’s workers, Bible teachers, and Christian education directors. In 1960, the college moved from downtown Columbia to a new four hundred-acre campus. Renamed Columbia International University in 1994, the institution retains it fundamentalist orientation, still requiring all students to have a major in Bible studies.