Union University of California (UUC) was established in the State of California in 1986 as a non-profit, religious corporation and fully approved by the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE) of the State of California to grant academic degrees .
Currently, UUC is an affiliate member of the Association of Biblical Higher Education (ABHE), the United States Distance Learning Association as well as the California Association of Private Post-secondary Schools. UUC uses an asynchronous method of online course delivery. Therefore, students from anywhere in the world can access and participate in their classes at any time.
As a Christian higher education institution with a mission to equip people to serve, the university first started with a School of Theology. Thousands of students have been enrolled and many graduates have served in leadership positions at various ministries around the world. Recently, realizing the need of preparing people to serve in other areas of the society, the Board of Directors has approved the addition of a School of Education and School of Business. Currently, UUC consists of a School of Theology, a School of Education and a School of Business. After serving Vietnamese students for nearly a quarter of a century, UUC will now offer programs in English to interested students worldwide.
Since the beginning, UUC has offered both onsite and distance learning courses to reach out to the local as well as international communities. Classes were held on campus in Westminster, California, and correspondent courses were offered to international students via mail. Since the introduction of the Internet, UUC has followed the development of this technology and believed that someday it could be used to deliver education to students at the distance with quality and minimum cost.
In 2005, after studying carefully much research on the effectiveness of online education, UUC’s leadership realized that online technology had reached the point that it could be used to deliver quality education to students wherever they are in the world at the lowest possible cost. After many attempts, finally in the fall semester 2005, UUC offered the first semester online. Onsite classes have gradually faded out. Today, UUC is known by those in academic circles as an online higher education institution.
The model UUC mostly uses is the asynchronous course delivery method. In contrast to synchronous course delivery method, in which teachers and students have to participate in the class at the same time, the students and teachers in an asynchronous classroom participate in the class anytime and not necessarily at the same time during the assigned period. The asynchronous method has been proven effective and convenient to students and teachers living in different parts of the world, who work and rest at different times but still can participate in the same classroom.
UUC’s committed to keep up-to-date technology and provide quality education for students around the world.