They met on the first day of biology class about a decade ago at Trinity Christian College.
She asked if the open seat next to him was taken. They became lab partners for the rest of the semester.
About a year and a half later, Andrew Kowitz sent the young woman he met in biology on a romantic scavenger hunt laced with handwritten notecard clues scattered across the southwest suburban Palos Heights campus.
One stop was at South Hall, where he had asked her to be his girlfriend. Another was in the basement of Alumni Hall, where they had shared their first kiss.
The final destination was back at the science center, where Andrew Kowitz was waiting on one knee with an engagement ring in the exact spot where they once sat side by side during class.
“I said yes immediately,” Casey Kowitz recalled.
The west suburban couple have two young children and celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary on Saturday.
Yet the college that brought them together is now shutting down.
Trinity’s board of trustees announced in November that the private Christian liberal arts school would be closing at the end of this academic year, citing declining enrollment as well as financial constraints.
“The board has worked faithfully and tirelessly to consider every possible option in the face of significant and rapidly evolving financial challenges,” said Jeanine Mozie, Trinity’s acting president, in a video statement. “However, there is no sustainable path forward for our beloved institution.”
The school’s final commencement ceremony took place on May 8.
The news was surreal to many students and parents who had to scramble to make new arrangements for the next school year, as well as to generations of alums of the 67-year-old college who mourn the loss of their alma mater.
Casey and Andrew Kowitz described a grieving process after learning their cherished school — along with all those scavenger hunt locations where they shared so many pivotal moments — will be gone.
“Trinity was so integral to who we are and our story,” Casey Kowitz said. “Our family wouldn’t exist without it. So Trinity really means a lot to us. And it will forever.”
Trinity is one of several local Christian colleges to close, merge, move or halt new admissions in recent years, amid an increasingly challenging landscape for American higher education institutions of all types.
In 2024, Lincoln Christian University, roughly 30 miles from Springfield, ceased academic operations after 80 years; its seminary was acquired by another Missouri-based Christian school.
Trinity International University announced the sale of its north suburban Bannockburn campus earlier this year and will end operations there after the 2025-26 school year. A local couple who recently bought the property for $20 million hope to turn the 115-acre site into a community hub centered around youth sports.
A university spokesperson stressed that while the Illinois campus was sold, “Trinity International University is not closing.”
“Decades of students, faculty, and staff built something meaningful on that campus,” Trinity spokesperson Chris Donato said in an email. “That doesn’t disappear because the institution is restructuring. What we’re holding onto is the mission, not the property.”
The four-year evangelical school — which had been at the Bannockburn site since 1961 — shifted to online-only undergraduate programs in 2023. Trinity Western University in Canada will be the new home of the university’s seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, which was originally founded in 1897 as a 10-week Bible course in the basement of a Chicago church.
Then in April, Chicago Theological Seminary announced that the 170-year-old institution has stopped admitting new students due to financial challenges.
The school in the Woodlawn neighborhood, whose graduates include civil rights icon the Rev. Jesse Jackson, said in a statement that it’s undergoing a “board-approved strategic planning process” to ensure the seminary is able to continue its mission “for generations to come.”
Across the country, roughly 40 Christian colleges have closed, merged or announced intent to merge since 2020, accounting for just over half of all not-for-profit university and college closures nationwide, according to a 2025 analysis by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit newsroom covering American education.
Experts say the struggles of many religiously affiliated colleges and universities tend to mirror the recent difficulties faced by all higher education institutions, from declining enrollment to financial constraints to a looming demographic cliff due to fewer anticipated high school graduates.
These hardships were exacerbated a few years ago by the COVID-19 pandemic, which temporarily closed many secular and religious colleges and universities nationwide, as well as forced most to abruptly switch to virtual formats.
Particularly vulnerable are smaller, private universities and colleges — both secular and religiously affiliated, said Perry Glanzer, professor of educational foundations at Baylor University in Texas and the editor in chief of Christian Scholar’s Review.
“There is a lot of alarm — but it is the same alarm as all higher education institutions,” he said. “Everyone is recognizing that the good times are over. When the number of students that you can recruit goes down, that’s tough on any type of institution, just like a business. So you’re competing for a smaller pie.”
But some say the loss of faith-based higher education institutions might have a different impact emotionally, because the college experience can be so entwined in the culture, spirituality and religious identity of its student body.
In late April, Casey and Andrew Kowitz attended Trinity Christian College’s last Outcry, a voluntary weekly student-led worship service and longtime school tradition that much of the campus took part in communally for decades.
“It was bittersweet,” the husband recalled, noting that they were able to spend time reminiscing with other alums during a fellowship period beforehand.
“Trinity is so important to how we grew in our faith,” the wife added. “Who we are as people. Our deep friendships. The way it has shaped our career path. … They prepared us for how to be the embodiment of Christ in the world.”
‘A little scary’
Julia Leidecker was getting ready to leave her southwest suburban Hickory Hills home to commute to a morning class at Trinity Christian College in early November when she received the email announcement: The school was closing.
“It was very abrupt,” the sophomore recalled. “I sat at my kitchen counter and bawled my eyes out. It was a shock.”
The entire vibe at the college of under 1,000 students shifted afterward, as she and her peers suddenly had to rush to make transfer arrangements, she said.
“Everything changed. Campus literally went from being so fun and upbeat to now everyone is so sad. And it’s such a sensitive topic,” she said, adding that professors also faced unanticipated job loss. “Normal class discussion turned into, ‘Oh, I don’t have a job. I don’t know where I’m going next year.’”
Trinity entered into “teach-out” partnerships offering similar tuition and on-time graduations with roughly a dozen Christian colleges, some local and others across the Midwest.
In the fall, Leidecker plans to attend St. Xavier University in Chicago. Although Leidecker knows a handful of students from Trinity who will be transferring there too, she said she’s still nervous about the change.
“At Trinity, we’re like a family. All my professors know everybody,” she added. “So having to create new relationships is a little scary.”
On the last day of classes at Trinity earlier this month, she gathered with several friends in their residence hall as they packed up their belongings.
There were no typical and long-anticipated final college rituals like a graduation ceremony to mark the end of their experience on campus, she noted.
“Saying goodbye to people for the last time was really hard,” Leidecker added. “But everything happens for a reason.”
Across the country, several notable Christian colleges and universities have also recently announced closures.
Providence Christian College in California will officially cease academic operations June 30. Siena Heights University in Michigan, a Catholic school founded in 1919, announced over the summer that it would be closing at the end of this academic year. St. Andrews University in North Carolina closed in May 2025, citing a financial crisis.
But the outlook isn’t dire for all religiously affiliated higher education — and many Christian colleges and universities have actually been flourishing in this climate, Glanzer said.
He said Catholic and Protestant higher education enrollment grew 1.6% from fall 2023 to fall 2024, based on data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. Enrollment at Protestant institutions increased by 2.4% that year and 3.6% over the five years prior, he said.
This is compared with a general decline in enrollment in many other higher education sectors during that same period, added Glanzer, co-author of the book “Christian Higher Education: An Empirical Guide.”
A 2024 report by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities found that 44 of its institutions were growing in total enrollment and 37 were increasing their undergraduate student populations.
Many Protestant colleges and universities have recently expanded greatly via online enrollment, an option that can be especially attractive at divinity schools where students might prefer to remain working at their home church rather than moving to pursue higher education, he said.
Sometimes local demographics like a booming city population can also boost a particular school’s enrollment, whereas parts of the country with a smaller college-age population might be hit harder, he added.
“It’s a complex picture. There are the Trinity Christian Colleges out there — and I’ve known many good people there and it’s sad when those things happen,” said Rick Ostrander, executive director of the nonprofit Michigan Christian Study Center. “But there are a lot of Christian colleges and universities that are doing quite well.”
In some cases, having a strong religious affiliation can be a niche offering that helps distinguish smaller, private schools and attract more students in the face of these broader higher education struggles, added Ostrander, author of the book “Why College Matters to God: An Introduction to the Christian College.”
“One could make a pretty good argument that having a particular religious identity actually enables small colleges these days to weather the headwinds more effectively,” he said.
But that won’t be the case for every school, Ostrander added.
“It’s just that a lot of small, private colleges tend to be religious in the first place,” he said. “So those are the ones that are experiencing the hardships.”
Packing up and moving on
Tracy Schorle, of the southwest suburbs, attended “Family and Friends” weekend at Trinity Christian College in early November and had an amazing time visiting her daughter, along with extended family members who joined them.
They went to the bookstore and proudly wore Trinity Christian College sweatshirts, she recalled.
Just days later, the mother was stunned to read an email that the school was closing.
She called her daughter and shared the news with her and her roommates.
“They were crying and sad. It was just awful,” Schorle recounted. “I took something away from three young ladies who had all of their plans for college completely ripped away from them.”
Her daughter plans to attend Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais next year.
But packing up and moving her out of her dorm earlier this month was a particularly sorrowful time, the mother recalled.
“There’s a different level of … vulnerability that comes with expressing your faith in a public setting like a school,” Schorle said. “She got really close with her roommates doing Bible studies together. So I think that when something that is part of your personality, part of your soul … I think that hits differently than when a regular school closes. It’s part of your culture. Part of your inherent person.”
An array of colleges and universities around the country without religious affiliation have also recently announced closures, including Hampshire College in Massachusetts, Sterling College in Vermont and California College of the Arts, which intends to shutter after the 2026-27 academic year.
“These smaller institutions perhaps have a smaller margin of error than a larger university would have,” Ostrander said.
In the years to come, higher education institutions across the board will be facing a formidable enrollment cliff, a projected sharp decline in high school graduates driven in part by a drop in birth rates following the 2008 recession.
Colleges and universities of all types are also facing a much more negative public opinion about higher education compared to previous years, another hurdle to enrollment and long-term solvency.
A Pew Research Center survey released in October found 7 in 10 Americans believe the nation’s higher education system is heading in the wrong direction, up from 56% who felt that way in 2020.
Respondents were particularly negative when asked about higher education’s success in preparing students for well-paying jobs and institutions keeping tuition costs affordable.
A September Gallup poll found that only 35% of Americans feel college is “very important,” compared with 75% in 2010.
Trinity Christian College graduate Kylla Hutcherson of south suburban Hazel Crest always thought her young children would one day have the option of attending her alma mater.
As a high school senior, she had been attracted to the small, close-knit campus, which offered personal relationships with professors.
Hutcherson was also drawn to the spiritual life of the college, which she described as robust but intentional on the part of the students — never mandatory or forced.
“They were very much like, ‘Wherever you are in your walk, we’ll be there with you.’ It wasn’t like, you have to be this type of Christian; you have to be this type of student,” she added. “They were very open to receiving you as you were.”
The 2017 graduate never imagined the campus — and all the places where she had so many formative experiences — would one day be gone.
“When it comes to thinking about college and those past years, there’s nothing wrong with missing those times and missing those spaces,” she added. “I think sometimes we get really in the habit of moving ahead. But it’s OK to reminisce and go back for a little bit to remember how you felt in those moments. Because they could be gone. And you may only be left with memories.”
Daily Southtown reporter Olivia Stevens contributed.
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