La Sierra College - Meteor Yearbook (Arlington, CA)

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Biographies written by Mark Davis

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. or ko lsen For the past ten years Loma Linda University has been for- tunate to have V. Norskov Olsen serving as president. Dr. Olsen has long been known as a distinguished theologian and church historian and in the last ten years has proven himself to be a valuable and effective administrator. Not only did he per- form the duties of the job well, but he also gave the institution a new image with his emphasis on the spirit of place. Dr. Olsen was born into a devout Lutheran home in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark. While he was very young his mother joined the Adventist Church after studying the books she pur- chased from a literature evangelist. As a young man, Dr. Olsen planned to be a landscape gardener and apprenticed himself to a Copenhagen gardener. After finishing his apprenticeship, he, his father and his uncles were looking around for the right business to buy. When a local conference minister happened to hear him give a talk, the minister urged him to become a ministerial intern for just a year and then see what you want. After four years of study at Danish Junior College, he became the youngest man ever or- dained in Europe. Following graduation, he worked as a pastor and evangelist raising up small Adventist churches during the same time Hitler's armies marched across Europe. When the war ended Dr. Olsen enrolled at Emmanuel Missionary College Know An- drews Universityj. During his time in Michigan he met and married a talented pianist, Anita Lippi, then a student at the Chicago Music Conservatory. Before returning to Europe the Olsens moved to Washington, D.C., where Dr. Olsen completed the re- quirements for bachelor of divinity degree at the Adventist Theological Seminary. Pastor Olsen returned to his Danish alma mater where he taught Bible. He laterjoined the faculty of Newbold College to serve as the professor of religion and academic dean of the col- lege. After taking a leave to study at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he earned his master of theology degree, he returned to Newbold to serve as president of the college. During this period of time, Dr. Olsen worked to strengthen Newbold's ties with the Adventist Junior Colleges on the conti- nent and the Theological Seminary in the United States. While in England, Mrs. Olsen completed her teaching degree from London's famed Royal Academy of Music at the same time that her husband earned a Ph.D. from the University of London. An opportunity to study with well-known theologians such as Karl Barth and Oscar Cullman prompted Dr. Olsen to enter the University of Basel in Bern, Switzerland, and study for the doctor of theology degree. Following completion of this second doctorate, Dr. Olsen joined the faculty of Loma Linda University's Department of Religion. He was named chairman of the department in 1966. In 1967 he became dean of the college, and shortly thereafter, provost of the La Sierra campus. Then, in 1974, he was elected president of the University. As a theologian and a church historian, specializing in the reformation period, Dr. Olsen's credentials are impeccable. Not only is this so in the denomination but throughout the theological and academic worlds. He is the author of the theological biography John Foxe andthe Elizabethan Church. It was published by the prestigious University of California Press which handles only works by recognized scholars. It has been no small feat that amid the pressures of con- tinually increasing administrative demands, Dr. Olsen has published two scholarly but readable works and numerous articles. At home he rarely sits down without a book. At any one time, he reads I don't know how many books, underlining, making notes, says his wife, an associate professor of music on the La Sierra campus of LLU. Dr. Olsen based his administration on some of his philosophical positions on education. In life there is no short cut to success, he says. He feels that it is not merely the mastery of the subject matter that is important, but the discipline, the use of time and the developement of purpose which humans acquire in the process of learning. In Dr. Olsen's opinion, a vocation was not the end goal of education: If education is merely the learning of a vocation, and the faster the better, and not 'the wholly awakened man' as Woodrow Wilson called 'the ideal product of college,' then you have within sight the decline of civilization. The faculty makes LLU a Christian University, according to Dr. Olsen, not the fact that the institution requires some units of study in religion. The Christian commitment of the man who teaches sociology, history and biololgy -just to mention a few areas - may be far more ofa revelation of the spirit of this university than the commitment of the man who teaches religion. Why? Because the Christian college is, by its very nature, a fellowship which requires demonstration even more than explanation. The Christian college or university does not merely have a religious program, it is a religious program. Perhaps the most important aspect of Dr. Olsen's ad- ministration has been his emphasis on academic integrity. ln life at large, there must be a time of reckoning, as well as a time of opportunity. An educational institution without any ex- aminations would soon lose its academic reputation, though its playing fields might be beautiful, its parlors for dating comfor- table and the atmosphere of its Chapels devout. Tenderness without a mixture of toughness of fundamentally unkind, for life is tough and the earlier the youth learn it the better.