Published March 8, 2017
From the earliest days of Clarks Summit University, women have played an instrumental role in leadership and education. At Practical Bible Training School at Bible School Park, God placed it on the hearts of Hazel Vibbard, Elizabeth Fletcher and Mabel Thomson to join three men and begin a Bible institute at the First Baptist Church in Johnson City, New York.
These women would become the first three full-time faculty members of Baptist Bible Seminary. Because Vibbard, Fletcher and Thomson followed God’s leading, more than 13,000 people have received Biblical education at the school, preparing them to serve God around the world.
Miss Vibbard
Hazel L. Vibbard was born in Johnstown, New York, on June 18, 1887. Vibbard spent a year at Dwight L. Moody’s Northfield Seminary for Women in Northfield, Massachusetts, where she gained practical training for education in a Christian atmosphere, before attending New York State College for Teachers in Albany.
After befriending Mabel Thomson in college, Vibbard encouraged her to embrace the Baptist distinctives. Vibbard became a teacher with Thomson at Susan Fenimoore Cooper Foundation School in Cooperstown, New York and eventually transferred to attend Practical Bible Training School. There, she and Thomson co-edited the school publication known as Echoes, which focused on Bible outlines, missionary news, alumni notes and Sunday school lessons. During her third and final year as a student, Vibbard joined the full-time faculty of the training school as registrar, bookroom manager and teacher of Bible Synthesis.
When Vibbard heard God’s call to join others in the foundation of a seminary in Johnson City, New York, she terminated her position at the training school. Vibbard was registrar and manager of the bookstore at the seminary, and she taught Bible Analysis I and II. Vibbard was known as a modest, humble and motherly woman as well as a strict teacher who held her pupils to high standards. She expected all of her students to find and memorize a key verse for every chapter of the Bible, and she required them to keep a notebook to aid in their Bible study and use as a resource for their future ministries.
By Heather Sagnor, senior in the Communications-Writing program
