Glass doors lead to the light-filled lobby of a redbrick and limestone chapel at one end of a grassy quad, where lectures and receptions were held and students testified about their faith.
Original artwork hangs on the walls on the way to the music department, chaplain’s office and recital hall, along with brass “leaves” listing the names of past financial boosters formed into the shape of a tree.
This visit to Trinity Christian College, in Palos Heights, Illinois, isn’t real. It’s virtual, captured just before the college closed in May so students and alumni could remember the campus, which is being sold off to repay more than $26 million worth of debt and other liabilities.
“Instead of being wiped off the map, this is a way to honor the legacy” of the college, said Shalom Nwaokolo, who, with his wife, Ashley, is creating the permanent digital preservation of it.
Memorializing colleges and universities in virtual reality is among the more sentimental responses to the accelerating pace at which they’re closing and projected to close.
So pronounced has this trend become, however, that it’s also resulting in more consequential steps that speak to the intensifying threat of plummeting enrollments, rising debt and other problems.