Ouachita Voices

Ouachita Voices

CELEBRATING 125 YEARS OF ACADEMIC & CHRISTIAN EXCELLENCE

Ouachita Voices

Ouachita Voices C E L E B R AT I N G 1 2 5 Y E A R S O F AC A DE M I C & C H R I S T I A N E XC E L L E N C E

Editor: Trennis Henderson Assistant Editor: Brooke Zimny Editorial Director: Rob Levin Project Manager: Renée Peyton Book Design: Rick Korab Proofing Services: Bob Land

Copyright © 2011 by Ouachita Baptist University Printed in the United States All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from Ouachita Baptist University.

Book Development by Bookhouse Group, Inc. 818 Marietta Street Atlanta, Georgia 30318 404.885.9515 www.bookhouse.net

Students attend 1949 campus vespers service in Mitchall Hall.

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TA BLE OF CON T EN T S

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| DEDIC AT ION | IX |

| CH AP T ER T HR EE: ALUM NI VOICE S | 67 |

Frank D. Hickingbotham Ouachita Baptist University Trustee and Benefactor

It All Started with a Pair of Shoes Cliff Harris I Would Still Choose Ouachita Gov. Mike Huckabee Point of Grace: The Ride of Our Lives Terry Jones

| FOR E WOR D | XI |

Dr. Rex M. Horne, Jr. Fifteenth President of Ouachita Baptist University |

IN T RODUC T ION | XIII |

Trennis Henderson OBU Vice President for Communications | CH AP T ER ONE: HIS TOR IC AL VOICE S | 1 |

1886–1936: A Foundation for the Future Dr. Ray Granade 1936–1986: From Survival to Success Dr. Hal Bass 1986–2011: Continuity and Change Dr. Tom Auffenberg | CH AP T ER T WO : PR E SIDEN T I AL VOICE S | 39 |

My Turn at Bat for Ouachita Dr. Daniel R. Grant Reflections on a Decade of Progress Dr. Ben M. Elrod Recollections from a Son of Ouachita Dr. Andrew Westmoreland A Calling I Am Following Dr. Rex M. Horne, Jr.

| CH AP T ER FOUR: FACULT Y VOICE S | 77 |

The Lord Guides Our Steps Dr. J. Scott Duvall Ouachita Is … People Dr. Joe Jeffers Making Meaningful Connections Dr. George Keck Relationships Form Common Thread Dr. Deborah Root Joyfully Surprised by Ouachita Dr. Amy Sonheim | CH AP T ER FI V E: T RUS T EE VOICE S | 99 |

Deep Ouachita Roots Frank D. Hickingbotham Ouachita Tiptoes into Your Heart Rita Lewis Spillyards Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant William H. “Buddy” Sutton | CH AP T ER SI X: VOICE S OF T HE FU T UR E | 109 |

Pursuing a Standard of Excellence Alyse Eady Defining Moments in Life Jacob Lively Ouachita Milestones and Memories Philip Williamson Embrace Today and Dream of Tomorrow Dr. Rex M. Horne, Jr.

Students gather on the lawn in front of Hickingbotham Hall to visit, study and relax.

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DEDICAT ION

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In grateful appreciation to Mr. Frank D. Hickingbotham, a man of vision, integrity and service whose generous financial gift helped make Ouachita Voices possible.

Portrait courtesy of artist Larry Bishop (www.larrybishop.com)

Mr. Hickingbotham, a successful and respected businessman, entrepreneur and civic leader, is a longtime trustee and benefactor of Ouachita Baptist University.

His contributions to OBU have funded student scholarships, the renovation and expansion of Riley-Hickingbotham Library and the construction of Hickingbotham Hall, home of the Frank D. Hickingbotham School of Business.

A member of the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame, he holds an honorary Doctor of Laws degree conferred by Ouachita.

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uachita officially turns 125 years old in September of 2011. While the sum of these years may not seem extensive compared to many universities across the globe, these have been most significant years because of the impact upon men and women and their influence around the world.

How often this president has the opportunity to walk these grounds with gratitude to God. As the fifteenth president of Ouachita, I think of the previous fourteen and the challenges they have faced. Dr. Conger was our founding president. The service he rendered and the vision he cast have likely, in my estimation, surpassed his dreams. Those who have served after Conger have shared a love for this place that endures. The affection that Ouachita has in the hearts of so many is based in the people who have served here and studied here with the blessing of friends and constituents who have prayed, encouraged and given generously to Ouachita across these years.

Ouachita is unique in many ways. This university has continuously educated young men and women since the beginning. While other institutions have lost their way, drifted from their moorings or weakened their original foundation, Ouachita has not. For 125 years Ouachita in word and deed has been true to the twin pillars of an abiding love of God and a love of learning. After five years in this office, my appreciation for this steadfast devotion could not be greater.

Ouachita Voices is a grand attempt to gather historical, personal and institutional perspectives of a number of contributors. Their words will join in creating a testament to this enduring work and the sustaining grace of God. You will enjoy the articles by the living former presidents of Ouachita as well as those from dedicated faculty, trustees, alumni and several recent and current students who will challenge us for the future.

While not all have the opportunity to contribute their Ouachita story, each reader does have the opportunity to participate. While you read, you may reflect on your experience with this university, the people who have made her great and the faith embraced here that may well have changed your destiny. It would be our prayer that you would join the chorus of voices who believe the impact of Ouachita must be even greater in the years to come.

Thank you for being a part of Ouachita. We share an uncommon legacy. We praise Ouachita Baptist University where the work is not yet complete, but the present is marked by dedicated professors teaching young adults who are enthusiastic about learning, faith, relationships here and the ones they will form in service to God and man in the years to come wherever God’s plan for their lives unfolds around the world.

Dr. Rex M. Horne, Jr. President, Ouachita Baptist University

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Ouachitonians pose for a traditional commencement photo in front of the Tiger.

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ne of my favorite moments of the academic year comes during Ouachita’s opening fall convocation when President Horne invites incoming students, faculty and staff to stand as he officially declares them “Ouachitonians.”

There is something special about wearing the title of Ouachitonian that can be fully grasped only through personal experience. The sense of shared heritage and lifelong camaraderie embraced by the Ouachita family is a timeless treasure. As trustee and alumna Rita Spillyards so eloquently reflects in her essay, “Ouachita tiptoes into your heart and never leaves.”

The year 2011 marks a century and a quarter of Ouachita’s steadfast commitment to a love of God and a love of learning. This ambitious anniversary project, Ouachita Voices: Celebrating 125 Years of Academic and Christian Excellence, seeks to capture the spirit of the Ouachita experience through the eyewitness reflections of Ouachitonians from across the years.

In the following pages, you will read first-person accounts from Ouachita presidents, faculty members, trustees, alumni and students as well as historical overviews from a trio of resident experts: Dr. Ray Granade, Dr. Hal Bass and Dr. Tom Auffenberg. For many readers, this collection of essays, along with historical and contemporary campus photographs, will be a cherished stroll down memory lane. For others, it hopefully will be an engaging introduction to the 125-year history of Ouachita Baptist University.

This project came to fruition through the assistance and encouragement of a number of enthusiastic supporters. For starters, Ouachita President Rex Horne has been a faithful champion of Ouachita Voices every step along the way. Dr. Horne, along with Terry Peeples, vice president for development, and Dr. Brett Powell, vice president for administrative services, provided valuable input throughout the book’s planning and production process. Ouachita’s 125th Anniversary Steering Committee, chaired by Ian Cosh, vice president for community and international engagement, endorsed the book as part of the university’s anniversary celebration.

To each of the essayists who shared their memories and insights, thank you for making this volume all that it is. Others who played key roles include Phil Hardin, assistant to the president for administration, whose keen institutional knowledge was vital. Thanks to Dr. Ray Granade, director of library services; Phyllis Kinnison, archivist; and the library and archives staff for their help in tracking down historical photos. Thanks also to Dr. Wesley Kluck, vice president for institutional advancement, and OBU Photo Lab editor Callie Stephens, a 2011 graduate, who provided numerous photographs.

Thanks to Rob Levin, Renée Peyton, Rick Korab and other members of the Bookhouse team whose expertise and commitment to excellence helped transform the dream of Ouachita Voices into reality.

A special word of appreciation goes to Frank Hickingbotham, a longtime Ouachita benefactor, who generously provided funds to help underwrite the cost of this project. Another key player throughout the process was Brooke Zimny, assistant director of communications, whose professional skills and attention to detail always make my work better.

Thanks also to my dear wife, Pam, who graciously put up with my extra office hours and frequent updates about each little detail related to the book project. It has been my privilege to coordinate this effort to convey anew the width and depth of Ouachita’s rich history and bright future.

Trennis Henderson OBU Vice President for Communications

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Ouachita Baptist College class of 1897

| CHAPTER ONE: HISTORICAL VOICES

1886 –1936: A Foundation for the Future

By Dr. Ray Granade

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ome begin Ouachita Baptist University’s history with the state’s first Baptist school, the Arkadelphia Male and Female Institute, in 1850. They trace Arkadelphia support of Baptist education through the Arkansas School for the Blind, Red River Baptist Academy, and its offer to XIII the Arkansas Baptist State Convention (ABSC) of site, building and $10,000. Others emphasize widespread Baptist interest in education: $75,000 endowment lost in the Civil War, ABSC adoption of Mississippi College in 1870, and six Baptist schools formed around the state between 1871 and 1876.

Both approaches merge at a state convention-selected selfperpetuating Board of Trustees in Little Rock on April 8, 1886, hearing eight proposals. After considerable debate the next day, the board members voted. Seventy-two ballots later came the telegram, “College located at Arkadelphia.” The decision reflected denominational devotion to local church autonomy and a state strongly influenced by Landmarkism where many short-lived educational institutions started between 1875 and 1900 and the ABSC had existed fewer than forty years and lacked physical presence until 1881.

Founded in 1808, Arkadelphia became the county seat in 1842, and by 1880 was the state’s eighth largest town. Ouachita

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CHAPTER ONE

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President Conger assembled an esteemed faculty despite very low salaries and replaced Baptist College was the first of five institutions founded there within a decade, prompting newspaper allusions to “City of Colleges” and “Athens of Arkansas,” among comments that “money is scarce and business very dull.”

But Arkadelphia’s first telephone system and Front cover of Ouachita’s first catalog water works arrived in 1891, electricity soon thereafter; two banks served the town after 1888; baseball games took place after 1887 in a 500-seat ballpark; and Arkadelphia Bottling Company provided portable versions of fountain drinks.

Preparatory or Collegiate departments. Their classical curriculum mirrored that at most schools, though the collegiate option included bookkeeping courses and offered women a Mistress of English Literature (no language study). Tuesday through Saturday classes accommodated ministerial students. Female students wore uniforms—a navy blue suit trimmed in gold braid with matching hat—to promote convenience and economy and suppress “pride and rivalry in the matter of personal decorations.”

This rural setting overseen by a resident paternalistic figure imposed many rules. Women ventured beyond the campus fence only with a teacher, marching by twos to church on Sunday or to town, usually on Mondays. They socialized with males only under well-supervised conditions (Conger believed that “a faithful, earnest pupil has not time for such diversion”), and a matron ensured their conformity. Males suffered fewer rules, lacked similar oversight and wore no uniforms; the first year’s voluntary military unit wore work clothes to drill and shouldered improvised wooden weapons.

Still, no student could incur debts or leave class or campus without permission. Conger brooked no behavior subversive of “the acquisition of mental strength, moral force, application and concentration of thought.”

Strict rules and uninspired curriculum featuring rote memorization and daily recitations did not deter enrollment.

Second-year enrollment increased almost 100 over the first,

Conger lays strong foundation

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uachita trustees chose as president a minister with impressive educational credentials named John William Conger who, at age 29, had already presided over a Tennessee college, founded an Arkansas one and headed Prescott High School. His charisma rested on erect posture, handsomeness, unfailing courtesy, selfconfidence and genuine interest in people. “Dr. Jack” combined strong-minded optimism and determination with a deep interest in the poor’s welfare, concerns that shaped the school’s course.

Elected three months before Ouachita opened, Conger operated under a renewable two-year contract that made him solely responsible for everything. He assembled a six-member faculty (including him and his wife), prepared building and grounds, and advertised a school created not “as a financial speculation, but solely upon an educational basis,” and “not run as a moneymaking institution.” Free tuition for all ministers “irrespective of denomination” and their children, and a variety of other discounts, encouraged attendance but inhibited income.

Those 166 students who appeared when the institution opened on September 6, 1886, enrolled in the Primary,

President Conger takes a group of coeds on an outing on the Ouachita River in 1896.

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them with equally fine successors when they moved—a hallmark of his presidency. believed should acquire a classical education and reserve religious studies for seminary. Ministerial students numbered only twentyfive or thirty, never more than forty, or less than 10 percent of the total. After students began graduating in 1888, and did not continue their studies at seminary, Conger hired his first faculty with an earned doctorate away from Little Rock’s First Baptist Church to begin a School of Bible Study in 1894.

Conger’s first departure from the classical curriculum was not religious study, but an 1890 School of Music. To oversee it, he hired Fred D. Baars, Leipzig and Cincinnati conservatories of music graduate and the state’s only male music director. In 1893, Conger broadened the school into the Ouachita Conservatory of Fine Arts. The conservatory expanded enough that, in 1898, Conger erected another building to house it and the auditorium required for daily chapel.

The third major departure was a Department of Military Students gather for a football game on the lawn of Old Main.

Science and Tactics in 1896. Conger futilely sought state and averaged about 270 students that decade despite Conger’s assistance before securing War Department recognition and elimination of the Primary Department. Picnics and ice cream help (surplus arms and equipment and a retired professor of socials remained premier social events, though military science and tactics). He decreed mandatory Conger instituted annual All Fools’ Day (April 1) participation for all males, who had to purchase and Senior Day (May 1) observances. their own uniforms and wear them daily except Increased enrollment, a boon to an institution Sunday. So Federal blue coats and Confederate gray always teetering on the edge of insolvency, led pants with a black stripe down each leg joined the Conger immediately to construct a three-story women’s blue uniforms on campus. Attempting brick building affectionately known as “Old Main.” to inculcate a strong mind in a strong body, both The original wooden building became a women’s controlled by sound morals, Conger argued that dormitory. After it burned the next year, Conger three hours daily of drill counteracted hollow built and opened The Young Ladies’ Home in 1891, chests, stooped shoulders and weak backs. though male students continued boarding in town.

Curricular changes might be important, but Keeping the doors open required more money nothing had greater impact than the development than students provided, particularly since about of literary societies and team athletics. Common at President John W. Conger a third of them paid no tuition. Facing annual colleges, literary societies reinforced key educational deficits, Conger employed financial agents, well-known clergymen elements through debate. Strictly segregated by gender, four who served two years on commission and mostly collected from organized quickly: Alpha Kappa and Corinnean “paired” churches. respectively with male Philomathean and Hermesian. Conger Donors supported a place to educate rising Baptist ministers allowed each to decorate and use an Old Main classroom. Male and promote denominational work while educating laity. But societies collected libraries to support internal and inter-society Ouachita lacked any program for “preacher boys,” whom Conger debates that quickly became an annual May event (men debated; 3

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Ouachita Alma Mater Ouachita, we sing thy praises Thy beauty, thy power, thy fame.

Each loyal heart upraises A cheer to thy glorious name: O-U-A-C-H-I-T-A Here’s good luck to Ouachita, May all her skies be gay.

Raise a cheer for Ouachita, A loud Hip, Hip, Hooray: O-U-A-C-H-I-T-A Ouachita, thy sons and daughters Will carry thy flag unfurled; For none can e’er surpass thee, The Queen of the college world: O-U-A-C-H-I-T-A Here’s good luck to Ouachita, May all her skies be gay.

Raise a cheer for Ouachita, A loud Hip, Hip, Hooray: O-U-A-C-H-I-T-A

CHAPTER ONE

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women cheered on “their” male society).

Female societies’ smaller libraries featured publications “more suited to their sex.” Since the college library contained only about a thousand volumes, society libraries greatly expanded members’ educations. And societies quickly became responsible for the other major outlet for student educational creativity, begun in 1890: the literary magazine Ripples.

Organized team athletics began in 1895 with football, little more than an ill-organized intramural squad without intercollegiate competition. Male students also played baseball in this era of “Casey at the Bat,” and both genders enjoyed tennis.

Conger’s second decade wrought significant changes while conserving established strengths.

Average enrollment increased to about 340 for the rest of his tenure. Two new literary societies organized in 1900, and strong Ouachita societies won statewide intercollegiate debate and speaking contests.

Team sports continued under Faculty and Student Athletic Association support

with faculty and students coaching various teams that emphasized the student-athlete and retained an intramural air. Ouachita Christian Association’s advent in President Conger in his later years 1906 and the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations expanded a flourishing religious life beyond First Baptist Church, Volunteer Band (hopeful future missionaries) and Ministerial Alliance. Large studentled worship services became the Sunday afternoon norm. In 1898, Conger instituted a School of Pedagogy to provide Christian teachers just as he had planned to provide church leadership with a missionary ideal four years earlier. Also in 1898, Conger proposed to resign, though trustees demurred; instead, he precipitated the first major change in institutional administration.

Conger proposed to sell the Board of Trustees his investment in the school and end biennial leases in 1900. Nine of the fifteen trustees who selected him had been ministers. By 1900, that composition had exactly reversed—perhaps board response to state convention efforts in 1892 and 1897 to connect the school and Early women’s basketball team poses for a team photo in front of the Young convention organically.

Ladies’ Home.

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Male students in the late 1800s practice drills as part of the Department of Military Science and Tactics.

limited means whose fifteen residents did their own housework and boarded at cost. That same year, Conger constructed a simple wooden structure, commonly called “The Lab Building,” to house the Department of Natural Science. By year’s end, Ouachita’s physical plant value stood at about $131,500 (more than $3 million in today’s dollars).

As the board accepted Conger’s proposal, they realized the need for, and committed to, endowment. But they also faced debt that increased by about $9,000 annually. They quickly joined a convention drive to liquidate debt, raise endowment and set in place the Ouachita-Central System of Affiliated Colleges and Academies that would funnel more students to the college.

The board even hired Conger as financial agent for two years after 1903. After he resigned in 1907, they worried that lack of endowment would push the school “into the rank of second-class institutions” and that, without debt relief, it would be “closed out by the auctioneer.”

Conger had begun and expanded the school over twentyone years, a tenure that no successor would match or exceed. He had assembled an esteemed faculty despite very low salaries and replaced them with equally fine successors when they moved—a hallmark of his presidency. His recruiting stressed personality and religious devotion over scholarship, though after he hired his first alumnus in 1890, he also stressed devotion to one’s alma mater.

And he had created a campus ethos that stressed personal relations, concern for the less fortunate, and Christian service at home and abroad as well as mental furnishing.

Conger’s proposal did not shock business-minded trustees.

Mountain Home Baptist and Central Baptist colleges challenged Ouachita’s call on Arkansas Baptists, and the annual $2,500 deficit had become onerous. Alumnus and former teacher J.G. Lile left the presidency of Central Baptist College after about five years, saying that he could not afford to keep losing money. It was a common tale that caused much ephemera in Arkansas higher education.

Conger sought to surrender only financial problems when he set his price at $7,500, payable over seven years.

Board agreement did not end Conger’s other responsibilities.

Increased enrollment required more buildings, and Conger erected more in his last decade than in his first. In 1904, he built a twostory brick President’s Home on the campus’ western edge. He used a donation to construct the Mary Forbes Industrial Home for Young Ladies two years later—a dormitory for young women of

Ouachita’s first football team took the field in 1895.

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CHAPTER ONE

Successors expand on Conger’s vision

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Students play tennis on the lawn in front of Old Main in the 1890s.

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onger’s success ensured that trustees would seek ordained Baptist ministers with a strong dedication to and experience in education. Only one would lack a doctorate and, while at least four served as pastors, all but two devoted most of their professional lives to education. This time the Board chose 41-year-old Henry Simms Hartzog, a professional educator with theological training, to succeed Conger. Hartzog came to Ouachita after an outstanding University of Arkansas presidency and a year with Charles Merrill Company. An outstanding orator and amateur artist with a grand sense of humor, he was a brilliant educator committed to academic quality.

Hartzog’s emphases often differed from Conger’s. Although the charter required that all faculty be Baptist, Hartzog in 1909 hired Presbyterian Livingston Harvey Mitchell to replace Baars.

But nowhere was the demarcation clearer than in public relations.

It is no coincidence that the first yearbook issue appeared the same year, 1907, that Hartzog hired professional coaches, began the annual Thanksgiving “Battle of the Ravine” and began expanding intercollegiate competition started only two years earlier. He established a military band in 1908 to increase that program’s visibility. And he built seven tennis courts behind the Young Ladies’ Home in 1911, encouraging forty women to join the new Ouachita Tennis Association. Hartzog’s enthusiasm for collegiate sports prompted a consistent problem: As teams became solely coaches’ province, they exhibited chronic eligibility President Henry Hartzog problems.

After four years, Hartzog returned to Charles Merrill Company in St. Louis, saying he could not support his six boys on his Ouachita income. His personal finances mirrored the institution’s. The year after he became president, institutional

debt exceeded $60,000 and the annual borrowing rate reached $12,000. Ouachita faced its worst financial situation between its founding and the Great Depression. Trustees focused strictly on debt. Into this quagmire stepped 42-year-old Robert Graves Bowers, Ouachita’s first alumnus to become president. This large, commanding figure had been a pastor in Texas and Arkansas, served as ABSC missionary secretary, then financial agent two years before being elevated to Ouachita’s presidency.

Bowers’ greatest turmoil involved finances and the ABSC. When Arkadelphian J.W. Wilson bequeathed $10,000 for endowment, Bowers leveraged that to apply for a $100,000 General Education Board of New York grant. They agreed, if he raised matching funds and the institution set aside $50,000 of its own money to establish a $250,000 endowment. Such an endowment

Hot Springs physician A.U. Williams donated seven acres across the ravine from campus 6

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would allow Ouachita to continue offering one of the nation’s lowest private school tuitions without annual deficits and borrowing.

Nothing in school history promised success. To complicate matters, a Little Rock businessman offered the ABSC a liberal gift to move the college to his town. An Arkadelphia group countered with a promise to finance the entire debt on the condition that, if the removal President Robert Bowers question ever arose again, Ouachita would pay Arkadelphia $50,000—an offer the trustees accepted.

In his short tenure, Bowers attracted outstanding faculty and Coach Morley Jennings. Baseball and basketball continued their popularity, including a women’s basketball team (all home games since they could not leave town), but football was the major sport.

Coinciding with Jennings’ first year, Hot Springs physician A.U. Williams donated seven acres across the ravine from campus on which Jennings constructed the school’s first football field in 1912. When former player Cleve Turner remarked in 1913 that the team “fought like tigers,” supporters appropriated the animal to nickname the team.

Bowers’ departure after only two years to pastor Little Rock’s First Baptist Church stymied the progress he had made. Nowhere was this truer than financially; the year that he resigned, the ABSC appointed a special committee to consider school finances.

Samuel Young Jameson, a decade older than Bowers and in many ways his predecessor’s opposite, faced that crisis. A Georgia native, Jameson had spent five years in business after college, then returned to college and seminary before embarking on a successful ministerial career. He had left the pastorate for seven years as corresponding secretary and treasurer of Georgia Baptists, then another seven presiding over Mercer University. At Mercer, he had increased enrollment, built buildings and raised some $250,000 (mostly for endowment), so that Mercer prospered as never before. His Georgia success attracted Ouachita’s trustees, who selected the tall, stalwart, energetic man with an uncanny

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ability to sway crowds with his oratory.

Jameson had barely arrived when the ABSC committee successfully recommended a $30,000 debt-retirement campaign, into which he wholeheartedly threw himself. The 1914 meeting celebrated “Ouachita’s Deliverance” by paying off the mortgage with $10,000 donated by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board and $5,000 each from three donors. Jameson’s fundraising successes ensured that Ouachita would continue to seek large donations, however welcome small ones might be.

In addition to successfully eliminating debt, Jameson provided males their first campus housing by persuading donor W.T. Cone to purchase and donate a house adjoining campus in 1914—a structure quickly dubbed “Cone Castle.” Jameson hired the school’s first PhD and advertised Ouachita widely to secure the largest percentage of out-of-state students in the school’s history during his second year. After another year, in 1916, Jameson left to pastor in Georgia.

Progress continues after World War I era

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uring the decade after Conger resigned, Ouachita successively inaugurated four presidents. Except for Jameson, the trustees selected men in their early forties with Arkansas upbringing or ties, half of whom had served as pastors. Student life remained largely unchanged, except for increased emphasis on religion and sports, and buildings accommodated students in classrooms and dormitories without offering expansion room. In another succession decision, trustees elected a 39-year-old minister with President Samuel Jameson strong education credentials and commanding voice in a frail body. Charles Ernest Dicken had presided over a Jonesboro college and came to Ouachita from five years as president of a Texas school. His greatest strength was his ability to recognize the new post-World War I societal day.

The United States remained neutral in the Great War when

on which Coach Morley Jennings constructed the school’s first football field in 1912.

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Dicken became president in 1916, though Ouachita’s Military school boasted that athletes’ on-field conduct was “free from all Department served on the Mexican border after Pancho Villa’s immoral practices and profane language” and that students under raid. Once the United States became a combatant, Dicken age 21 produced parental permission to participate; any student rushed to Washington to secure a contingent of the Students’ who failed a third of his class work, attended irregularly or took Army Training Corps (SATC) for the fall of 1918, and about 150 fewer than fifteen (later twelve) hours became ineligible. men from Henderson-Brown and 250 from Ouachita comprised Student life also changed. While literary societies remained the Arkadelphia unit. When war ended in November and the significant, Ripples gave way to newspaper format in 1916; when unit “demobbed” the next month, Dicken convinced the War students arrived for classes that fall, The Signal greeted them.

Department that Ouachita deserved one of the new Reserve Still society-written and -edited, and still featuring some longer Officer Training Corps programs. Continuing military unit pieces, the newspaper’s shorter, more gossipy items heralded presence boosted enrollment to its highest point since Conger’s a new feel on campus. An inchoate social structure joined the tenure and averaged about 300 students.

Enrollment rebounded despite Dicken’s decision to abandon both the Preparatory Department and a master’s program, and student life became more robust. Sports remained a highlight. Henderson-Brown College had built the town’s first indoor basketball arena, which they loaned to Ouachita teams until the Tigers trounced their benefactors in a five-game series, at which point the only available hours suddenly became early morning and the Tigers canceled their 1917 season. Baseball interest paced that of football early in Dicken’s tenure. Aaron Ward became the first Ouachitonian to play professional baseball in the majors for the New York Yankees in 1917 before Travis Jackson did the same in 1922 for the New York Giants.

Ward’s career highlighted Ouachita’s great sports problem: Lack of participation in the Arkansas Athletic Association, Members of Ouachita’s 1927 ROTC battalion in formation in front of Old Main. which sanctioned events and determined player eligibility, led state schools to boycott Ouachita. Recognizing the problem, Dicken made Ouachita new media format. Existing since the school’s founding, social a charter member of the Arkansas Inter-Collegiate Athletic clubs had been short-lived, intimate gatherings of a few friends.

Association and served as its first president. Still, problems But in 1915, a larger, more elaborately organized female social with subsidized athletes continued, and a Signal editor typified club took the name Kewpie Club from dolls made popular attitudes toward games’ physicality when he wrote in 1916 that “it

by Ladies’ Home Journal drawings. Kewpies met secretly, or as is better to have a few boys killed on the football field or baseball secretly as meetings could be on an intimate campus, for the diamond than it is to bring up a race of molly coddles.” Only school outlawed social clubs prior to 1917 (the same year that no-holds-barred sports produced “fearless, sturdy men.” Still, the Dicken abandoned required uniforms for females). But Kewpies 8

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presaged the future. After Dicken reversed the school growth. In 1921, thirty-year ban on social clubs, another girls’ social the ABSC tried again to club formation (the EEE Club) signaled, more than systematize its educational any other single event, the demise of Ouachita’s endeavors: Mountain schools literary clubs. It was a change accelerated by Dexter would be secondary schools Rivers becoming the first female on Ouachita’s (with some vocational debate team in 1919. Men’s social clubs lagged training), Central Baptist several years since men had organizational options College would be a junior not available to women (military department college, and Ouachita its only and athletic teams), and never figured quite as four-year school. prominently in the school’s social fabric.

Successful accreditation The advent of national honor societies, required better financing international students and relaxed campus rules for endowment, library brought other changes. Part of Dicken’s attempt expansion and faculty salaries. to elevate Ouachita’s academic standard, the first At this critical juncture, discipline-specific honor society naturally supported Mrs. Florence I. Wilson of debate (1924). Associations formed through Baptist Arkadelphia, Trustee J.W. mission work began attracting international students Wilson’s widow, bequeathed from Latin America, Africa and Asia, starting with $20,000 for endowment.

Charles Pong (1922–26). And the administration Trustees suggested that the abandoned Senior Day in the hysteria that ABSC raise at least a $300,000 characterized the Red Scare of 1919–20, replacing it endowment; Dicken proposed with “Senior Privileges.” $400,000, one quarter Founding members of the EEE women’s social club Dicken’s commitment to student life showed from the SBC Education in his construction projects. In 1920, he abandoned family-style Commission and another from the General Education Board of eating in favor of a cafeteria-line facility when he constructed New York. When the U.S. entered the Great War, Dicken seized the Dining Hall and opened the school’s first gymnasium. He the opportunity and instituted the school’s first fundraising demolished the old SATC barracks in 1920 and in its place campaign. Conceived with the help of Hardy Winburn, pastor erected the state’s largest of Arkadelphia First Baptist Church, the plan envisioned raising dormitory, which opened in 1923 $150,000 in three months by enlisting five groups, all investing in as Cone-Bottoms Hall.

Liberty bonds. In a single stroke, Dicken married fundraising to Dicken’s desire to standardize patriotic fervor.

Ouachita athletics and social Just as the school launched its campaign in 1918, Trustee structures—and move toward Dr. J.C. Wallis died of the Spanish flu and left $30,000 toward accreditation—was part of general endowment, and Dicken enlisted J.G. Lile as financial agent American standardization. for five years. The campaign reached more than $93,000 in The Arkansas Baptist State gifts and pledges before running afoul of the SBC’s ambitious Convention, for example, “75 Million Campaign,” which began in 1919. The campaign, increasingly coordinated financial which promised $550,000 to Ouachita for construction and support for all its programs endowment, set a state goal which Arkansans oversubscribed. A Ouachita Ripples was a forerunner and particularly its educational dramatic giving decline followed initial success and only about of The Signal campus newspaper, activities in the face of public half the convention-wide goal came in; Ouachita received only which debuted in 1916.

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Achieving accreditation in 1927 allowed Ouachita graduates to teach in $1,113.17 and had to delay its own fundraising efforts until 1923. The ABSC added Ouachita as a budgetary line item the next year—only to remove it three years later.

Improved finances allowed Dicken to hire and retain excellent faculty with a six-year average tenure—highest until that point and far superior to the normal two-year average—and encourage those without a PhD to earn one.

President Ernest Dicken Dicken’s greatest loss was Coach Jennings’ departure in 1926, leaving an enviable record (71 wins, 15 losses and 13 ties in 14 seasons during which his teams scored over 2,000 points to their opponents’ 364) that some called the school’s golden age of football. The school also memorialized Conger; when he died of cancer in April 1924, the school buried him on campus in a double vault next to his wife, Tennie, who had died a year earlier.

no proper place in a religious confession of faith” and reiterated its 1923 Kansas City meeting statement: “Loyalty to fact is a common ground of genuine science and the Christian religion.”

The convention protested “the imposition of this theory upon the minds of our children, in denominational or public schools, as if it were a definite and established truth of science” and insisted that “this and all other theories be dealt with in a truly scientific way, that is, in careful conformity to established facts.” They set forth a doctrinal statement about God and Scripture, then ended with the belief that “adherence to the above truths and facts is a necessary condition of service for teachers in our Baptist schools” since “these facts of Christianity in no way conflict with any fact in science.”

The 1924 ABSC meeting had adopted a stronger statement and required all employees to sign. Dicken’s promise that he and every faculty member would sign the SBC statement initially satisfied the Ouachita trustees. At a called meeting that roughly coincided with John T. Scopes’ arrest in Tennessee, they rescinded their earlier position and found only the fundamentalist statement acceptable. Dicken resigned, effective June 1, 1926.

Evolution debate sparks campus crisis

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ne Dicken-recruited faculty member, Assistant Professor of Biology and Geology Chester Munn, precipitated the crisis that ended the tenure of Dicken and seven other faculty and, in one trustee’s words, threatened the school’s ability to hire “the highest type of educator.” Religious fundamentalists pressured politicians between 1921 and 1929 in twenty states (including all those of the old Confederacy) to adopt antievolution legislation—including Arkansas in 1927. Munn unapologetically taught Darwin.

The SBC and ABSC likewise addressed evolution. The SBC’s May 1925 Memphis meeting observed that “matters of science have

John W. Conger, Ouachita’s founding president, died in 1924. He and his wife, Tennie, who died a year earlier, were buried on campus in a double vault.

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standard Arkansas high schools and enter medical school with full credit.

Seven of the twenty-four faculty members also refused to sign the anti-evolution statement and forfeited employment. Twelve signed with a caveat; only five signed outright.

In replacing Dicken, trustees quickly discovered the effect of his resignation and its precipitating events.

Two candidates turned them down. They finally selected 47-year-old Arkansas native, alumnus and Superintendent of Public Instruction Arthur B. Hill, whose career had been exclusively in the state’s public schools and who lacked a doctorate.

President Arthur Hill Hill continued Dicken’s course.

He relaxed rules even more, instituting later curfew, fewer dorm checks, special privileges for upperclassmen and even non-compulsory chapel.

When curfew violations increased, boisterous behavior in the library became common, males set off dynamite caps in the dorm and chapel absence soared to 70 percent, laxity disappeared and Hill denounced hazing and made class and chapel attendance compulsory.

Hill hired professors with doctorates from prestigious schools (the universities of Chicago, Illinois, and Michigan) who made accreditation possible. Achieving accreditation in 1927 allowed Ouachita graduates to teach in standard Arkansas high schools and enter medical school with full credit. Despite poor health, surgery and recuperation at the Mayo Clinic and further recuperation in Arkadelphia’s Moore Sanitarium, Hill maintained his commitment to hiring well-credentialed faculty and to student scholarship, particularly debate participation.

That commitment to sound academics and the ability to move the school past the evolution crisis by maintaining Arkansas Baptists’ trust and goodwill were his hallmarks before his 1929 resignation to become executive secretary of the Arkansas TaxPayers Protective Association.

1930s overshadowed by Great Depression

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o succeed Hill, the trustees elected 41-year-old former Ouachita English Professor Charles D. Johnson, who had left after earning his PhD to chair the Department of Public Discourse and later the Journalism Department at Baylor University. Johnson knew Ouachita, Arkadelphia and Arkansas, and had impressive academic and administrative credentials; as a new faculty member in 1916, he had organized the “400 Club,” a student recruiting organization, and sponsored The Signal. Unfortunately, he became president slightly less than four months before “Black Thursday” and the stock market’s “Great Crash” that began a dozen years of economic misery and moved the school’s economic focus from advancement to survival.

The changed economic picture colored all Johnson’s actions.

The school’s first female PhD, hired in 1929, was gone two years later and Johnson had to grant two other faculty members leaves of absence “in the interest of economy.” By 1932, all the PhDs recruited to gain accreditation were gone. State schools organized after 1909 offered stiff competition, even among Baptists: The ratio of Baptists in state schools as opposed to Ouachita was five to one. Enrollment declined yearly after Johnson became president: first 4 percent, then 12.5 percent, then 11.6 percent—or a quarter of the student body over three years. Even ministerial student enrollment declined significantly.

Johnson tried to staunch the loss. Despite his predecessor’s championing of debate, with The Signal opining in 1929 that literary societies had passed “their largest usefulness,” Johnson saw social clubs become a major force in campus life. Male students in 1930 formed their first long-lived social club, Alpha Sigma Sigma (which became Sigma Alpha Sigma in 1933), followed by Rho Sigma in 1934. He also implemented Hardy Winburn’s 1930 plan to develop seventy-five tuition scholarships, even as tuition costs fell from $100 annually in 1929 to $45 in 1933.

Despite concessions to student desires, Johnson did not completely abandon his predecessors’ paternalism and sternness.

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all dating and, while dates were no longer restricted to Sundays, position in Monticello’s new agricultural and mechanical college. the number of dates a girl could have weekly depended on her Once again, trustees had to find another president, their third in classification. Couples could not sit or stand together on campus less than a decade after the evolution crisis. and had to “keep their hands off each other in public and in It would have been hard for trustees to escape thoughts private.” of the tragic decade after Conger’s departure, In 1932, Johnson faced his most trying year. of short presidential tenures and economic The ABSC’s newly formed Education Commission problems and the very real possibility that the reported in 1931 that higher education trended school might fold. It would have been hard to toward large colleges in large population centers remain optimistic after the crises that had ended and recommended immediate consolidation Dicken’s tenure and produced such instability of all ABSC higher education efforts into a thereafter. But the school’s governing body elected single institution near the state’s population Dr. James Richard Grant, a 53-year-old Arkansas center. The next year, a group of Little Rock native and professional educator with five degrees businessmen proposed that the convention follow from prestigious institutions, former Arkansas its commission’s recommendations and move Polytechnic Institute president and current vice the state’s Baptist college to their city. At the president and professor of education at Ouachita. tumultuous meeting, sentiment favored relocation. President Charles Johnson Grant had previously served as acting president Then a new Arkadelphia proposal that included during and after Johnson’s administration, and he refinancing bonds convinced the convention to retain the current knew well the challenges of his new position: an unaccredited and location. indebted institution with low enrollment where two-thirds of the The other major 1932 event was the school’s loss of students paid no tuition. Grant’s goals as he took office were to accreditation that spring. Citing an over-emphasis on athletics live within the institution’s income while endeavoring to increase and poor financial conditions, the association noted enrollment it and enrollment by improving the school’s reputation and decline, ABSC contributions of only $1.55 over the previous regaining accreditation. five years, use of endowment income for unauthorized purposes (loan security), sending coaches on high school recruiting Dr. Ray Granade, director of library services and professor of history, has served trips and subsidizing athletes (which The Signal as early as at Ouachita since 1971. He holds degrees from Samford University, Florida 1929 said should be done openly or not at all, after posing the State University and Texas Woman’s University. question the year before: “Is Ouachita a stadium with a college attached?”).

Whether the financial situation or loss of accreditation precipitated the move, Johnson resigned the next spring to take a

An early photo of Cone-Bottoms Hall from the 1920s shows the fence and service gate that bordered the campus landmark.

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1936 –1986: From Survival to Success

By Dr. Hal Bass

Workers put finishing touches on the construction of Riley Library in 1949.

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wo broad, sequential currents characterize Ouachita’s second half-century: survival and advancement. Both currents reflect the impact of the institution’s broader socio-economic, demographic and cultural environment on its fortunes.

In 1936, fifty years after its 1886 establishment, Ouachita was struggling for survival, absent academic accreditation, in the midst of the Great Depression. This struggle persisted through World War II and the early post-war years. The ensuing era of progress coincided with the post-war economic growth that provided a rising tide boosting Ouachita’s long-term outlook, along with that of the American South in general. Federal higher education policies, most notably the G.I. Bill and subsequent federal grants and loans programs, in tandem with the baby boom, brought unprecedented numbers of students to Ouachita. The centennial celebration in 1986 found Ouachita enjoying relative stability and prosperity.

Along the way, other environmental factors shaping developments at Ouachita included the Civil Rights revolution and controversies dividing Southern Baptists.

Presidential leadership strengthens stability

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residential leadership looms large in assessing this era. Five presidents served over the half-century, but three were in office for a combined total of 90 percent of the time, fortyfive years. J.R. Grant became Ouachita’s eighth president in 1934, and he remained in office until 1949. After two brief presidencies in four years, Ralph A. Phelps came on board as the eleventh president, holding forth until 1969. His successor was J.R. Grant’s son, Daniel R. Grant, who served until 1988.

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Only two campus structures present in 1936 remained in place fifty years later, and All three men left significant leadership legacies. J.R. Grant kept Ouachita afloat throughout perilous economic times. Ralph Phelps revived an ailing institution.

His energy and enthusiasm propelled Ouachita forward amid cultural controversy and turmoil. Daniel Grant presided over remarkable advances in facilities, faculty recruitment and development, and financial President James R. Grant stability.

Enrollment data over the five decades provide one indication of Ouachita’s progress. A total of 416 students enrolled in the fall of 1936. Fifty years later, in fall 1986, enrollment was 1,414. The low ebb was 382 in 1937, while the high tide was 1,881 in 1966. Thus, enrollment at the end of the half-century was more than three times higher than it had been at the outset. The average enrollment rose each decade, with the most dramatic increase occurring in the middle decade, 1956–66. However, after reaching a peak in the

mid-1960s, enrollment began to stabilize at lower levels ranging from 1,400 to 1,750.

Faculty growth accompanied this enrollment expansion. The faculty numbered 35 in 1936, and grew to more than 100 by 1986. Early on in the first Grant administration, the curriculum solidified along lines that remained substantially intact for the next half-century. In turn, this curriculum was administered through an academic structure that also retained its general shape over the next five decades.

In the late 1930s, the academic departments were organized into divisions that were readily recognizable, albeit after some reshuffling, five decades later: Biblical Education and Philosophy; Education and Psychology; Physical Education; Language, Literature and Speech; Mathematics and Physics; Military Science; Science; Social Science; and the Conservatory of Fine Arts, embracing Music and Art. Their centennial counterparts were Business; Education, including Physical Education; Humanities; Natural Sciences; Religion and Philosophy; Social Sciences; and the School of Music.

After losing its accreditation in 1932, Ouachita regained it a decade later. It retained a tenuous hold on accreditation status until

President and Mrs. J.R. Grant in front of the president’s home on the Ouachita campus

Daily Dining Hall was a hub of campus activity in the 1940s and 1950s.

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they continue to grace today’s campus: Cone-Bottoms Hall and the Ouachita Tiger.

A neon Tiger adorned the entrance to A.U. Williams Field in the 1950s.

The Tiger, erected during the 1934-35 academic year, has remained a constant campus landmark amid ongoing growth and changes.

1951, when it was again dropped by the North Central Association from the roster of accredited institutions. Fortunately, accreditation was restored the next year, and Ouachita has continued to satisfy the expectations of regional accreditors ever since.

transformed. Indeed, only two campus structures present in 1936 remained in place fifty years later, and they continue to grace today’s campus: Cone-Bottoms Hall (1923, but unoccupied in 1986), and the Ouachita Tiger (1935, restored in 2010 to its original marble color). In contrast, several buildings constructed during this era remain in use on the occasion of the 125th anniversary.

They include buildings primarily housing classrooms and departmental offices: Moses Science Hall (1951); Berry Chapel and Bible Building (1962); Verser Speech and Drama Center (1967); Lile Hall (1973); Mabee Fine Arts Center (1975); and McClellan Hall (1977). Four dormitories built in the 1960s and 1970s continue to house students: Flippen Dormitory (1961): O.C. Bailey Hall (1962); Perrin Dormitory (1964); and Frances Crawford Hall (1970). Riley Library (1949, renovated, enlarged and renamed Riley-Hickingbotham Library) and Evans Student Center (1973) also endure, along with the Winthrop Rockefeller Field House (1965, reconstituted as Sturgis Physical Education Center, 1983).

In the 1950s and 1960s, the campus expanded northward, across the ravine, an area that came to house several men’s dormitories, a maintenance building and the college’s athletic facilities.

Several campus buildings constructed in the second half-century came to bear the names of noteworthy campus personalities of that era. The Physical Education Building

Ouachita moves to university status

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he most noteworthy structural shift was the 1965 name change from Ouachita Baptist College to Ouachita Baptist University.

This change both reflected and portended academic program expansion beyond undergraduate to graduate-level degrees, and increasing division of labor and specialization in organizing and administering the undergraduate academic program.

Graduate studies had begun in 1959, with master’s programs in American Civilization and Religion. Music Education was initiated in 1961, followed by Elementary and Secondary Education in 1967.

That same year, the first two graduate programs were abandoned.

A short-lived undergraduate nursing program, housed in a School of Nursing, operated from 1965 to 1967. These graduate programs contributed significantly to the enrollment surge. At the time of the centennial, the graduate program focused narrowly on education— specifically, music education and secondary education.

Campus facilities underwent dramatic change during the second half-century, leaving the campus almost completely 15

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J.R. Grant retired in 1949, the same Main fire, punctuating the end of erected in 1937 and in use until 1985 was renamed Walton Gym in 1958, in recognition of football coach W.I. “Bill” Walton, who compiled an impressive record of success in the 1930s and ’40s, and subsequently served as a trustee. The Music Conservatory Building, completed in 1944, later took the name Mitchell Hall, commemorating Old Main, a campus landmark for more than Livingston Harvey sixty years, was destroyed by fire in 1949.

Mitchell, director of the conservatory for four decades, until 1949. Beginning in 1953, the J.R. Grant Memorial Building housed most campus administrative offices. The women’s dormitory built in 1970 celebrated the service, beginning in 1926 and spanning over five decades, provided by Frances Crawford in a variety of roles and responsibilities, most enduringly as registrar. Moses Science Hall was renamed Moses-Provine in 1975, in honor of Eugene A. Provine, longtime professor of chemistry. In addition, the dining hall originally built in 1920 was later converted to classroom and office use and renamed Daily Hall, in appreciation of the distinguished service of Ralph C. Daily, professor of history.

Arguably, the most significant event in the second half-century in the realm of campus facilities was destructive, rather than creative. The longtime symbol and centerpiece of the campus, Old Main, built in 1888, was destroyed by fire in 1949.

Campus life reflects generational shifts

Riley-Hickingbotham Library was expanded, renovated and renamed in 1987.

Architect’s rendering of Sturgis Physical Education Center

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uachita’s second half-century attracted four distinctive generations of students to campus. At the beginning of

Evans Student Center, built in 1973, is at the center of Ouachita’s distinctive mega-structure.

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year as the devastating Old an era in Ouachita’s history.

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For Ouachita students and faculty on campus during the late 1930s, the ongoing Great Depression provided an environment that balanced hard times with a strong sense of community.

Enrollment was trending upward despite the lack of academic accreditation and the difficulty of making tuition payments.

One likely reason was Ouachita’s willingness to let students who were not keeping their accounts current to remain enrolled, in recognition of the severe economic conditions they were facing.

This practice had unfortunate consequences for the faculty and staff, who had no assurance or even realistic expectations that their salaries would be paid in a timely manner. Nevertheless, during the Depression years, Ouachita attracted a nucleus of strong, sacrificial faculty who served long and well amid difficult circumstances. At the beginning of the second half-century, newcomers who helped keep the college going and pointed toward better days ahead were Richard C. Pettigrew, professor of English, 1932-1948, and Ralph C. Daily, professor of history, 1935-1964. One key staff member, librarian Juanita McMillan Barnett, served in that capacity for almost the entire second half-century, retiring in 1983.

Lacking both the mobility and the relative affluence of later generations of students, pre-war students had a strongly campuscentered college experience. They also were relatively similar in their backgrounds, coming primarily from rural settings across Arkansas. These factors contributed to a very cohesive character for the student body.

The war years were unsettling for Ouachita. Enrollment declined, and the traditional male-female ratio shifted as many male students left President S. William Eubanks college to answer the call to military service. Thirty-six former students never returned, sacrificing their lives on behalf of our country. Their number included George Grant, a son of President J.R. Grant. A memorial bearing their names continues to occupy a place of honor at the center of the campus. The austerity of the Depression years continued, with scarce resources diverted to the war effort. This reallocation extended to the campus itself. When the Army Air Corps located a training program in Arkadelphia, the cadets were housed in the conservatory building still under construction that would become Mitchell Hall.

the era, the campus was populated by students who belonged to what came to be called the Greatest Generation. This group had grown up experiencing the Great Depression, and they went on to fight in World War II. As such, they also are known as the GI Generation.

The Greatest Generation gave way to the Silent Generation, who were similarly shaped by the Great Depression and also by World War II in their formative years, but for the most part did not serve in combat. They appeared on campus during the war years, and their presence endured throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s. The war and the post-war GI Bill produced a substantial overlap early on between the GI Generation and the Silent Generation on campus, as war veterans returned to and arrived on campus, but this transition time was largely completed by 1950.

In the mid-1960s, the Baby Boomers began to arrive on campus. They were the product of the post-war baby boom, and their large numbers fueled an enrollment surge. Baby Boomers are arguably the most self-conscious and expressive of their collective generational identity and status. As the centennial approached, the next generation, sometimes known as Generation X, displaced the Baby Boomers and brought their own values and perspectives to campus.

This generational perspective can also be applied to the faculty and staff. Succeeding generations of students were taught and supervised by the preceding generations and older members of their own generation. At any given time, the faculty and staff represented at least two and perhaps three distinct generations.

For example, through the first three decades of this era, from the mid-1930s through the mid-1960s, students from the Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation, and the first wave of Baby Boomers were being taught by some faculty members born in the nineteenth century. At the time of the centennial, coinciding with the arrival of Generation X students on campus, the ranks of faculty and administration included a handful of Greatest Generation representatives who had themselves attended Ouachita during the presidency of J.R. Grant, most notably his son, Daniel, who was president during the centennial era.

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Several faculty coming on board during the war years compiled lengthy and distinguished tenures. They included Donald M. Seward (1942-1977) in mathematics and physics, and Fay Holiman (1943-1973) in humanities. Virginia Queen, hired in 1946 as a music professor, was on hand for the centennial four decades later.

In turn, a wartime retiree, Estelle McMillan Blake, had been on the faculty since Ouachita’s inception in 1886.

The end of the war brought many soldiers back to campus.

Enrollment spiked upward immediately, and the campus extended its rather non-traditional wartime character, now accommodating and integrating several older veterans into the campus community.

Emerging leadership succession and accreditation issues left the college in turmoil at mid-century. J.R. Grant retired in 1949, the same year as the devastating Old Main fire, punctuating the end of an era in Ouachita’s history.

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Dr. Daniel R. Grant, Ouachita’s twelfth president, delivers his inaugural address in 1970.

1950s usher in President Phelps era

the faculty community and was well-received by the growing student body. Phelps’ clear commitment to activism and engagement pervaded the campus during these years. While remaining relatively isolated and parochial, the campus still was affected by the epochal issues of the era: Civil Rights and the Vietnam War.

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.W. Eubanks and Harold A. Haswell each served briefly as president of Ouachita in the early 1950s, but the decade of the 1950s really began for Ouachita in 1953, when Ralph Phelps assumed the presidency. On his watch, extending until 1969, Ouachita made significant strides forward, while also experiencing campus and cultural turmoil and unrest.

Phelps transformed the campus physical plant, and he attracted an impressive array of new faculty who came and stayed, revitalizing the academic program. Ouachita sponsored a new residential development north of campus, Ouachita Hills, which came to be home for many of the incoming faculty and extended the notion of campus community.

Noteworthy 1950s hires included Francis McBeth in music, Betty McCommas in English, Randy Quick in sociology, Bob Riley in political science and Vester Wolber in religion. Moving forward into the 1960s, joining the faculty were the likes of Wayne Everett and Joe Nix in chemistry, Jim Ranchino in political science and Everett Slavens in history. Their new blood President Ralph Phelps, Jr. brought energy and enthusiasm to

Ouachita regains postwar momentum

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y the end of his lengthy tenure, Phelps had worn out his welcome on and off campus. He resigned in 1969 amid leadership concerns, and alma mater called Daniel R. Grant back to campus to assume the presidency that his father had held in such memorable fashion. Under Grant’s leadership, Ouachita quickly regained the postwar momentum that had stalled in the latter years of the Phelps administration.

Broad job market forces, notably a glut of Baby Boomer PhDs, enabled Ouachita to attract well-credentialed faculty to campus across the board, and an expanding faculty development program kept many of them here. For example, the new faculty class of 1973 included four professors who remain on campus in 2011, approaching forty years of service. They are Tom Auffenberg in history, Raouf Halaby in English and then art, Richard Mills in sociology and Johnny Wink in English. Two of Daniel Grant’s faculty hires went on to serve as presidents of sister Baptist colleges: Lee Royce, economics, at Mississippi College; and Randall O’Brien, religion, at Carson-Newman College.

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had roughly coincided with the imposition of state-level Jim Crow laws mandating racial segregation throughout the South. Until the mid-1950s, “separate-but-equal” education was the regional norm, and Ouachita was no exception.

The Civil Rights movement brought forth calls for institutions of higher education to abandon their embrace of segregation.

In Ouachita’s case, these calls came in noteworthy part from alumni on the Southern Baptist mission field in Africa. However, prevailing sentiments among Ouachita’s traditional constituencies were more equivocal and even antagonistic than supportive.

The international spotlight on Arkansas that followed the state government’s resistance to the integration of Little Rock public schools in 1957-1958 heightened the pressure on Ouachita’s leadership to fashion an acceptable response.

Having committed in principle in 1960 to admit any student from a Southern Baptist foreign mission field who had the endorsement of two Southern Baptist foreign missionaries, Ouachita’s trustees followed through in 1962 by accepting applications from Mike and Mary Makosholo, from the then-British colony of Southern Rhodesia. The Makosholos came with the endorsement of missionaries and OBU alumni Bud and Jane Fray. Mike Makosholo became Ouachita’s first black graduate in 1965.

On this foundation, desegregation policies and practices advanced relatively quickly to address applications from AfricanAmerican students: first, also in 1962, to those attending an off-campus extension center located in Camden, Arkansas; then, in 1963, to the newly created graduate program in religion; and finally, in 1964, to the undergraduate program on campus. Carolyn Jean Green, a transfer from Henderson, entered that fall and graduated two years later.

In the ensuing years leading up to the centennial, black students came to comprise about 10 percent of the overall enrollment. The athletic programs and the graduate program in secondary education proved most successful in attracting AfricanAmericans to Ouachita. Parallel efforts to advance racial diversity among the faculty met with infrequent success.

Apart from enrolling black students, Ouachita made some noteworthy contributions to desegregation in Arkansas in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1966, Ouachita began housing an Upward Bound program on campus. Established under the auspices of the Higher Education Act of 1965, this federal program seeks to prepare students for college; in Arkansas it advanced the ideal of

One student from the 1970s, Andy Westmoreland, became Ouachita’s thirteenth president before departing to serve as president of Samford University. Another OBU graduate from that era, Mike Huckabee, became governor of Arkansas and later contended for the Republican presidential nomination.

The student body became far more diverse during Ouachita’s second half-century. At the outset, in the mid-1930s, an overwhelming majority came from Arkansas, which was then a predominantly rural state. Urbanization, while slow coming to Arkansas, nevertheless resulted in a growing number of Arkansas students coming from larger cities to the small town of Arkadelphia. The early post-war years coincided with rising numbers of military veterans taking advantage of the G.I. Bill to pursue their college education at Ouachita, temporarily boosting the average age of the student body.

Another important shift was the significant rise of nonArkansans comprising the student body. The newcomers came primarily from neighboring Texas, but substantial numbers of missionary kids and international students made their way to Ouachita from around the world. The athletic programs played a major role in bringing a broader mix of students into the Ouachita community.

By far, the most historically significant development related to student body diversity was racial integration. Ouachita’s founding

Mike and Mary Makosholo, Ouachita’s first black students, visit with fellow students at a basketball game in the early 1960s.

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Ouachita’s Baptist identity and commitment to academic and Christian racial integration.

In 1969, the federal Department of Education began funding regional and state-centered organizations to assist the public schools in meeting challenges associated with desegregation.

The Arkansas Technical Assistance and Consultative Center was located at Ouachita, and from Tiger Traks, which began as a bicycle race in that vantage point, 1975, has expanded into a multi-event student a small staff worked competition. with school districts throughout the state to address and overcome the problems they were encountering in pursuing racial integration. Education Professor A.B. Wetherington played a key role in developing and administering this program, as did former history professor Paul Root.

students. The Birkett Williams Lecture Series was inaugurated in 1978, bringing distinguished speakers from across the academy to campus.

Additional academic innovations included the Honors Program, initiated in 1964 and later named in honor of Carl Goodson. In the mid-1970s, an international exchange program with Seinan Gakuin University started in Japan and provided the foundation for an expanding array of international travel and study opportunities for students, often accompanied by faculty.

The traditional ravine rivalry with Henderson took on a cooperative dimension with the establishment of the Joint Educational Consortium (JEC) in 1972. Funded by Arkadelphia philanthropist Jane Ross’ Ross Foundation, the JEC undertook several initiatives designed to foster communication, collaboration and collegiality between the two institutions. Under its auspices, opportunities for students on one campus to take courses on the other were facilitated, the two libraries developed a joint cataloging system for their volumes and a lecture series was established.

Student life continued to be campus-centered throughout the second half-century, but students increasingly had the opportunity to come and go in the automobiles that became commonplace

Academic innovation and advancement

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systematic development program inaugurated by Ben Elrod under Ralph Phelps in the 1960s and resumed under Daniel Grant in the 1970s enabled Ouachita to raise substantial funds to supplement tuition payments and Arkansas Baptist State Convention contributions. These funds facilitated the expansion and improvement of the campus physical plant and also advanced academic opportunities for students and faculty alike.

The initial endowment for an academic chair began in 1973.

At the time of the centennial, seven had been established. A parallel development effort successfully established several endowed scholarships. Henry Academic Enrichment Grants began in 1977, providing funds to faculty to undertake travels and projects with

Tiger Tunes, an annual song-and-dance extravaganza, has raised thousands of dollars for student scholarships since its debut in 1979.

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excellence remained its raison d’être.

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An enthusiastic crowd cheers at a basketball game in the early 1960s.

on campus in the post-war years. Arguably, the most significant changes centered on the status of women. Reflecting changing social norms, dress codes for women were relaxed. At the time of the centennial, traditional dormitory curfews were being challenged.

Social clubs expanded in number and presence in campus life over the second half-century. These groups, lacking links to national fraternities and sororities and the institutional foundations they provided, often proved to be ephemeral. Yet three carrying over from the first half-century remained in operation at the end of the second: the EEE women’s social club (1925), and two men’s clubs: Sigma Alpha Sigma (1933) and Rho Sigma (1935).

Appearing on the scene in the second half-century and present at the centennial were two more men’s clubs, Beta Beta (1941) and Kappa Chi (1981), and three women’s clubs, Gamma Phi (1945), Chi Delta (1970) and Pi Kappa Zeta (1973).

These social clubs played a vital and visible role in campus life. They promoted school spirit and provided social outlets for the student body. As the centennial neared, abiding concerns heightened regarding the propriety and legality of long-established pledging practices. Reforms designed to bring pledging into line with both state law and Ouachita’s Christian mission were instituted.

The Ouachita Student Foundation was established in the mid1970s. Its purpose was to raise funds for student scholarships. In doing so, it developed two events that quickly became highlights of student life. Tiger Traks began as a bicycle race in 1975 and evolved into a broader series of competitions among self-selected student teams. Tiger Tunes came on board in 1979 as a fall counterpart musical event featuring participation by social clubs and other campus organization, as well as performances by talented hosts and hostesses selected from the student body.

Intercollegiate athletics loomed large throughout Ouachita’s second half-century. The university competed with considerable success in the Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference despite financial limitations.

Football was the most prominent sport, but the basketball, baseball, track and field, tennis and swimming programs achieved noteworthy records. Women’s intercollegiate athletic

programs emerged in the 1950s, initially and most notably with women’s basketball, and subsequently with volleyball and tennis.

The Battle of the Ravine rivalry with Henderson highlighted competitions across the athletic spectrum, despite a decade-long hiatus beginning in the early 1950s due to the fallout from a “kidnapping” of an OBU Homecoming queen by Henderson students.

Several Ouachita coaches from this era have been named to the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. Their number includes Bill Walton, Bill Vining, Buddy Benson and Carolyn Moffatt. Safety Cliff Harris (1970) went on to earn All-Pro honors with the Dallas Cowboys, and heightened the national profile of his alma mater in the process. His contemporary, Linda Gamble, played a key role in the development of women’s professional basketball.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, the athletic program played a major role in advancing diversity among the student body. In addition to racial diversity, athletics, most notably tennis, brought numerous international students to campus.

In the early years of the second half-century, Ouachita students competed with extraordinary distinction in the arena of intercollegiate debate. They were ably coached by the legendary R.C. Daily, who had 21

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arrived on campus in 1935, and assembled a coterie of debaters who excelled for well over a decade. From this pinnacle, the debate program declined in status and accomplishment, and it was terminated in 1984, on the eve of the centennial.

Another area where Ouachita students earned recognition and renown beyond the campus community was their participation in the Reserve Officer Training Corps. ROTC maintained a strong and visible presence on campus throughout this era. However, as the centennial approached, Ouachita’s ROTC program had begun to experience a decline from its traditional heights.

In the 1960s, female Ouachita students developed a well-deserved and enduring reputation for excellence in pageant competitions. On three occasions during this era, the winner of the annual Miss OBU Pageant went on to become Miss Arkansas: Sharon Evans, 1967; Helen Gennings, 1968; and Lisa Stephens, 1984.

Strong Arkansas Baptist ties

Semi-finalists in a 1961 campus beauty pageant that predated the Miss OBU Pageant

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hroughout this era, Ouachita maintained generally positive relations with its Baptist constituency. Financial support from the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, which had dwindled to a negligible amount during the early Depression years, increased substantially. During the years of the second half-century, the convention strengthened its financial support of Ouachita with a steady stream of annual income through its Cooperative Program budget that was both essential to and inadequate for its operation.

OBU presidents regularly lobbied the convention for increased financial support. The convention responded with noteworthy increases and periodically authorized fundraising campaigns to enable Ouachita to solicit additional contributions from Arkansas Baptists to address ongoing needs and opportunities.

At the same time, the convention’s inability to provide sufficient financial support generated some tensions. Ouachita clearly required resources beyond the willingness or ability of the convention to provide. However, some within the convention predicted detrimental repercussions from Ouachita’s development of separate sources of funding, including concerns that the convention might find itself unable to exercise the sort of guidance and direction it considered appropriate.

One flash point occurred in the mid-1960s concerning the issue of seeking federal aid to higher education. In question was whether Ouachita would pursue federal financial support

in the wake of landmark legislation expanding the federal government’s commitment to support higher education. Doing so would potentially compromise the cherished Baptist principle of separation of church and state and invite federal control. The compromise reached was for Ouachita to continue to receive federal funds that could be passed on generally intact to assist students, and to engage in contractual agreements with federal government entities in which OBU received payments or reimbursements for services provided.

Another issue that occasionally inflamed Ouachita’s relationship with Arkansas Baptists concerned academic freedom.

It typically surfaced around questions about the propriety of books used in classes or speakers invited to campus. Such controversies generally were short-lived. They usually were quietly resolved by discussions between the Board of Trustees and the president.

The latter years of the Phelps era (1953-1969) found the longtime president buffeted by rising dissatisfaction with his leadership from both within the campus community and among Arkansas Baptists. Following Phelps’ resignation, his successor, Daniel R. Grant, quickly and effectively re-established cooperation and confidence with Ouachita’s Baptist family.

In turn, the latter years of the Grant II era (1970-1988), coinciding with the 1986 centennial, featured rising controversy within the Southern Baptist Convention that came to affect 22

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Ouachita in the mid-1990s. Beginning in 1979, a faction of convention conservatives mobilized against perceived theological liberalism, most notably in the seminaries. By the mid-1980s, this conservative faction was well on its way to achieving its professed objective of taking over convention leadership by controlling the selection of trustees to convention agency boards; and this pattern was beginning to trickle down to the state level. However, a number of factors, including Grant’s astute leadership, kept both Arkansas and Ouachita out of the firing line in the short run.

Throughout the era, the religion faculty had a key role and responsibility in establishing and maintaining good will between Ouachita and Arkansas Baptists. Religion faculty served as Ouachita’s ambassadors, supplying pulpits, serving as interim pastors and conducting Bible studies. Music faculty often complemented them in this service capacity. Even the faculty ranks apart from religion typically included several bivocational pastors who made themselves available to churches across the state. This particular pattern was in decline at the time of the centennial due to shifting norms for faculty recruitment.

If the legendary Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep on the bluff overlooking the Ouachita River in 1936 and awakened fifty years later, he would have observed a campus physical plant almost completely transformed. Similarly, he would have gazed in wonderment at the technological developments in communications. Instead of manual typewriters, a few faculty offices now featured desktop computers. The student body had tripled in size and was much more diverse.

And yet, he would surely perceive substantial similarities. A Dr. Grant was still the president. The Tiger still guarded the campus.

The ravine rivalry remained strong. Most significantly, Ouachita’s Baptist identity and commitment to academic and Christian excellence remained its raison d’être.

This reflection has sought to present Ouachita’s second halfcentury in the context of broader societal currents shaping the course of campus developments. However, Ouachita was not simply a feather floating in the breeze. In addition, the leadership, commitment, service and sacrifice of several generations of the expansive Ouachita community had brought the institution from the precipice of failure in the depths of the Great Depression to the solid and stable status it enjoyed at its centennial, facing the future with blessed assurance.

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Dr. Hal Bass, professor of political science, served as the founding dean of the W.H. Sutton School of Social Sciences from 2002 to 2011. Dr. Bass, who holds degrees from Baylor University and Vanderbilt University, also has served as chair of the Department of Political Science, director of the Maddox Public Affairs Center and chair of the Division of Social Science.

Sources Michael E. Arrington, Ouachita Baptist University: The First 100 Years (Little Rock, Ark.: August House, 1985) Michael E. Arrington and William D. Downs, Jr., Once in a Hundred Years: A Pictorial History of Ouachita Baptist University (Marceline, Mo.: Walsworth Publishing Co., 1985)

An early Ouachita computer course in 1983

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Students gather in the Growlery for an informal study session.

1986 –2011: Continuity and Change

By Dr. Tom Auffenberg

Members of the Class of 2015 entered a world of many longstanding traditions familiar to those of the Class of 1986. The curriculum remained committed to a strong core of required liberal arts classes for all students. The Battle of the Ravine remained the highlight of every football season. The Signal and Ouachitonian continued as major campus publications. Tiger Tunes, with its highly choreographed production numbers and focus on raising money for student scholarships, still reigned as a highlight of Homecoming week. Every Tuesday morning students attended a weekly chapel. Each spring, long-established social clubs inducted new members. Students enrolled in Contemporary World still took the dreaded Geographic Literacy exam. Certain faculty who were familiar figures to the Tigers of 1986, such as Glenn Good, Raouf Halaby, Hal Bass and Tona Wright, remained engaging classroom instructors.

A

freshman enrolling in Ouachita as it began its 125th year entered a vibrant university firmly committed to a mission seeking “to foster a love of God and a love of learning.” Such had always been the mission of Ouachita since its founding in 1886. However, the years 1986-2011 witnessed not only a continued allegiance to certain core values, but also became an era of significant change that helped propel a once rather obscure college into an institution ranked the No. 1 Regional College in the South for four years in a row by U.S. News & World Report.

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However, the new Tigers of 2011 would have no knowledge of many things that had long been part of Ouachita life. Legendary dorms like Conger, Daniel and Ernest Bailey no longer existed.

Cone-Bottoms had ceased to house coeds, instead serving as a remodeled headquarters for the university administration.

Compulsory dorm hours for coeds and compulsory ROTC for men had long since disappeared. “Walt’s,” which fed generations of undergraduates, had been replaced by a modern Commons.

The catalog no longer offered courses for credit in “Shorthand,” “Clothing and Personal Appearance,” “Driver Education” or “Home Economics for Men.” Perhaps most shocking of all to the cyber-centered generation of 2011 would have been the thought of a university in 1986 where laptops, email, texting, online courses and numerous computer labs did not exist.

Undoubtedly one of the things anyone returning to campus for the first time in twenty-five years would notice about Ouachita would be a drastic improvement in the university’s infrastructure, which grew in value from just over $18 million in 1986 to more than $83 million by 2010. The megastructure begun in 1973 received what many assumed would be its final addition in 1989 with the dedication of R. A. “Brick” Lile Hall, which provided the history, English and modern foreign language departments with sorely needed new offices and classrooms. One of the most stunning additions to the campus was the Jones Performing Arts Center (JPAC) in 1992. With a seating capacity of fifteen hundred, JPAC became the center for a wide variety of productions throughout the year, including such annual events as Tiger Tunes, Festival of Christmas and Christian Focus Week. The School of Fine Arts utilized the facility for its opera and musical theatre productions, as well as numerous concerts. Instead of having two chapel services in old Mitchell Hall, the new facility enabled all students to attend a single chapel at 10 a.m. each Tuesday.

An equally impressive state-of-the-art facility was erected on the site of Mitchell five years later. The four-story Harvey Jones Science Center provided more than sixty thousand square feet of space for the biology, chemistry, physics, math, computer science and dietetics departments. The university’s newest classroom facility, Hickingbotham Hall, opened in 2006 as the new home for the Frank D. Hickingbotham School of Business. Originally envisioned as a free-standing facility, it instead was connected to the existing megastructure next to Lile Hall.

In addition to new classrooms and computer labs, a key

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enhancement to Ouachita’s academic program came in 1987 with a major renovation of the library made possible by a generous gift from Ouachita benefactor Frank Hickingbotham. Renamed RileyHickingbotham Library, the renovated facility doubled the size of the library’s holdings and initiated a joint online catalog with Henderson State University that significantly modernized usage.

One of the most popular infrastructure improvements came in January 2001, with the opening of the Ouachita Commons,

President Ben Elrod provides students an update on the construction of Jones Performing Arts Center, which was dedicated in 1992.

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Instead of an institution with three deans in 1986, the Ouachita of Academic rankings confirm Ouachita is “a special place to study and learn” Ouachita Baptist University’s 125th anniversary milestone marks the fourth consecutive year (2008-2011) that Ouachita has earned the distinction of being ranked the No. 1 Regional College in the South by U.S. News & World Report.

“We are pleased with the continued recognition of the high quality of Ouachita educational programs,” Ouachita President Rex Horne affirmed. “Being named the No. 1 Regional College in the South four years in a row is significant. It reflects well on the outstanding faculty and programs available to our students year after year.”

The regional college category

Chick-fil-A opened in 1998 as part of an Evans Student Center renovation

includes four regions throughout

project.

the nation. The South region

which replaced the old Birkett Williams Dining Hall built in 1958.

Now instead of two cafeteria lines offering a rather limited fare, students, faculty and staff could choose from a variety of entrees at several food stations. Part of the facility also included a Starbucks, which became a popular meeting place. Equally popular among students was the addition of a Chick-fil-A in Evans Student Center.

“Chick,” as it became known on campus, rapidly became a popular alternative for lunches and snacks. In 2006 the Willard and Pat Walker Conference Center, completed on the level immediately below the Commons, provided much-needed space for numerous campus events.

On a campus where the vast majority of students live either in university residence halls or apartments, the quality of housing became a crucial issue during this era. In 1994 and 1995, Ouachita built its first new residence halls in more than twenty years— Anthony Hall for men and Maddox Hall for women. It was not until 2008 that the Board of Trustees authorized the construction of the most significant construction project of the era, a Student Village that replaced four aging men’s dormitories on the North Campus. The $26 million complex, dedicated in August 2009, features two residential halls, each architecturally divided into several four-story houses. The Village includes private and semi-

includes approximately one hundred undergraduate colleges and universities in a twelve-state area from Arkansas to Florida.

Ouachita also has consistently ranked among U.S. News’ top “Great Schools, Great Prices” universities in the region and is ranked nationally among “America’s Best Colleges” by Forbes magazine.

According to U.S. News, the annual survey of more than fourteen hundred colleges and universities across the nation includes “data from each college on up to 15 indicators of academic excellence.” The indicators are used to assess academic quality in six key categories: assessment by administrators at peer institutions, student retention and graduation rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving.

“The Ouachita experience is unique, both for its academic strength and the sense of community felt by our students, faculty and staff,” President Horne emphasized. “The rankings bear out what our alumni and students already know—Ouachita is a very special place to study and learn.”

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the 21st century now has eight.

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Presidential vision and leadership

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uring the post-centennial era, four men have served as president of the university. All four had to grapple with issues that had dominated the administrations of their predecessors— concerns over tuition and enrollment, the nature of the university’s relationship with the state Baptist convention, efforts to enhance the academic reputation of the institution and the need to improve the school’s infrastructure.

When he presided over the 1986 centennial, Daniel R. Grant already had served as president for sixteen years, an era which witnessed a significant transformation of the campus in terms of long-range planning, infrastructure, academic standing and a growing commitment to international engagement. When he retired two years later after serving longer than any of his predecessors except founding President Conger, Grant left his successor with a situation that offered much promise for continued improvement.

Perhaps no previous Ouachita president continued to remain as active in community, denominational and university affairs after retirement than Dr. Grant. Named president emeritus by the Board of Trustees, he has remained a frequent fixture at numerous campus events. With his longtime commitment to global education, Grant played a key role in establishing the Consortium for Global

private suites to house a total of 360 male and female students and boasts amenities such as study, fitness, theater and game rooms.

Complementing the complex is the new Heflin Plaza, which includes a spacious 300-foot-long bridge spanning the ravine to link both sides of campus. Almost immediately after the completion of the Student Village, university officials began construction of two additional residence halls next to Maddox and Flippen-Perrin halls.

Westside One and Two, which opened just in time for the 2010 fall semester, provide housing for 128 students.

In addition to residence halls and classrooms, several other post-1986 construction projects enhance the campus. Athletics benefited from the Heflin Indoor Tennis Center and the Crews Indoor Athletic Pavilion. The Growlery provides a popular eating and meeting niche in Evans Student Center, while the Katie Speer Pavilion and gardens took advantage of the university’s scenic location overlooking the Ouachita River. The International Flag Plaza and Fountain, dedicated in 1997, symbolizes the university’s strong commitment to international education.

The Ouachita Commons, known on campus as the Caf, opened in 2001.

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one who had spent most of his career serving the university in numerous capacities. Only age 40 when he became president, Andrew Westmoreland, popularly known on campus as “Andy,” is the son of a Baptist minister and a native Arkansan. After his graduation from Ouachita as a political science major in 1979, Westmoreland remained on campus for six years as director of student activities and Evans Student Center, taking some time off to begin work on a master’s degree at the University of Arkansas. In 1985, Dan Grant named him director of the Ouachita Student Foundation (OSF) and director of Student Support Services. During Ben Elrod’s tenure, Westmoreland served in a variety of key positions, culminating in his 1995 appointment as executive vice president.

While working at his alma mater, Westmoreland also managed to complete work on his master’s degree from the University of Arkansas in 1996 and earned a doctorate in higher education administration from the University of Arkansas-Little Rock in 1997. In naming Westmoreland as Ouachita’s fourteenth president, the Board of Trustees selected someone who had served the institution in numerous capacities and who was intimately familiar with the students, faculty and staff of the institution.

As president, Andy Westmoreland followed many of the policies begun by his two immediate predecessors, including continued improvement of the infrastructure. Like many college presidents, he faced the growing dilemma of an end to the prosperity of the 1990s and the beginning of several years of economic downturn that characterized the first decade of the twenty-first century. This made efforts at student recruitment and balancing the budget increasingly challenging. In the spring of 2006, after just over eight years in office, Westmoreland announced his decision to leave Ouachita to accept the presidency of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Including his undergraduate years, he had been actively engaged in OBU life for thirty-three years.

Westmoreland’s successor was a man with close Ouachita connections, as well as a leading figure in Arkansas Baptist circles.

Born in Louisiana, but raised in Arkansas, Rex M. Horne, Jr., spent his freshman year at Ouachita in 1971-1972, but eventually received his undergraduate degree from Arkansas College. By that time he

Andrew Westmoreland (center) is inaugurated as Ouachita’s fourteenth president as Rex Horne, Mike Huckabee, Ben Elrod and Buddy Sutton offer congratulations.

Education and served as its president from 1990 until 1998.

Grant’s successor as Ouachita’s thirteenth president was a man who had worked closely with him during his administration.

Born in the small Arkansas community of Rison, Ben M. Elrod graduated from Ouachita in 1952 with a bachelor’s degree in history. Even before his graduation, he embarked on a twelveyear career that led him to serve as pastor of several churches in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Elrod eventually earned both Bachelor of Divinity and Doctor of Theology degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. In 1975, he completed a doctorate in higher education at Indiana University.

Before becoming president in 1988, Elrod served the university as vice president for development and also gained experience as president of two other colleges. When the board named him Ouachita’s new chief executive in 1988, they selected an individual with a long track record of administrative experience in higher education, coupled with strong ties to Ouachita, Arkansas and the Baptist denomination. These assets put him in good stead as he presided over a generally prosperous decade of development and accomplishment. When he retired from the presidency in 1998, the board named him chancellor of the university, and Elrod remains a prominent figure in campus life.

As Elrod’s successor, the board again chose an alumnus, 28

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had already embarked on an active ministry career. Dr. Horne furthered his education by earning a master’s degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a doctorate from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Over the years, Dr. Horne led churches in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. The capstone of this era of his ministry career was as senior pastor for nearly sixteen years at Little Rock’s influential Immanuel President Rex M. Horne, Jr. Baptist Church. He served as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention from 1995 to 1997 and in 1997 joined Ouachita’s Board of Trustees. His many years of service on the board, coupled with his strong Baptist credentials, leadership skills and vision, led the Board of Trustees to offer him the presidency in the spring of 2006.

Dr. Horne came with a firm commitment to strengthen Ouachita’s growing academic reputation and to deal realistically with the financial challenges the institution faced during the economic downturn of the previous several years. All three of his immediate predecessors attended his formal installation in

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March 2007. In his inaugural address, Dr. Horne challenged the Ouachita community to “seize the opportunities” afforded by being a Christian, liberal arts university and pledged to continue to encourage students “to think critically and live redemptively.”

Faculty reflect commitment, continuity

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he faculty who have served under Presidents Grant, Elrod, Westmoreland and Horne from 1986 to 2011 remained relatively similar in terms of size and background, but also benefited from expanding opportunities for professional development. By 2010 the number of full-time faculty numbered 113. More than 80 percent of the 2010 faculty had terminal degrees, and nearly 40 percent held the rank of full professor.

As part of its mission as a small, quality liberal arts university, Ouachita’s students continued to benefit from a generous student/faculty ratio, which remained remarkably steady at about 12:1.

A comparison of the catalogs for 1986 and 2010 reveals remarkable continuity among the faculty. In 1986, some 30 fulltime professors held bachelor’s degrees from Ouachita and six had Academic excellence is at the heart of the Ouachita experience. Among the university’s core values is a commitment to “advance excellence in teaching, learning, research and creative expression.”

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conferences. As had been the case since the mid-1970s, professors often presented the results of their research at interdisciplinary colloquia held on campus at noon every other Wednesday.

One significant indicator of improved opportunities for Ouachita’s faculty is the number of endowed chairs, which rose from only seven in 1986 to twenty by 2010. These include six in natural sciences, four in business, three each in Christian studies and humanities, and two each in fine arts and social sciences.

During this era, Ouachita experienced some significant changes in its academic programs. In 1986, the university had three schools, each headed by a dean: Arts and Sciences, Music, and Graduate.

By far the largest school, Arts and Sciences comprised six divisions: Business and Economics, Education, Humanities, Natural Sciences, Religion and Philosophy, and Social Sciences. The first major transition came in 1991, when Ouachita abolished the graduate program and ceased awarding master’s degrees in education and music education. However, the 1990s witnessed transformation of two divisions into schools: Business in 1993 and Christian Studies in 1999. Furthermore, the School of Music became the School of Fine Arts, which now included a division of Music and a division of Applied Arts—the latter involving a shift of theatre and art from the division of Humanities. Also in 1999, the adoption of a new program of general education included the creation of a School of Interdisciplinary Studies. The final transformation toward a drastically new academic administrative structure came in 2002, when the four remaining divisions within Arts and Sciences each became a school with a respective dean. Instead of an institution with three deans in 1986, the Ouachita of the twenty-first century now has eight. By 2010, five of these schools were named in honor of significant Ouachita alumni or donors: the Frank D. Hickingbotham School of Business, the Chesley and Elizabeth Pruet School of Christian Studies, the Michael D. Huckabee School of Education, the J.D. Patterson School of Natural Sciences, and the W.H. Sutton School of Social Sciences.

The era also witnessed some significant changes at the departmental level. In 1996, Home Economics changed to Family and Consumer Sciences, still within the Division of Education.

Subsequently it became the Department of Dietetics and Nutrition located in the School of Natural Sciences. Speech Pathology, in 1986 part of a Department of Speech, Drama and Speech Pathology in Humanities, also moved to Natural Sciences as the Department of Communication Disorders. Drama became the

Longtime chemistry professor Alex Nisbet (left) assists a student with a lab assignment.

received a master’s. By 2010, the university still had 28 professors with Ouachita undergraduate degrees, including three of the seven deans. A continuing theme that has been predominant throughout the university’s history is a core of dedicated faculty who taught at Ouachita for decades. In 1986, 29 faculty had taught twenty years or more at Ouachita. By 2010, 31 faculty members (about 25 percent of the total) had served Ouachita for two decades or longer.

However, another theme that characterized Ouachita was the turnover in faculty, especially at the junior ranks. For example, in 2010, 27 faculty members and one dean had been at the institution for five years or less. Many factors accounted for this turnover, including the university’s rural setting, faculty salaries and increased employment opportunities in some academic disciplines.

A major theme affecting professors in the post-1986 era was the increased opportunity for faculty development. Of particular significance was a move during the Elrod administration to make semester or full-year sabbaticals available to professors who had completed at least six years of service. Awarded on a competitive basis, these sabbaticals provided invaluable opportunities for research, course development and other projects to strengthen the overall caliber of individual faculty members. The university also continued to provide annual competitive grants for research and development, as well as generous funding from Academic Affairs to promote the presentation of scholarly work at professional 30

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Department of Theatre Arts in the School of Fine Arts. In 2010, the Communications Department, which now included Mass Communications and Speech Communication as separate majors, became the first endowed department—the Rogers Department of Communications. Probably the most drastic changes occurred in the field of religious studies. What was the Department of Religion and Philosophy in 1986 twice underwent major structural revisions so that by 2010 it consisted of a School of Christian Studies organized into five departments.

After 1986, a handful of majors disappeared, including Office Administration and Economics in business and Christian Counseling and Family Life Ministry and Church Recreation for religious studies. At the same time, several new programs became available to Ouachita undergraduates: Russian, Athletic Training, Musical Theatre, Middle School Education, Software Engineering, Biblical Languages and Church Media. ROTC, which ended in 1991, came back in 1999 as a new, totally voluntary program in conjunction with Henderson State University and commissioned its first new officer in 2002.

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Also in 1999, Ouachita reconfigured its general education program. Now renamed CORE instead of GNED, the change came after several years of an interdisciplinary committee headed by Dr. Randall Wight who became the first dean of the new School of Interdisciplinary Studies. Reflecting the theme of continuity versus change, the CORE program was a mixture of both. It retained such requirements as Natural and Physical Science, Contemporary World, and a year of foreign language. But the program also added new requirements, including a freshman-level Liberal Arts course and a two-hour Concepts of Wellness, which replaced the old physical education activity course requirements. Christian Studies replaced the traditional Old and New Testament courses with Survey of the Bible and Biblical Interpretation, and each school created an exit-level one-hour Senior Seminar to integrate its discipline within the larger university community.

The Carl Goodson Honors Program remained an important aspect of the academic program throughout this period. The basic requirements for graduating as a participant in the Honors Program remained unchanged from the major revision implemented in the 1970s: at least two interdisciplinary seminars, a directed study and a senior thesis. Professors from many departments participated in the interdisciplinary seminars, which included such topics as “Pandemics,” “Film Noir,” “Jane Austen” and “The 1980s.” The number of students completing the program remained fairly steady, averaging about ten a year. In 2007, a major revision in the admissions process occurred, whereby selected entering freshmen automatically gained admission, with the provision that they also take one of the freshman-level CORE Honors courses. An expanded number of scholarships enabled the Honors Council to award grants to upcoming senior students to travel to an impressive number of locations to work on honors theses. By 2010, Carl Goodson participants had traveled to every continent, including Antarctica, to conduct such research. The A variety of choral performance program also assumed supervision of the groups have been a key part annual Scholars Day, held in April of every of Ouachita’s Division of Music year, which featured dozens of students from throughout its history.

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all disciplines presenting papers and posters demonstrating their research.

Students: The heart of Ouachita

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tudents naturally constitute the heart of any university, and here again Ouachita demonstrated both continuity and change. Many alumni continued to send their children to Ouachita, but students also came from an increasing variety of backgrounds—and more came from out of state. By 2010, only about half of students were Arkansans, and almost one-third came from neighboring Texas.

The 2010 student body came from thirty-three states and fortytwo countries. As always, Ouachita remained a largely residential campus, with more than 95 percent of students living in campus housing, which by now included five apartment complexes as well as campus residence halls.

As a tuition-driven institution, enrollment remained a critical factor to the school’s financial well-being. In 1986, enrollment was 1,400. This reflected the lowest undergraduate enrollment since 1960 (1,137), but included a record number of 263 in the graduate Backyard Bible Clubs and other student-led ministry activities play major roles in Ouachita’s Campus Ministries strategy.

program. After the graduate program ceased, enrollment hovered between a low of 1,277 in 1991 and a high of 1,714 in 2000. The tuition these students paid remained quite competitive compared to other small, private, liberal arts institutions, but also reflected the increasing cost of higher education. Expenses for a full-time residential student increased from $2,626 a semester in 1986 to $12,830 in 2010.

One of the most dramatic changes in student life came in the fall of 1990 when Ouachita trustees voted to end the school’s 104-year tradition of curfew for coeds. For the first time in the institution’s history, female students no longer had to contend with “late minutes” or disciplinary actions related to curfew.

Twelve years later the university introduced “open houses,” allowing students to host students of the opposite gender in their dorm rooms at selected hours.

Throughout the post-centennial years, Ouachita continued

Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” was staged in 2010.

By 2010, only about half of students were Arkansans, and almost one-third 32

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to offer its undergrads a generous variety of extracurricular opportunities. The 1986 catalog listed nearly fifty social clubs, honor societies, professional organizations and other groups. Some, such as Pershing Rifles, the Ozark Society and the American Home Economics Association, ceased to exist; but others took their place, such as the International Student Association, which among other things sponsored a popular International Food Festival every spring. Social clubs remained a vital part of campus life. In 1986 these included Beta Beta, Kappa Chi, Rho Sigma and Sigma Alpha Sigma for men and Chi Delta, EEE, Gamma Phi and Pi Kappa Zeta for women. By 2010 changes in this line-up had occurred, with women losing Gamma Phi and Pi Kappa Zeta and men losing Sigma Alpha Sigma. However, Tri Chi and Chi Rho Phi were new clubs available for coeds and Eta Alpha Omega for men. In the fall semester, approximately one out of four Ouachita students was a member of one of these clubs; after pledging each spring, the percentage generally rose to about one in three.

Students throughout this period had the opportunity to participate in a myriad of religious activities provided by the university and local churches. Weekly chapel services continued on Tuesdays, and Christian Focus Week remained a longstanding tradition each February. Reflecting a national trend, the most inclusive religious organization of 1986, the Baptist Student Union, gradually evolved into Campus Ministries. As such, it sponsored a wide array of campus, community and mission experiences. These included worship opportunities at Noonday and student-led worship called Refuge on Thursday nights.

Campus Ministries also sponsored local Bible study groups, Backyard Bible Clubs for local children, Big Brother/Big Sister, and even a drama ministry team known as Rough Draft.

Post-centennial Ouachita continued its tradition of a strong athletic program. But, as with other aspects of the university, this continuity was coupled with change. From 1986 to 1996, OBU remained a member of the NAIA and competed in the AIC (Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference), but in 1997 shifted to the Lone Star Conference affiliated with NCAA Division II. Only three years later, the university joined the Gulf South Conference.

In 1986, men competed in football, basketball, baseball, track and

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Evans Student Center, a central gathering spot since 1973, houses the campus bookstore, post office, Tiger Grill and Chick-fil-A as well as several campus offices.

came from neighboring Texas.

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field, cross country, swimming, soccer, tennis and golf. There were even teams in bowling and marksmanship. Women’s competition remained limited to basketball, volleyball and tennis.

Over the following years, significant transformations occurred.

The program dropped track and field in 1995 and cross country for men in 2000. However, in 2010 Ouachita became the first university in the state to add a wrestling program, which attracted more than twenty student-athletes its first year. The changes in women’s sports were even more dramatic. In addition to adding women to the Tigersharks swim team in the late 1980s, coed teams in cross country, soccer, softball and golf opened new horizons for female athletes. By 2010, more than 25 percent of the student body was involved in intercollegiate athletics, double the percentage of fifteen years earlier.

The Ouachita vs.

Henderson football Battle of the Ravine, dating back to 1895, is the oldest rivalry in the nation among current NCAA Division II schools.

International study opportunities

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ne of the more vibrant programs that enriched Ouachita was international studies. Probably none of the school’s founders would have imagined in 1886 that 125 years later a student named Humoyiddan Ravshanov from Uzbekistan would be pursuing a bachelor’s degree in history and political science at Ouachita, or that an OBU coed named Sarah Stark would spend a semester studying in Morocco. From its humble beginnings in the mid-1970s, international studies continued to offer an increasing number of opportunities for students and faculty. The program also provided a gateway for students from abroad to participate in the Ouachita experience. Named in honor of President Emeritus Daniel R. Grant, the center was renamed in 2008 to honor both Dr. Grant and his wife, Betty Jo. The Grant Center for International Education embraced a mission “to bring the world to Ouachita and to take Ouachita to the world,” and over the period of 1986-2011 it succeeded admirably in both goals. Dozens of Ouachita faculty took student groups abroad for work in academics, missions and musical performances.

In 1991, Dr. Fran Coulter and Dr. Tom Auffenberg in the History Department pioneered the first European summer study program, a three-week study tour that took students to England, France and Italy, providing them not only with academic credit, but also the invaluable experience of encountering three widely different European cultures.

Christian Studies contributed to international education with annual summer programs that took OBU students on trips either to the Holy Land or other Biblically significant sites. Fine Arts sent musical

Ouachita’s baseball team competed in the 2008 championship game of the NCAA Division II World Series.

Ouachita’s swimming program expanded in the 1980s to include female swimmers. Both the Tigersharks and Lady Tigersharks consistently rank nationally in NCAA Division II competition.

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groups to perform in churches and other venues across the globe.

Students attending the annual international chapel in September 2010 found themselves confronted with the opportunity not only to enroll in the annual European study tour, but also to study abroad at an array of thirteen sister institutions in eleven countries. From its initial outreach with Seinan Gakuin University in Japan early in the Grant administration, international studies now sent undergraduates to places as diverse as Salzburg College in Austria, Al Akhawayn University in Morocco and Universitas Pelita Harapan in Indonesia.

Ouachita’s newest international partnership was launched in 2010 in cooperation with Liverpool Hope University in the United Kingdom.

Dr. Tom Greer played a key role in developing an especially unique program for a Christian university located in a small Arkansas town—a program that forged strong links with the People’s Republic of China. No one attending Ouachita at the height of Mao Zedong’s xenophobic Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and ’70s would have imagined that eventually China would play host to a variety of professors, staff and students from Ouachita. As a result of Greer’s enthusiasm and strong China connections, for several years contingents of Ouachita professors crossed the Pacific to participate in academic seminars at prestigious Peking University, while a professor from that institution taught Chinese at Ouachita.

But the Grant Center did far more than provide the university’s students, faculty and staff with international experiences. It eagerly recruited students from across the globe to study at Ouachita. By 2010, nearly sixty students from twenty-seven countries enrolled at Ouachita, including some from such diverse locations as Albania, Eritrea and Rwanda. Several of these international students competed on Ouachita’s baseball, basketball, soccer, swimming and tennis teams.

In addition to international students, Ouachita annually attracted many children of international missionaries, often more than any other Baptist institution. In 2010, for example, thirtyfour MKs (missionary kids) representing twenty-three countries were enrolled at Ouachita. By 2010, thanks to its students from international and overseas missions backgrounds, the small Baptist university in a modest southern Arkansas town enjoyed a definite cosmopolitan flavor, with some 7 percent of its students coming from international backgrounds.

Another university center that significantly contributed to campus and community life during this era was the Ben M. Elrod Center for Family & Community. The center’s aim is to promote public service, volunteerism and community engagement.

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International students from more than forty nations help enrich the diversity of campus life.

Ouachita’s annual European Study Tour provides students a variety of academic and cultural experiences as part of the university’s strong international education emphasis.

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Ouachita remains a caring, vibrant institution of higher learning that has

Blackmon Computer Lab in Hickingbotham Hall is among more than fifteen computer labs located throughout the Ouachita campus.

Inevitably in any institution comprised of hundreds of students, faculty and staff, tragic losses occurred. Among others, these included the deaths of youthful professor David DeArmond in music and longtime professors Dr. Alton Crawley in mathematics and computer science, Dr. Roy Buckalew in speech and Dr. Tom Greer in humanities. But no tragedy so profoundly affected the campus as the crash of American Airlines Flight 1420 on the night of June 1, 1999, when the pilot overshot the runway while attempting to land in a thunderstorm. Among the passengers were twenty-five members of the Ouachita Singers returning from a concert tour in Germany. Eleven people died as a result of the tragedy, including two from the Ouachita family—senior music major James Harrison and 14-year-old Rachel Fuller, second daughter of Charlie and Cindy Fuller, who had led the group. In October 2006, members of the Ouachita community gathered to dedicate the Rachel Fuller and Ouachita Singers Memorial

Established in 1997, the center was named by trustees in honor of Dr. Elrod, the guiding inspiration behind the project, upon his retirement.

From its inception, the Elrod Center’s mission was to “serve humankind through the educational experience.” The center developed an impressive array of activities. Twice a year it sponsors Tiger Serve Day, which attracts hundreds of campus volunteers who engaged in a variety of service projects to help members of the Arkadelphia community. Among numerous other programs are those that provide students with opportunities to work with senior citizens and tutor elementary school students in English and math. Nor were the center’s activities limited to Arkadelphia, as it sent teams to help respond to natural disasters throughout the state and in neighboring Texas and Louisiana. All of these activities reflected Dr. Elrod’s original vision that a key aspect of the Ouachita experience was to instill a spirit of service and leadership among its students.

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steadily improved its academic standing and opportunities for student enrichment.

Amphitheatre built to honor the memory of those lost in the 1999 tragedy.

Continuity coupled with change included numerous transitions—many good, and a few sad. These themes characterized Ouachita Baptist University in its post-centennial era. Some things remained virtually unchanged—a handful of buildings such as Berry Chapel, a strong liberal arts academic program, a firm commitment to Ouachita’s Christian dimension. Others clearly reflected continuity amid change.

Dr. Ray Granade still headed the library, but now it was a much larger facility offering access to a wide network of electronic services.

Campus poet Dr. Johnny Wink continued to produce an incredible variety of creative works, but now he did so using a computer rather News coverage of the crash of than a manual typewriter. Dr. Joe Flight 1420 in Little Rock Jeffers still taught organic chemistry, but now also served as dean of one of the several new schools created in 2002. The Signal continued to chronicle campus news, but now it included an online component.

Other developments reflected dramatic change. The Ouachita of 2011 now boasts eight 24-hour computer labs—something that would have seemed alien to the Tigers of 1986. The Grant Center and Elrod Center provide undergraduates with a vastly expanded opportunity for international studies and community service.

People arriving on campus could now enter via Ben and Betty Elrod Boulevard, named in honor of a former president and first lady.

Students could now major in such fields as Musical Theatre or Biblical Languages. And the endowment had grown from just under $10 million in 1986 to almost $66 million in 2010.

The 1986 OBU catalog was emblazoned with the slogan “The Best of Life!” Although that slogan has long since disappeared from the university’s public relations portfolio, Ouachita remains a caring, vibrant institution of higher learning that has steadily improved its academic standing and opportunities for student enrichment. In

many respects it still mirrors what had been its tagline in the 1970s, a university committed to “Academic and Christian Excellence” that also focuses on producing difference makers for the twenty-first century.

Dr. Tom Auffenberg, R. Voyt Hill Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History, has served at Ouachita since 1973. He holds degrees from Texas Christian University and Vanderbilt University.

A recent snowfall briefly turned the Arkadelphia campus into a winter wonderland to the delight of many students.

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| CHAPTER TWO: PRESIDENTIAL VOICES

My Turn at Bat for Ouachita

By Dr. Daniel R. Grant

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he opportunity to serve as Ouachita’s president (1970-1988) came during an unusual time when university presidents came and went in a hurry. It was a time of student demonstrations against the Vietnam War, and a growing drug culture.

“New college president stories” were legion, and I think I heard all of them. Presidents’ average tenure during this era was said to be only 2.3 years!

The search committee called me in early summer of 1969 and didn’t try to conceal Ouachita’s problems: a sharp enrollment drop; a $300,000 operating deficit and a similar deficit projected for 1970; very low faculty salaries on the national rating scale; strong criticism and weak support from Arkansas Baptist leadership; a deplorable condition of campus buildings; and faculty morale and public relations at a record low. Friends warned us of these Ouachita problems as Betty Jo and I, along with our three children, talked and prayed our way to the decision to accept the offer. A Vanderbilt colleague, Professor Leiper Freeman, said our decision was based on three things—“God, father and alma mater.” That was a good explanation.

Rebuilding relationships

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ow to dig out of Ouachita’s problems probably was learned by “nature and nurture” from my father, J.R. Grant, who served as OBU’s eighth president. I focused on rebuilding relationships with our many “publics”—students, prospective students, parents, faculty, staff, trustees, pastors, state convention

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“A strong emphasis on international education at Ouachita began in the alma mater as VP for development. I also reminded him frequently about the beauty of his beloved Caddo River.

With the help of a search committee, I urged another former faculty member, Dr. Carl Goodson (chief academic officer at Missouri Baptist College) to return to Ouachita as VP for academic affairs. The third appointee was B. Aldon “Bill” Dixon as dean of students. OBU had several different deans of students in the previous ten years. Bill was on the staff of Belmont College in Nashville, but our long association and friendship in First Baptist Church of Nashville helped me recruit him. Each of these three was an outstanding professional person and devoted Christian and Baptist, and helped make my years at Ouachita an exciting era of achievement.

Two other important appointments came a little later.

Dr. Ed Coulter became assistant to the president (later VP for administration), and Joe Franz became business manager, and both played critical roles in financial administration.

Dr. Daniel Grant, Ouachita’s president from 1970 to 1988, offered students an “open-door and open-ear policy.”

Planning and rebuilding Ouachita’s campus

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leaders, alumni, the press, community leaders, employers, graduate schools, donors and prospective donors, and on and on.

We rebuilt those relationships by focusing on the future in exciting ways and involving leaders of the various groups in our planning processes. My first promise was to the students—to have an “open-door and open-ear policy,” and this was soon extended to all Ouachita’s publics. Because Betty Jo and the children stayed in Nashville until June, I ate most of my meals in the OBU cafeteria, providing a lot of one-on-one conversations with surprised students.

They gave me an earful about the faculty, staff, buildings, grounds and student hopes and dreams for Ouachita. Many accepted my invitation to “Come see me when you have a problem.”

Ouachita’s next two decades were very favorably shaped by the good fortune (God’s response to fervent prayer!) of three key early appointments. My first phone call, even before I accepted the presidency, was to Dr. Ben Elrod, former vice president for development at Ouachita, who left to work on his second PhD and was currently president of Oakland City College in Indiana. I sought to convince him it was God’s will that he come back to his

aming first priority among daunting campus problems was virtually impossible. The most visible need was to build or rebuild much of the entire campus. I spent more time talking about the less visible need to grow stronger in “academic excellence and Christian excellence,” but hardly a year passed without a groundbreaking ceremony or a building dedication.

We chose an outstanding Little Rock architectural firm, headed

by Nolan Blass, to prepare a new long-range campus plan. Blass made their relatively young and new architect, Jerry Wilcox, our working architect. We talked to Wilcox and Blass about our dreams for a beautiful and serviceable new campus, moved even closer to the Ouachita riverfront. Wilcox recommended a “Ouachita megastructure” with six buildings joined together, somewhat U-shaped, keeping vehicle traffic to the outside and preserving a lawn and plaza for pedestrians only.

First came Evans Student Center, with a beautiful view east across the river and west into the main campus. Next were John G. Lile Hall, Mabee Fine Arts Center and McClellan Hall (housing four academic departments and Senator John

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1970s. … Ouachita was well on the way to ‘making the world our campus.’”

McClellan’s official papers). Other new buildings or major additions were Blackmon Field House, Riley-Hickingbotham Library, Sturgis Physical Education Center, a new maintenance building, a new campus drive to the riverfront and west along the ravine, and a pedestrian bridge across the ravine, connecting the north campus to McClellan Hall. It proved to be invaluable to have the same architect during my entire presidency, and for several years following. Architectural continuity, along with what some may have felt was my “obsession for planning,” helped keep us all on the same page.

A new president’s home was given to Ouachita in 1977 by anonymous donors. It gave plenty of room for First Lady Betty Jo to entertain students, faculty, staff and university guests. The need for it was confirmed just one year later when a count of individuals entertained exceeded the three-thousand mark. My report of this to the OBU Board of Trustees inspired Dr. Don Moore, executive director of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, to pen a much publicized poem, “Ode to Betty Jo.” During the massive rebuilding of the central campus, we really did not have to face the issue of historic preservation. The possible exception was “Old North Dorm,” the oldest surviving building on campus. It was originally a women’s dormitory and later a men’s dorm after Cone-Bottoms Hall was built in 1923. It had serious structural problems, and had not been occupied for several years.

Lakeside, Ernest Bailey, Johnson and Terrell-Moore were renovated wartime barracks and needed to come down. Daily Hall, the “Old Book Store” and Walton Gym (with Ruth Lamb Pool) were poorly built, well below standard for modern educational needs, and fire hazards.

I had mixed emotions as I told the trustees I was tearing down most of the buildings my father built in the 1930s and 1940s. They assured me (and I agreed) that my father would be very pleased to see us building a stronger Ouachita. His Great Depression struggle was to keep Ouachita’s doors open, regain accreditation, pay off the burden of a mortgaged endowment and house a growing student body with renovated barrack structures.

In a parallel vein, I had no regret when Grant Administration Building was torn down by President Elrod after he succeeded me.

It was built and named for my father after “Old Main” burned

down in 1949. Although it was inadequate for administrative needs when I became president in 1970, I felt replacing it was a very low priority item. It was very satisfying in retirement to watch President Elrod raise money to preserve historic and beautiful Cone-Bottoms Hall by totally rebuilding it internally as a modern administration building. It will always be known as Cone-Bottoms Hall, but he and the trustees were very gracious in giving it the “internal name” of Grant Administration Center in recognition of both of the Grant presidents.

An essential part of Ouachita’s growth was the acquisition of adjoining property through purchase, donation or exchange. I knew each lot or house in the area of Cherry, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth streets by names that went far back in Ouachita history— Porter, Cannon, Rudolph, Meador, Herbert, Carter, Sloan, Dews, Williams, McMillan, Hobgood, Wallace and others. Dr. Ed Coulter and others worked tirelessly to secure this land. Henderson State University President Garrison was helpful in a property swap with Ouachita that made it possible to straighten out the “dog-leg shape” of University Drive as it approached the Ouachita campus from Highway 7.

President and Mrs. Grant hosted thousands of guests in the president’s home, which was donated to Ouachita in 1977.

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Growing stronger in academic excellence

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each month. Few things raised the level of faculty personal and professional goals like this gathering.

• The early example of Professor Joe Nix in employing undergraduate students for his contract research in water chemistry became a strong and valued tradition. In most universities such experience is available only to graduate students. The Carl Goodson Honors Program and Ben Elrod Scholar Program have expanded this opportunity.

• The Paul and Virginia Henry Academic Enrichment Awards were first offered in 1976 to stimulate creative approaches to teaching, such as field activities for students.

• In 1976, Ouachita participated in the “McGrath Study” of some 50 Baptist colleges in the southern region, measuring a whole host of qualities. Ouachita amazingly ranked higher than any other university in “institutional esprit,” which Dr.

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he “less visible” Ouachita changes in the 1970s and 1980s— growing stronger in academic excellence and Christian excellence—were more important than the dramatic bricks-andmortar changes. Let’s turn to how we worked for those vital twin goals. Academic excellence first: • The percentage of Ouachita faculty holding doctorates passed the 55 percent mark for the first time in history, and the growth has continued steadily in the years following.

• Nine endowed chairs (the first ever) were established. Nineteen others were reserved in wills, and most of those were established before the 125th anniversary year.

• The enrollment decline of the late 1960s was reversed and we reached a new peak of 1,693 students in 1977, rising to 1,751 in 1981, the largest enrollment ever, except for once in the 1960s when OBU had a nursing school. This growth was achieved amid steady increases in the student body’s average ACT scores and the number of Governor’s Scholars.

• The endowed Birkett Williams Lectures were inaugurated in 1978, bringing distinguished lecturers to the campus long enough to speak informally to several classes and to a dinner for selected students, as well as teachers and other guests from the region.

• A strong emphasis on international education at Ouachita began in the 1970s. In 1974, I negotiated an exchange program with Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka, Japan. An instant success, it led to other exchange programs, study-abroad programs and increased enrollment of international students. Ouachita was well on the way to “making the world our campus.” Decades later, it is a special joy to see the growing strength of the Daniel and Betty Jo Grant Center for International Education, established in 1988. OBU study-abroad programs in various countries have grown to ten, and still counting!

• The Maddox Public Affairs Center was established in honor of Ouachita friend Judge Edward Maddox, to provide practical experiences in the study of political science and public service.

The Washington Seminar in January is just one example.

• Dr. Joe Jeffers, with encouragement from Dr. Joe Nix, and my personal support, established the Faculty Colloquium. It is a great tradition with little formal organization, but it grew quickly in popularity. Faculty members with research, creative work, etc., report at a “brown bag lunch” on two Wednesdays

Professor Bob Riley helps break ground for McClellan Hall as Dr. Daniel Grant, Dr. Ben Elrod and others look on.

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Earl McGrath explained to me as “a sense of shared purpose, high morale and a feeling of genuine community.”

• A remarkable new contributor to academic excellence (The OBU-HSU Joint Educational Consortium) came as a shock to Arkadelphia old-timers accustomed to the bitter TigerReddie rivalry. It began with monthly breakfast meetings between the two presidents, but soon extended to achieving economies by pooling scarce resources to do what neither side could do alone: a joint lecture series, joint art exhibits, two-way crossover privileges for students to take courses not given on their own campus, agreement not to duplicate lowenrollment courses, and cooperative library economies. It attracted support from the Ross Foundation and praise from accreditation agencies and Arkansas governors.

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The Birkett Williams Lecture Series, inaugurated in 1978, brings distinguished lecturers from diverse fields of expertise to campus.

Growing stronger in Christian excellence

decided to use it to start a Missionary-in-Residence Program.

It began paying dividends in increased MK enrollment and “Great Commission influence” on students, faculty and staff.

• Christian Focus Week was given my strongest personal support, making certain all university resources were committed to making the week powerful and effective.

• Strong emphasis on missions was given through springbreak and summer missions and the growth of a variety of direct relationships to world mission fields. Ouachita began to rank consistently in the top three or four schools in the nation in producing new Southern Baptist Convention missionaries.

OBU was number one on more than one occasion. Because of this, SBC International Mission Board leaders reached out to OBU for pilot programs and other significant interaction.

• Strengthening Ouachita’s relationships with Baptist leadership at all levels was given a high priority in 1970. We began hosting an annual dinner for Associational Missionaries, honoring one of their number as “Arkansas Associational Missionary of the Year.” It has become a much-appreciated tradition. Presidential involvement with ABSC, SBC and its agencies, and even the Baptist World Alliance, paid dividends for Ouachita in a variety of ways.

• Last, and certainly not least, with each retirement or resignation in the OBU Religion and Philosophy Division, a strong effort was made to secure even stronger replacements.

Finances: Paying for a stronger Ouachita

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y sense of mission at Ouachita, above everything else, was to make academic excellence and Christian excellence strong and inseparable. I was well aware of the negative impressions many in higher education have about such principles as required chapel, required Bible courses and rules intended to provide a Christian environment. I believe that the heart of having a genuine Christian university lies in having a faculty and staff of “born-again Christians” with a contagious Christian faith. Required chapel and required Bible courses are vital components of the Christian university, and I worked very hard to improve the quality and effectiveness of both of these. Here are a few of the things we did to make our university more genuinely Christian: • Initially I was personally involved in recruiting new faculty and staff. I tried to make it clear that I did not want to be the only one to ask about the candidate’s Christian faith and experience. As a political scientist, I knew that such questions could not be asked at state institutions, but that Ouachita’s right to require employees to be committed to our Christian mission is protected under our U.S. Constitution.

• We built Evans Student Center in the heart of the campus and placed the BSU (now BCM) and Campus Ministries offices in the heart of that building. There is important symbolism in having these located at our campus center as well as its rational center.

• When a house owned by Ouachita became available, we 43

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“My sense of mission at Ouachita, above everything else, was to make and to nearly $2 million in 1988.

In the early 1970s, more than 75 percent of the money from fundraising campaigns was used primarily for constructing buildings.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, this dropped to 50 percent. As I recall, the last campaign during my tenure had a goal of 25 percent for bricks-and-mortar improvements, allowing more for scholarships, international study, academic enrichment, faculty sabbaticals, etc.

It’s impossible to explain OBU’s growing strength in the 1970s and ’80s without describing the Ouachita Student Foundation, its Tiger Traks and Tiger Tunes, its theme of “Students Helping Students,” its dramatic raising of scholarships, and my own evaluation of OSF as “institution building” and “individual building.” From its founding in 1974, OSF was an arm of Ben Elrod’s development program with the strong personal support of the president. Vital work for Ouachita is behind the fun and fame of Tiger Traks and Tiger Tunes. I believe OSF, broadly defined, was one of the top three or four secrets of Ouachita’s success in growing

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ne of my most pleasant surprises as president of Ouachita was achieving financial stability quickly, while rebuilding much of the campus on a pay-as-you-go basis. In addition, Ouachita’s endowment increased from less than $2 million in 1970 to more than $12 million in 1988.

The Ouachita-Southern Advancement Campaign not only brought $2.2 million to Ouachita, but helped reestablish a harmonious relationship between Ouachita and the churches and state convention leadership. Ouachita and Southern Baptist College (now Williams) worked together in this campaign and it proved to be good for all concerned. In celebrating Ouachita’s centennial anniversary, a campaign raised $10.7 million. In the 1987-88 year, annual gifts and grants totaled more than $5 million for the first time. Total gifts and grants during 1970-1988 amounted to $50.5 million. The ABSC’s annual appropriation to Ouachita (not always funded), increased from $540,000 in 1970 to $1,069,000 in 1974,

Tiger Tunes, sponsored by the Ouachita Student Foundation, helps fulfill OSF’s goal of “Students Helping Students.”

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President Jimmy Carter, a guest speaker for Ouachita’s centennial Founders Day Convocation, greets Arkadelphia Police Chief Bob Johnston.

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academic excellence and Christian excellence strong and inseparable.” was a great time for looking back and looking forward. Chaired by Dr. Ed Coulter, OBU’s centennial celebration featured an amazing diversity of events. Dr. Bill Downs wrote a memo on “100 Ways to Celebrate Ouachita’s Centennial,” and we must have exceeded that goal, including more than one hundred Ouachita birthday parties in Arkansas and around the world! Highlights included hosting the Arkansas Symphony; comedian Jerry Clower; a Global Christian Focus Week; the ABSC annual meeting; a Centennial Homecoming; and Christmas at Ouachita; as well as publication of Mike Arrington’s history of Ouachita and, with Bill Downs, a pictorial history of Ouachita; a concluding Founders Day Convocation with former President Jimmy Carter and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton; and burying a time capsule on the site of Old Main.

One might expect that my last two years as Ouachita’s president— from the emotional mountain peak of centennial celebration until September 1988—would have been all downhill. My memory of that time is not of coasting downhill, but of continued work to strengthen Ouachita even more in academic and Christian excellence, complete with student recruitment, faculty recruitment, budget balancing and more fundraising and groundbreaking for R.A. “Brick” Lile Hall.

My memories of the twenty-two-plus years of retirement in Arkadelphia are wonderful! My successors—Presidents Elrod, Westmoreland and Horne—have shamefully spoiled Betty Jo and me with invitations to Ouachita dinners and special events. My greatest joy in these post-retirement memories is seeing all three of them lead Ouachita to become steadily stronger in academic and Christian excellence. That is Ouachita’s great tradition and great vision.

Mike Arrington wrote Ouachita’s centennial history, Ouachita Baptist University: The First 100 Years.

stronger from 1974 to 1988.

Two individuals made generous contributions to Ouachita toward the end of my time as president, but are best known for their support during my successors’ tenure. Frank Hickingbotham (of TCBY fame) helped with scholarship assistance, and then made a challenge grant of $500,000 to help raise the $2 million to build an “information-age library.” His support has much exceeded this in the years that followed, with the beautiful facility to house the Hickingbotham School of Business anchoring the OBU megastructure. Bernice Jones, widow of Harvey Jones (of Jones Trucking fame), called me in the mid-1980s to ask what Ouachita needed. I violated a Ben Elrod principle of good fundraising and “under-asked” her to endow a business scholarship, which she did. Soon after that she called me to ask what else we needed, and I asked her to endow a chair of business, which she did. The rest is history, as she helped Ben Elrod build the remarkable Jones Performing Arts Center, and later the equally outstanding Harvey Jones Science Center.

We used Ouachita’s centennial year (1985-86) for administrative planning (“Centennial Decade Goals” and “Second Century Goals”); for fundraising (“Ouachita Centennial Advancement Program”); for restating and celebrating Ouachita’s mission; and for recognizing and thanking donors and others responsible for all the growth. It

Dr. Daniel R. Grant, president emeritus of Ouachita Baptist University, served as the university’s twelfth president (1970-1988). A 1945 summa cum laude graduate of Ouachita, he also holds degrees from the University of Alabama and Northwestern University.

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Reflections on a Decade of Progress

By Dr. Ben M. Elrod

Ben and Betty Elrod Boulevard, dedicated in 2009, serves as the university’s main entrance to campus.

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riting this essay has been a journey through memory, and a most pleasant one. I have been related to Ouachita since 1948 as a student, graduate, board member, vice president for development (twice), president and chancellor with a few jaunts away to other assignments. That adds up to sixty-three years. As I marked my eightieth birthday, October 13, 2010, I am still chancellor. I accepted that designation under two conditions: that the school would not pay me and that the school would not ask me to do anything I didn’t want to do. It is unquestionably the best job I ever had.

Some of the individuals who played a key role in my tenure as president from 1988 through 1998 include: • President Emeritus Dan Grant. Even in retirement, my esteemed friend was a trusted counselor and willing helper.

• Charolette Allison was a key person as executive assistant, facilitator, source of information, diplomat and encourager.

Much of my work simply wouldn’t have been accomplished without her dedicated service.

• Dr. Ed Coulter supervised the many construction projects, in addition to other heavy responsibilities. The academic program was in the able hands of Mike Arrington. Bill Cook was vice president for development and later director of the Ouachita Fayetteville Center. Phil Hardin served as a very helpful assistant to the president.

• Ian Cosh turned my dream of a Center for Family and Community into a reality. Ian designed a comprehensive program to connect students and faculty to the ongoing needs of the Arkadelphia community. Under his leadership, the center has become valuable to the lives of both Ouachita and the community.

• Andy Westmoreland served successively as assistant to the 46

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president, vice president for development and executive vice president. Andy was involved in practically every task we undertook, and carried a tremendous amount of my burden of responsibility.

• In earlier days, while serving as VP for development, I had the good help of Lane and Judy Strother, Larry Bone and Donna Connelly Blackwood, the third of ten Ouachitonians to become Miss Arkansas. (Kristen Glover, Miss Arkansas 2011, is the tenth.)

• John Cloud made tremendous contributions to Ouachita in development. Because of the sensitive nature of deferred gifts, his work as director of planned giving was largely unheralded, but his impact on the progress of Ouachita has been considerable.

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history at Ouachita. His father, J.G. Lile, was on the faculty and staff for twenty-five years. The J.G. Lile Hall and R.A. Lile Hall are possibly the only father-son buildings standing side-by-side on a college campus. Mr. Lile was a major player in fundraising, always insisting on staying in the background.

• Pete Parks was a cowboy-like Oklahoman who told Professor Cecil Sutley in 1963 that he “wouldn’t make a current gift to Ouachita, but would remember Ouachita when he went to that great round-up in the sky.” Pete did remember his alma mater to the tune of $10 million worth of cash and mineral rights, some in the Arkoma Basin gas field. The Pete Parks Institute for Regional Studies is named in his memory.

• Chesley and Elizabeth Pruet of El Dorado were very generous toward Ouachita’s ministry to young people. Chesley was a successful driller of oil and gas wells. Their generosity was extended to many good causes but especially to Ouachita.

The Chesley and Elizabeth Pruet School of Christian Studies is named in their honor.

• Mrs. Bernice Jones contributed $5 million to build the Jones Performing Arts Center, $7.5 million for the Harvey Jones Science Center, and numerous other gifts. I estimate that she gave OBU $18 million to $20 million during her lifetime.

External influences

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trength in the economy and job market prevailed in 19881998, after the stock market meltdown in 1987. Successful capital campaigns were conducted almost non-stop throughout the decade, funding construction programs that changed the face of the campus. In Phase I and II of the Decade of Progress Campaign, $27 million and $30 million were raised, respectively.

The campus took on a new look. Several major construction projects were completed. The projects and years of dedication include: R.A. Lile Hall (1989; begun in the Grant era), Heflin Tennis Center (1990), Jones Performing Arts Center (1992), Anthony Residence Hall (1994), Maddox Residence Hall (1995), conversion of Cone-Bottoms Hall from residence hall to Grant Administration Center (1995), Tiger Den (1996), International Flag Plaza and Fountain (1997), conversion of fieldhouse to BlackmonBenson Fieldhouse (1997), Harvey Jones Science Center (1997), Katie Speer Pavilion and Gardens (1998).

The construction of buildings was accompanied by an increase in the General Endowment Fund from $11 million to $29 million.

The list of people who provided unusual financial support is much too exhaustive to print. However, a few key donors include: • R.A. “Brick” Lile, one of the first major donors from my days as VP for development, was a leader. Mr. Lile had a rich family

Ben Elrod (top right, in glasses) visits with a group of fellow students in the early 1950s.

“An institution such as Ouachita is a living entity, created afresh by each generation.”

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Two stories that involve Mrs. Jones must be told. The first one borrowed money to give in honor of Dr. E.A. Provine, iconic concerns our difficulty in determining the amount which we might chemistry professor at OBU. More recently, he has made reasonably ask of her. substantial investments and routinely relates to faculty and John Cloud and I went to her home in Springdale armed students in all sorts of beneficial ways. The J.D. Patterson with OBU’s plans for the future, including all projected plans for School of Natural Sciences and an endowed chair of buildings. We had decided to ask her for $3.5 million as the lead gift chemistry acknowledge his unique support of Ouachita. on a $5 million performing arts center. It was there that I committed • Johnny Heflin was the first person what I have described in lectures, conversations to express confidence in a new and writings as the unpardonable sin of administration with major support to Jones Performing Arts Center hosts a variety of musical events fundraisers: asking less than one should. build the Heflin Tennis Center. I will each year.

Mrs. Jones responded with a conditional always remember him as a very special commitment to give what we asked. friend who trusted a new president She next asked when we could start enough to make a major commitment. on the project. We needed to raise an His wife, Sharon, and his sons continue additional $1 million to $1.2 million and to figure substantially in Ouachita’s finalize the plans, which we estimated progress. might lead to construction in a year and a • Jay Freeman, in addition to giving freely, half. made room in his schedule for countless She rocked us back on our heels when hours of volunteer fundraising. During she continued, “When could you start if a $1 million campaign in Little Rock, he I gave the entire amount?” I told her that gave three or four mornings a week to I would give John Cloud a shovel and tell enlist workers and solicit pledges. It was him to start digging that night. She said she in this campaign in 1972 that Chairman thought she would do that and would call Jay Freeman and I enlisted a very young within a week to confirm. She did give the Johnny Heflin to successfully chair a full amount plus an additional $500,000 division. which was required for the project.

• Frank Hickingbotham has made a Another story involved one of my most unique contribution to the progress of embarrassing moments—and a real bit of OBU. The impressive Hickingbotham pleasure for Mrs. Jones. We were dedicating Hall, built during the tenure of Andy the completed renovation of Cone-Bottoms Westmoreland, is a tribute to one of Hall and she was there to participate. Among the prime benefactors in the history of my responsibilities was to transport Mrs. Ouachita. Frank, a native of McGehee, Jones hurriedly from the site to Evans Student Center across campus. attended Ouachita before leaving for a job opportunity elsewhere.

We entered the car, I put it in reverse and high-centered the car on Even after graduating from another college, he always had a deep a new curb. It wouldn’t budge, so we took another car. Mrs. Jones love for Ouachita. threw her head back and laughed all the way there. Mrs. Jones was A school of business was needed at Ouachita. It was obvious one of the most generous people I’ve ever known. that a considerable amount of money would be required. Frank had • Dr. J.D. Patterson, a Ouachita graduate and Searcy dentist, has begun to support Ouachita during Dr. Grant’s presidency as he built been investing in OBU for many years. My acquaintance with a business empire, including TCBY. Suspecting that a businessman Dr. Patterson dates back to the Ralph Phelps presidency in of his stature would like to see a highly rated business school at the 1960s. In one instance, to my knowledge, Dr. Patterson OBU, I went to see him. Two things can be said of him: He gave 48

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uring the 1988-98 decade, several international relationships were established. These included Reading University (London), Salzburg College (Salzburg, Austria), Beijing University (Beijing, China), and the Ministries of Education of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Interesting things occur in international travel. In Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Betty Lou and I were housed in a suite often occupied by Russian dignitaries, including Nikita Khrushchev, during their visits to that former satellite of the Soviet Union. In Japan, we were housed overnight in a neat but tiny hotel room that was so small we had to put our luggage in the hallway. The shower was the entire bathroom with a nozzle and drain in the center of the room. Obviously, the bathroom allowed only one activity at a time.

In Salzburg, where we were accompanied by Buddy and Peggy Sutton, two interesting happenings live in my memory. First, there was a remark Buddy made as the plane touched down in Salzburg. Looking out the window, he said, “We’re in Salzburg; I just saw Julie Andrews!” That was typical of Buddy’s humor, which kept us in a pleasant mood across Europe.

Salzburg College was located in a building on the grounds of the mansion where “The Sound of Music” was filmed. Our tour bus stopped at the site of the famous gazebo (which has since been moved). When we returned to the bus, Betty Lou and I went directly to our seats but Buddy and Peggy paused to speak to other passengers. When they came back to their seats, Buddy said, “That is a Ouachita student and her mother from Hot Springs,” whereupon the couple across the aisle said, “We are Ouachita graduates.” The international reach of OBU was vividly demonstrated in that eight of some thirty passengers on a bus in the middle of Europe were Ouachita-related.

It is appropriate to cite the singular support which Buddy Sutton afforded to Ouachita and to me. He was chairman of the selection committee which invited me to return to OBU as president in 1988. He was chairman of the Board of Trustees which gave unswerving support during much of my tenure. He was a trusted confidant and personal friend, and remains so.

During the Salzburg trip, we briefly lost Betty Lou. We were window shopping and chatting in Vienna when Peggy suddenly said, “Where is Betty Lou?” She was nowhere to be seen. We backtracked, but no Betty Lou. Buddy and Peggy were extremely

The Heflin Tennis Center, which opened in 1991, is the home of Ouachita’s nationally competitive tennis team.

me his undivided attention when we discussed Ouachita and he never agreed to do anything that he didn’t do. The result is a highly accredited, top-quality Hickingbotham School of Business housed in beautiful Hickingbotham Hall. Frank continues to invest in the lives of students at Ouachita.

• Senator John L. McClellan and Governor Mike Huckabee were most attentive to Ouachita’s needs and plans. McClellan Hall and the Michael D. Huckabee School of Education acknowledge their efforts, and the valuable official papers of both men are housed in Riley-Hickingbotham Library on OBU’s campus.

• George Young (George and Faye Young Auditorium in Hickingbotham Hall) joined Brick Lile as one of the first donors to offer substantial support beginning in the 1960s when I was VP for development. The Youngs have been recognized in the naming of the George and Faye Young Endowed Scholarship Fund and the George Young Chair of Business. Their daughter, Carol, has continued their legacy of giving to OBU. • Others of the many who contributed substantially were Judge and Mrs. Edward Maddox (Maddox Hall), Clarence and Bennie Sue Anthony (Anthony Hall), Earl and Mollie Verser (Verser Theatre), and Paul and Virginia Henry (Paul & Virginia Henry Scholarship Fund).

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“On March 1, 1997, a tornado ripped through Arkadelphia. … An army of Ouachita people concerned but knowing my independent and adventurous wife of fifty years, I assured them she would resurface before dinner time.

Returning to the hotel, the lost was found. She showed up at the hotel wondering where we had been. I still don’t know where she had been. She just said, “Shopping.”

The Salzburg trip resulted in an agreement with Salzburg College President Ina Steegan and provided Ouachita students the opportunity to spend one or two semesters there. That has proven to be one of the most popular international programs. Upon arrival, Ouachita students take a two-week tour of Europe. They then live in the homes of Salzburg residents, and that arrangement affords an absorption experience in the culture and the language of Austria.

At the home base, back at OBU, the International Flag Plaza was constructed. It provides a visualization of the worldwide interests of Ouachita. The plaza includes a fountain with water flowing over a metal representation of the world. The American,

Arkansas and Christian flags fly alongside the flags of countries from which our international students come. Katie Speer of Malvern arranged for a grant from the Roy and Christine Sturgis Foundation to fund the project. She was also responsible for the parking area below Frances Crawford Hall and the beautiful Katie Speer Pavilion and Gardens that border the Ouachita River.

In the decade, the numbers of international students and MKs (Missionary Kids) grew to more than 10 percent of the student body. The number of Ouachita students attending colleges in other countries increased to almost one hundred annually attending schools in more than ten countries.

During those days of rapid acceleration of the international studies program, one item of special interest occurred. Trey Berry, the coordinator of OBU’s International Studies Program, received a call from another director asking for help. He was asking Ouachita’s advice about the best contact in Uzbekistan higher education. The call was from none other than Harvard University!

The International Flag Plaza, constructed in 1997, is a visual reminder of Ouachita’s commitment to international education.

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fanned out throughout the community to help meet the challenge for clean-up and restoration.”

Ouachita advising Harvard regarding international education matters? Interesting! Our International Studies Program reputation had circulated.

to support the best interests of the school.

Denominational relations

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The tornado n March 1, 1997, a tornado ripped through Arkadelphia. It left grieving families and a path of widespread destruction. Our students, faculty and staff were committed to go out into the wounded community to help wherever needed. Fortunately, we had a framework in place that was capable of organizing and directing the effort. The Center Students, faculty and staff provided for Family and extensive clean-up assistance in the Community had wake of a devastating tornado that hit been established by Arkadelphia in 1997.

Ian Cosh just months before. The primary purpose of the center was to enlist and equip faculty, staff and students to help meet needs in the area. Sooner than had been expected, the greatest need imaginable confronted us. In the months following the tornado, an army of Ouachita people fanned out throughout the community to help meet the challenge for clean-up and restoration.

The Center for Family and Community has carried on that tradition through Tiger Serve Day which is held each semester. The most recent Tiger Serve Day registered 920 participants responding to one hundred expressed needs in the area.

In addition to Tiger Serve Day, the center currently provides a dozen other services to the community. At-risk elementary

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eanwhile, the denomination to which Ouachita has historically related was in a tumultuous transition period.

The denominational struggle manifested itself publicly in the 1979 session of the Southern Baptist Convention. The continuation of the conflict reached into the decade of the 1990s. Ouachita was first affected directly in the early years of the decade. It became apparent that one faction involved was moving deliberately to gain control of the Ouachita Board of Trustees.

They mounted a well-orchestrated campaign, enlisted participants, created and distributed publications and promoted votes in the meetings of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.

Ouachita had, since its inception, been a key participant in denominational life. Its service to the churches was consistent and substantial. There was no legitimate reason for the institution to become the pawn in a denominational power struggle. In order to remove Ouachita from the battlefield, the Board of Trustees, with my encouragement, voted to revert to the original charter which restored the empowerment of the Board of Trustees to elect its successors. The change was made with no intention of lessening the strength of the relationship with the churches, and time has demonstrated that to be the case. Ouachita continued to consult with the appropriate representatives of the state convention, but the final vote was in the hands of the trustees. While this change precipitated a flurry of criticism, it clearly was the course of wisdom. It was action reluctantly taken after long consideration and prayer, and it was necessary.

The relationship between Ouachita and its sponsoring body is as strong as it has ever been, perhaps stronger. People of good will fashioned a workable solution which kept Ouachita from being crippled by a controversy unrelated to the institution. The action of the board provided for OBU to continue to serve all of our churches and students, rather than a segment of them. In the process, the supporters of Ouachita came forward by the hundreds 51

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students are tutored in math and reading, and elders are paired would provide their active support to achieve it. with students who provide companionship, scheduled contact One of the last projects undertaken in the decade was the start and encouragement. Service organizations are provided volunteer of restructuring of the CORE curriculum. These were the courses to workers. The center positioned OBU to be named to the 2009 be required of all Ouachita students regardless of major. Dr. Randall President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Wight was chosen to lead the effort. He is truly a renaissance man Roll, the third such national honor. Betty Lou and I partially with broad knowledge spanning the curriculum. endowed the center, and friends have contributed generously to the program. The Board of Trustees honored me in retirement Concluding reflections by attaching my name to the center, a generous gesture much appreciated. would like to dedicate these reflections to the one who, above In 1988, Ouachita was a strong, vibrant institution. The all others, stood by my side without wavering. Betty Lou academic quality and Christian emphasis of the school were Warren Elrod, the precocious freshman girl who confessed to obvious. President Grant had brought a level of integrity to Mrs. Turner that she shot the fireworks off in the girl’s dorm Ouachita which strengthened the support and who still has that mischievous twinkle of the churches, the alumni and other in her eyes, has been my strong constant individuals. Needs included the invigoration companion, critic and friend. Her role in of financial support from graduates and every accomplishment of the decade was friends, additional facilities, technological extensive and invaluable. advances and a strong increase in Upon reviewing this article, I realize that endowment. most of it is about people. That seems to My vision for the decade was to inform, me to be appropriate. An institution such mobilize and solicit the involvement of as Ouachita is a living entity, created afresh the larger Ouachita constituency in a oneby each generation. The people mentioned decade effort to move the institution to a herein, and many others, were Ouachita new level of capability, excellence, reputation during my decade. It wasn’t mine; it was and effectiveness in the world of higher ours. It is exciting to view a new Ouachita education. All of that would be devoted to being built on the foundation of the past. the development of a “university under the The future of Ouachita will be, no doubt, Lordship of Christ.” beyond our most ambitious dreams.

Included in the realization of the At my unbelievable retirement program vision was intensive long-range planning to planned by Dr. Wesley Kluck, I said, “I know determine the programs, people and facilities that I don’t deserve it, but I’m enjoying every needed; identification of the individuals minute of it.” Come to think of it, that’s a and entities from which resources might be pretty good description of my decade at the obtained; formulation of a plan to secure helm of this great institution. the resources; construction of facilities and Chancellor Ben Elrod and his wife, Betty Lou establishment of necessary programs; and Dr. Ben M. Elrod, Ouachita Baptist University proper expressions of appreciation to those who provided means to chancellor, served as Ouachita’s thirteenth president (1988-1998). A achieve the goals.

1952 graduate of Ouachita, he also served as a member of the Board of It was felt that the time was right for a decade of mobilization the Trustees and as vice president for development. of the vast Ouachita family together with others who could get the vision of a strong university under the Lordship of Christ, and who

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Campus prayer service following September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks

Recollections from a Son of Ouachita

By Dr. Andrew Westmoreland

“Batesville,” I replied. I didn’t think to add “Arkansas” because I was so nervous that simply saying “Batesville” was about all that I could manage.

As he did with thousands of students throughout his tenure as president, Dr. Grant then engaged me in conversation—about me, about my hometown, about why I chose Ouachita. And then he smiled and said, “Well, Andy, we’re glad that you are here.”

My encounter with a noteworthy person concluded, I moved on.

Perhaps it is a good thing, in God’s providence, that I had no inkling of all that would transpire that night in my life over the next three decades, virtually all of it bounded by a few acres on the banks of the Ouachita River. Had I been given a clue, my response would have been, simply, “Impossible.”

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here are you from?” In my eighteen years of life, it was the first question ever asked of me by a university president. The time was late on an August afternoon in 1975, the day of my arrival at college. The location was Evans Student Center on the campus of Ouachita Baptist University. The event was a reception for new students, hosted by university administrators. The man who asked the question was Dr. Daniel R. Grant, Ouachita’s twelfth president, 52 years old at the time.

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“For 125 years, God has answered Ouachita’s prayers through the presence Getting to Ouachita … and staying there

to Ouachita.

My college career was full of extraordinary experiences, with challenging and inspiring faculty members and a widening circle of friends. Early in my senior year, that circle expanded to include the most significant relationship of my life. When I saw Jeanna King, a freshman, in Evans Student Center, I was stunned. The story of how I managed to introduce myself to her and ask her on a first date is too awkward to record here. All’s well that ends well, however, and our stories quickly became intertwined with the larger narrative of Ouachita. In fact, it is impossible for me to think of Ouachita and not to think—immediately—of Jeanna.

As I approached graduation in the spring of 1979, Dr. Grant and Bill Dixon, then dean of students, asked me to consider taking a job as director of student activities and the student center. Although Jeanna and I weren’t yet married, I had the best of intentions, so I was loath to move too far away from her. After a short transition of a couple of years, I assumed that we would leave to pursue other, unknown opportunities. Except for time away for additional education, that “short transition” at Ouachita lasted twenty-seven years, including the crazy-quilt evolution of a career featuring half a dozen different positions for me, the more orderly advancement of Jeanna’s calling, and the birth of our daughter, Riley. What I believed would be the last stop before retirement came on January 1, 1998, when I assumed the office of president.

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hile it would be difficult for me to imagine my life without Ouachita, my arrival as a student was far from assured. My father, Fred Westmoreland, was a small-church pastor. Neither my father nor my mother had college degrees. Years later, as I learned the lingo of higher education, I discovered that I could be sorted into a particular class known as “first-generation college students.” Demographers tell us that my class of students don’t fare as well as many of our peers, that our dropout rates are higher and that we have difficulty learning the norms of college life. Our family’s economic stability was never strong, and I relied heavily on scholarships, grants and work to finance my education at Ouachita. These circumstances have played a significant role in shaping my views on the importance of providing access to private higher education for students of limited resources.

A family friend, Paul Bass, insisted that I visit Ouachita before making my college decision, and he drove me the three hours from Batesville to Arkadelphia one January day of my senior year in high school. I had grown up as a Baptist, and I knew of Ouachita largely through its connections with Arkansas Baptist life, but—because it was a private college—it seemed unrealistic to me as an option.

I was interested in studying political science, and I knew of the reputation of Bob Riley and Jim Ranchino, faculty members in the department. On the day of my campus visit, Dr. Riley was returning to his Ouachita office after completing two terms as lieutenant governor (and briefly governor) of Arkansas. A more colorful figure I had never encountered. He was a war hero, left for dead after a battle in World War II, miraculously discovered, brought out for recuperation, blinded as a result of injuries, the wearer of an eye patch, and a man with a vocabulary and a penchant for storytelling that is still, in my mind, unsurpassed. On that January morning, which must have been a melancholy time for him, moving back to his small office at Ouachita and closing the door on government service that he thought might conclude with his election as governor, he was pure magic to me. When Jim Ranchino, the state’s leading political pollster, burst into the room and I watched their repartee, I was hooked. I completed my application for admission while I was on campus. Somehow, someway, I was going

An unplanned opportunity

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n perhaps hundreds of conversations over the years, students have asked me, “How did you plan to become a college president?” They expect a neat answer, so my candid response is probably not satisfactory to them. “I never planned to be a college president,” I always say. It is true. Instead of planning, I found myself responding to people and to circumstances. I recognize, many years later, that God was using every shred of my experiences, the good, the bad and everything in between, to prepare me for the challenges that would lie ahead. It is, I believe, the same in every life and occupation.

In Bob Riley and Dan Grant, I have already mentioned two of the central characters in my development at Ouachita. Their

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of wonderful and generous friends.”

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negative impact of a fragmented transition between administrations.

After perhaps an hour of discussion, I believe it was Mr. Sutton who framed the issue by saying, “We’re of the opinion that, if you influence cannot be overstated. Important as they were and are, the are willing to accept the position, we’ll ask the trustees to ratify your key figure in helping me to learn the craft of a college president was election. If you aren’t willing, we will open the process to a search.

Dr. Ben Elrod. My first lengthy encounter with him was during the We hope that you’ll say yes.” I honestly cannot recall my immediate early days of his presidency in the fall of 1988, when he asked to take response, but I called him a few days later to say that I would proceed. me out for lunch. That conversation, I was restless the December night and dozens besides, eventually led to before my election. In truth, I was my service as assistant to the president. afraid. I did not feel prepared for Of all my assignments over the years, I the challenges. I also knew that my never worked harder, and I never enjoyed installation, coming without a search, it more, than in that position. It was would raise suspicions regarding the through Ben Elrod that I truly grasped choice. Our relationship with Arkansas the importance of human relationships, Baptists, so important to the institution, the sacred calling of working at a place was imperiled. I was relatively young, like Ouachita, the beauty of teaching just 40. I knew everyone in the and learning, the rhythms of life and Ouachita family and they knew me, so profession, and the joy that comes the honeymoon would be short, if I was when you help someone match their fortunate enough to have a honeymoon resources with their passion. I bear at all. Riley was only age 7; how would the responsibility for the mistakes I’ve the fishbowl experience affect her? I made over the course of two college loved Ouachita so deeply that it pained presidencies; Dr. Elrod’s influence me to think that I might cause harm has provided the light for most of the to the place and to the people. After successes. His impact on my life is the trustees elected me, a meeting of without parallel. all employees was held in Mabee Fine After Dr. Elrod discussed his Arts Center. Dr. Elrod first made brief proposed retirement with the members remarks, followed by Mr. Sutton’s of the Executive Committee of the Board announcement that I would become of Trustees in the fall of 1997, Mr. W.H. president on January 1. In the most “Buddy” Sutton, chair of the board at gratifying episode of my life, a moment the time and as able a chair as I have ever that prompts tears more than a decade known, asked me to have a confidential later, applause filled the auditorium. conversation with the Executive Dr. Elrod spoke into my ear, “They’ll Andy, Jeanna and Riley Westmoreland get up close and personal Committee at his office in Little Rock. be nice to you twice. This is one of with a tiger during Homecoming festivities.

The subject of the meeting would be a those times. Enjoy it.” Thus began my planned succession of the Ouachita presidency. It was a dangerous Ouachita presidency. moment for the institution. Days earlier, messengers to the annual meeting of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention had defeated, by a razor-thin margin, a “reconciliation” measure with Ouachita, on the heels of our charter change the prior year. The trustees knew of the 55

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Cooperating, climbing, coping, caring

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only when we had a record—a long record—of trust. Despite the fact that I was not an ordained minister, I accepted hundreds of invitations to speak at churches throughout the state. I attended evangelism conferences, gatherings of pastors during weekly and monthly meetings in their associations, and every other event that I could squeeze into my calendar. Through the contacts, we built new relationships for Ouachita, extending throughout the Baptist churches of the state and beyond. In addition, we worked in harmony with Dr. Emil Turner, executive director of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, to select incoming trustees. I met each year with members of the convention’s nominating committee, where we had a perfect record of unanimous votes affirming the “Ouachita slate.” I said, often and with sincerity, that there was “positive pressure” for Ouachita and the state

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emories of this era of my life are somewhat blurred with thousands of other Ouachita experiences, so an exact accounting is difficult for me. I know, however, that I was surrounded by strong people, and that they worked each day to accomplish the very best for our students and employees. The vice presidents and key staff members who served with me, including Mike Arrington, Stan Poole, Richard Stipe, Joe Franz, Wesley Kluck, Bill Dixon, Keldon Henley, Phil Hardin, Jeff Root, Lewis Shepherd, Rebecca Jones, Randy Garner, Ian Cosh, David Sharp and Bryan McKinney, deserve the lion’s share of the credit for the success that we enjoyed. In turn, they were blessed to serve with competent and caring men and women, so that our work could go forward. At the heart of the institution stood the members of our faculty, brought together from points around the world with a desire to fuse the love of God with the love of learning. To this day, I’m inspired by them.

Several items were on my agenda in the winter of 1998. Among them, the completion of a $40 million capital campaign, the passage and implementation of significant revisions to our CORE curriculum, and the repair of our relationship with Arkansas Baptists. Within a year, thanks to the generous support of many friends, we managed to close the books on the campaign, exceeding our top goal. The members of the faculty, despite the turf battles of revising the CORE curriculum at a liberal arts college, passed the planned revisions by a healthy majority, and we began the process of putting the changes in place. As for healing the relationship with Arkansas Baptists, I knew that it would take more than a few months. In fact, it occupied many of my days and nights for the next eight years.

Because time has passed and tensions have subsided, it is difficult to recall the tense moments of 1996 and 1997, when trustees altered Ouachita’s charter to return to a self-perpetuating board. In the midst of the storm, Dr. Elrod had assured Arkansas Baptists that, regardless of the change, Ouachita would remain at the center of Baptist life. I agreed, of course, and it became my responsibility to bring fulfillment to those promises. I knew that pastors and other church leaders would take us at our word

President Westmoreland visits with students on campus.

convention to stay together. In every respect, and to degrees that I could never have accomplished, Dr. Rex Horne has maintained and strengthened the promise of that partnership. At midnight on January 1, 1998, the relationship could have gone either way. I’m glad that we took the path of cooperation and reconciliation.

A laundry list of achievements occurred during my tenure as president, for which I deserve none of the credit: We reached our highest levels of undergraduate enrollment since the “nursing

“‘Where are you from?’ The answer is, and always will be, ‘I’m from Ouachita.’”

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school” days of the 1960s. Our endowment increased in a dramatic way. We completed the “Circle of Excellence” campaign, exceeding the goal of $62.5 million. We advanced our march toward regional prominence in the annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report. We enriched the academic quality of our schools by altering their structure. We hosted thousands of guests in the president’s home, seeking to build a stronger sense of inclusion. We sought to improve relationships with minority populations. We continued the growth of the international program. We added considerable academic heft through the hiring of key faculty members. We made strategic planning a touchstone of our administration. We added new facilities and expanded the acreage owned by the university. We named three of our academic schools for Chesley and Elizabeth Pruet, Gov. Michael D. Huckabee and Dr. J.D. Patterson. Each day, our people came to work, excited to see what God had in store and determined to make progress, however possible.

Not all of the work was easy. External factors, far beyond our control, played a major role, especially the events of September 11, 2001, and the lingering effects on the economy. On that evening, we brought our students together in the plaza for a time of prayer.

As we gathered, none of us knew the exact perpetrators of the massacre; we just knew that they were our enemies. More than anything else that night, I recall that we prayed for our enemies.

Over time, and as the economy declined, the families of our students suffered, and student recruitment and fundraising for operations consumed much of my time. Many friends, especially Taylor and Terri King, helped us shrug off some of the worries and focus on the overwhelmingly positive aspects of our work. And what would we have done without Frank Hickingbotham, Chesley and Elizabeth Pruet, Bernice Jones, J.D. Patterson, Johnny and Sharon Heflin, Buddy Sutton, Clarence and Bennie Sue Anthony, Edward Maddox, Katie Speer, Pete Parks, Tab Turner and a host of others? For 125 years, God has answered Ouachita’s prayers through the presence of wonderful and generous friends. If space permitted, I would list them here by the thousands.

The darkest moments of my tenure, by far, came in the loss of students and other cherished friends. Of these, the worst was on June 1, 1999, when a jet airliner crashed in Little Rock, with many of our Ouachita Singers and the family of Dr. Charles Fuller, director of the group, on board. James Harrison, one of

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our students, was killed in the crash. Others suffered burns. All were plagued with emotional distress. One of the survivors, Rachel Fuller, Charlie and Cindy’s teenage daughter, lingered, and then, one cruel June day, she died. Our campus community was in a state of grief too deep for me to absorb. Words failed. Others suffered far worse than I could imagine, yet it was the most difficult phase of my life. But the loss taught me to care in ways that I had never known. Life begins anew each morning.

And it is the mornings that I remember fondly, the mornings of returning to the stillness of the campus, as students and faculty anticipate the lessons of the day. The joy of seeing lives changed.

The fulfillment found in knowing that you are where you are supposed to be.

Concluding thoughts

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y intentions were to serve out my time at Ouachita, health and trustees permitting, until retirement at age 65. I was already making plans for the ways in which we would celebrate our 125th anniversary. Then, one day in late August of 2005, I received a call from Albert Brewer, a former governor of Alabama and the chair of the presidential search committee for Samford University. He asked about my interest in the position, and I declined. I declined several other times over the next two months.

Gov. Brewer was always a gentleman, but he knew how to persist.

In the most difficult decision of our lives, Jeanna, Riley and I began a new chapter, and we love the people of Samford as we continue to treasure our friends at Ouachita. Whether the decision was right for Samford will remain a mystery for years to come; that it was right for Ouachita is unquestioned. Dr. Horne’s leadership and vision have brought new life. We celebrate the great things that are taking place under his stewardship.

“Where are you from?” Decades have passed since Dr. Grant asked me that question. Now I receive the query, from my new place of service at Samford. Of course, the obvious answer is, “I’m from Birmingham.” In reality, the answer is, and always will be, “I’m from Ouachita.”

May God continue to bless this place that we love.

Dr. Andrew Westmoreland served as Ouachita Baptist University’s fourteenth president (1998-2006). He has served since 2006 as president of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.

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A Calling I Am Following

By Dr. Rex M. Horne, Jr.

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y family moved to Camden, Arkansas, when I was five years old. We became a part of the Cullendale First Baptist Church which would be the anchor of our lives for the next thirteen years. A new pastor soon came to our church. Rev. Robert A. Parker, “Brother Bob,” would be my pastor all those years.

Later, he gave me my first opportunity to serve the local church at First Baptist Church of Batesville.

Brother Bob was a Ouachita man through and through. He studied here, served as a trustee here and any time he mentioned “our college,” he was speaking of Ouachita. In his last days, though his mind frequently failed him, he would tell me that he was on the board when Ouachita College became Ouachita University. The love he had for Ouachita impacted me as a young boy.

Some of my fondest memories of the Cullendale church include people from Ouachita. Early in our years there, David Cunningham, a Ouachita student, came to our church to lead the music. David served in exemplary ways in ministry for many years, especially in Florida. He remains a devoted Ouachitonian. When I was in the youth program, a Ouachita student named Debbie Watson came to serve in our youth ministry. Debbie became a part of our family and her influence on me during those years cannot be overstated.

My dad did not have the privilege to attend college. He did, however, have affection for Ouachita. I remember Dad bringing us to campus for various events, not the least of which would be to watch Coach Benson’s and Coach Vining’s teams compete. In fact, Dad had a part in my lifelong friend and current board chairman, Richard Lusby, coming to Ouachita.

As I look back across my life, I can see how Ouachita has always been there in some way. As a former student, I would always think

Trustees Ken Shaddox and Mike Vinson present President Rex Horne with the ceremonial chain of office during his inaugural convocation.

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of Ouachita with fondness. As a pastor, I would always meet people A call to leadership with Ouachita connections. As a parent, I was pleased to have one of our children, Holly, and her husband, Stephen Carlisle, graduate pon Andy’s resignation, the trustees did their work in from this university. Then I spent several terms as a trustee under establishing a committee to find the next president. I spoke President Elrod and President Westmoreland, never thinking that with Andy throughout his decision and the beginning of the one day I would serve in the office they occupied. transition. In one conversation, I asked him who he thought Our living presidents, Dan Grant, Ben Elrod and Andy could do the job. I was surprised when he said something to the Westmoreland, have been personal friends of mine for a long time. effect that I could do the job and should consider it if asked.

I have the greatest respect for each I dismissed the conversation of them. Dr. Grant is amazing as as best I could. I had been serving his mind continues to think of how the great Immanuel Baptist Church to assist Ouachita. He analyzes the of Little Rock for more than future of Christian education and fifteen years. We had relocated this the desire to keep Ouachita at the wonderful congregation to a prime forefront. Dan was instrumental in spot in Little Rock. The church was my being elected president of the growing and we were happy there.

Arkansas Baptist State Convention However, it was not very long until at a significant time in the midI was contacted by the presidential 1990s. search committee to ask if I would Dr. Elrod is one who I consider the position. Leaders such appreciate so very much because as Ken Shaddox, Buddy Sutton, of his service to the church and Frank Hickingbotham, Johnny Ouachita. I readily identify with Heflin and Mike Vinson were his journey. Ben is one of the finest leading the trustees and the search individuals I know at connecting process. Out of respect for them the right people with the right and a desire to follow God’s will, opportunities to help Ouachita. As I Becky and I decided to pray about drive on campus, I notice on several it. Becky was a wonderful counsel buildings the names of donors who as always. Those I spoke with gave President and Mrs. Horne pose with their daughter and son-in-law, Holly impacted Ouachita because of the me excellent advice, though all and Stephen Carlisle (both 2002 OBU graduates), and grandchildren influence of Ben Elrod. Ben led Abby Anne, Lizzy and Gideon. would remind me it was a decision Ouachita at a pivotal time in her history. Future generations will I would have to make. Although it was a most difficult decision to benefit from his courage, vision and work. leave our church home, we were convinced going to Ouachita was Dr. Andy Westmoreland was the fourteenth president of the will of God. Ouachita. In my mind, Andy was a natural for this position. He When I speak of my privilege of serving as president of Ouachita, studied here and then served here for most of his adult life. Andy I speak of a calling I am following, not a choice I am making. When knows this campus and people like few others. Andy was and is a I committed my life to Christian vocational service, I had no idea personal friend who has been an encourager to me. I thought Andy where the journey would lead. Little did I know that I would come would be here until he retired and become the longest-tenured back to a place I had always respected within an hour of my boyhood president since Dr. Conger. It was not to be. He now serves the fine home. God has certainly blessed me.

Samford University as president.

I did not come to the presidency of Ouachita in a conventional way. My ministry had not been spent in higher education. I

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“God founded Ouachita, sustains Ouachita and directs men and women to I

remember telling our deans before the announcement of my selection that I was aware of my lack of knowledge in some areas, but that I trusted them to lead and help me. They have done so in a marvelous way.

Although many would consider me an insider when it comes to Ouachita, I was something of an outsider coming into this office.

I can imagine the faculty and staff wondered what this preacher would do to our university. I must say that I could not have expected the extraordinary level of support I have received from faculty and staff during these first five years at Ouachita.

Vision, faith and courage

came to the office with a desire to have fresh eyes. On my first official day as president, I had a board of trustees meeting.

The meeting was one where we walked the campus, toured the buildings and made observations about what we had seen and experienced. While a number of worthy projects were being completed, chief among them being the beautiful and functional Hickingbotham Hall, it was obvious that student housing had to be a priority. I invited a dear friend and expert architect, Burt Taggart, to come to campus and tell me what he observed. Burt mentioned a number of things, but the one that caught my attention was the challenge in finding the campus, since it did not have a formal entrance. These discussions and the commitment of the trustees resulted in the beautiful entry we now enjoy: Ben and Betty Elrod Boulevard.

New student President Horne speaks at the 2010 dedication of Heflin housing was essential Plaza which features a threeto recruitment and hundred-foot pedestrian bridge would aid retention. linking both sides of campus.

Burt teamed with Gary Clements and his team to design a Student Village second to none.

The project called for the demolition of three old dorms: Daniel, Ernest Bailey and Conger. While many memories of those dorms are still cherished, few would question the need for replacing them.

Westside One and Two soon followed. Both of these housing projects were ably constructed by VCC of Little Rock led

by Gus Vratsinas (VCC chairman of the board)

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serve on these sacred grounds.”

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Ouachita Baptist University Vision, Mission & Values Statement

and Sam Alley (chief executive officer).

During this time, another conversation was being held with the Heflin family. One of my regrets is not being able to share these victories with Johnny Heflin. Johnny and I had a long conversation before I became president. He was very sick at the time, but his zeal for Ouachita never diminished. He long thought that something should be built over the ravine to connect the two sides of campus. For years the footbridge was used and the gum tree occupied a place of distinction! With the new Student Village being constructed, why not build a gathering place on the two sides of campus connected by a wide, spacious, attractive bridge? Johnny, Sharon, Jay and his wife, Andrea, and Marc and his wife, Billie, are all Ouachita graduates and devotees. The family generously stepped forward, and Heflin Plaza became a reality and is now a central part of campus.

The challenge, of course, was an economy in crisis. Some would say this was not a good time to build. It was not, yet I have never heard of a great time to build. The trustees heard my vision, saw the plans and voted to go forward. God has given me vision, faith and courage. I truly believe it is a gift from God. I have an undying conviction that if something is of God, God will move His people to accomplish great things.

My tenure at Ouachita has been marked by the need to correct our financial challenges, grow our university and find a way to thank those who serve so ably and sacrificially here. Some strides have been made, but not all. I have mentioned the support of faculty and staff, but must say again how their value to Ouachita is inestimable. I am particularly indebted to the administrative council, deans council, Charolette Allison and Phil Hardin in my office who make this university great. I wish I had space to write of how each one of you has contributed to Ouachita’s success. I am here seeking to follow God’s call, but no more than the men and women who teach and serve. God founded Ouachita, sustains Ouachita and directs men and women to serve on these sacred grounds.

I marvel at times over how we get such quality young men and young women as students. We have a campus full of current and future difference makers. Our students are relational,

Vision Ouachita Baptist University seeks to foster a love of God and a love of learning by creating for students and other constituents dynamic growth opportunities both on campus and throughout the world.

With foresight and faithfulness, Ouachita makes a difference.

Mission Ouachita Baptist University is a Christcentered learning community. Embracing the liberal arts tradition, the university prepares individuals for ongoing intellectual and spiritual growth, lives of meaningful work, and reasoned engagement with the world.

Values Ouachita strives to be an academic community of vision, integrity and service grounded in the following values: Faith. We believe that life is lived most abundantly in response to the love of God through Jesus Christ.

Scholarship. We advance excellence in teaching, learning, research and creative expression.

Growth. We foster broad-based education, encouraging growth in intellectual, spiritual, physical and social domains.

Character. We affirm that respect and honesty undergird responsible citizenship and stewardship.

Community. We promote a vibrant community strengthened by diversity, sustained by common aims and supportive relationships, and committed to leadership and service on campus and beyond.

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“Ouachita has remained true to the twin pillars of a love of God and love of learning.” service-oriented and most have a deep personal faith. I have enjoyed so very much my interaction with students. I am committed to being an encourager of our students. Simply being around them inspires me and gives me great peace about the future. Becky and I attend many recitals, plays, athletic contests, lectures and other events on campus that involve our students.

We do so, not as a responsibility, but as a privilege to witness the growth of our students and the commitment of those who guide them—and I must say that my intramural football team, Team Rex Horne, was nationally ranked for a while.

Dr. Danny Hays and the Pruet School of Christian Studies count me as one of their professors. Nearly every semester I have taught a servant leadership class or a Christian Ministries course.

I am reminded each semester of a generation that has no fear of serving in any place or among any people desiring to meet any need. It is impossible to know about Ouachita and not be proud of this vibrant university.

Tried and true traditions

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e do, of course, continue to follow some tried and true traditions, while adding what may become new traditions.

We still sing the Alma Mater with extra feeling when the Gold Tigers visit campus. We have added a university hymn, “See God’s Light,” that is beautiful in melody and meaning. Our beloved Tiger has been restored and is quite impressive in the center of our campus.

Believe it or not, some freshmen have begun wearing beanies again,

President Horne frequently teaches a servant leadership course, emphasizing that “students are the most important asset we have here, and I want to be involved intentionally in the lives of our students.”

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President Horne competes as part of the Team Rex Horne intramural football team.

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at least for a short time in the fall. Our May The annual Festival of Christmas is among dozens of commencement is now held in front of the campus events attended each year by President and Mrs. Horne, the Ouachita community and area residents. historic Cone-Bottoms Hall. The setting in the midst of our academic buildings is perfect in my estimation, and it never rains that Saturday in May! One of my short-term goals is to improve the area around Dr. and Mrs. Conger’s gravesite. I desire to do so to honor the vision, service and legacy of our first president and first lady. As I walk or drive around our campus, I am mindful of those who have served before me. We have walked the same grounds, identified some of the same challenges and enjoyed immeasurable blessings. The pictures from the early days of Ouachita are not unlike some today. Certainly styles have changed, but when you gaze into the faces of the young men and young women in the pictures, you find optimism, enthusiasm and a certain joy that comes with the Ouachita experience. I see this in faces every day, 125 years after Dr. Conger.

We are now in the early stages of “Defining the Difference,” colleges or universities left in America. I don’t know if this is a major capital campaign. Terry Peeples, our vice president for true, but we all recognize there is a tendency to drift in human development, with her team and dedicated trustees like Phil nature. This occurs in individual lives and the life of an institution.

Baldwin and Larry Kircher are tackling the challenge of telling the Ouachita has remained true to the twin pillars of a love of God and Ouachita story and without apology asking for help. I am humbled love of learning. We know who we are and the responsibility that when I think of people who have believed in Ouachita and made is ours. My request is that you would be one who helps drive us sacrifices on our behalf. Some continue in this manner. I think of forward, not one who drifts. the people whose names grace five of our seven academic schools: As I returned to Ouachita in 2006, I thought of the young man Dr. J.D. Patterson, Chesley and Elizabeth Pruet, Governor Mike I was thirty-five years earlier in the summer of 1971. I drove my 1964 Huckabee, Buddy Sutton and Frank Hickingbotham. These people Ford to campus for summer school. My parents thought this would believe in Ouachita and use their influence and means to keep the be a good way for me to get acclimated to college. I remember very vision burning and the mission alive and aggressive. well driving away from home and finding a home here. Since I did There is a question that we all will help answer: What is the future not finish my undergraduate work here, I have often thought of what of Ouachita? Surely this university is far more than our founding might have been. I do not do that much anymore. After five years, I fathers would have dared dream. How much more should it be than recognize that the plan of God all along was to bring me back to this what we are dreaming? The challenges are numerous, but there are place to take care of unfinished business, not as a student but with the none that cannot be completely overcome with a strong belief in stewardship of being president.

Ouachita Baptist University that receives our prayers, influence and There has never been a day that I have driven on this campus gifts. We need you. with dread of the activities of the day. I count it unmerited favor It is said that there are fewer than one hundred evangelical that I am numbered with fourteen others who across 125 years have 63

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served as president. Our name, Ouachita, is unusual to some. It is precious to us. Our mission is noble, and our value is measured in the contributions of thousands of graduates and multiplied thousands they have touched. We love our history, memories, the grounds, buildings and even the ravine, but especially the people.

History and those most closely connected to Ouachita will judge the years of my presidency. I know I am privileged to lead Ouachita and that my foundational belief about Ouachita is unchanged. This university is worth the best of our lives as we serve, support and do all humanly possible to ensure her future role in shaping the minds and hearts of young men and women.

Perhaps a part of your calling is to join me in the calling I am following.

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Dr. Rex M. Horne, Jr., has served since 2006 as Ouachita Baptist University’s fifteenth president. A former Ouachita student and former member of the Ouachita Board of Trustees, he also has served as pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock and as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.

Former President Bill Clinton delivered a Birkett Williams lecture as part of Dr. Horne’s inauguration week activities.

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Ouachita Baptist University Presidents

John W. Conger 1886-1907

Henry S. Hartzog 1907-1911

Robert G. Bowers 1911-1913

Samuel Y. Jameson 1913-1916

Charles E. Dicken 1916-1926

Arthur B. Hill 1926-1929

Charles D. Johnson 1929-1933

James R. Grant 1934-1949

S. William Eubanks 1949-1951

Harold A. Haswell 1952-1953

Ralph A. Phelps, Jr. 1953-1969

Daniel R. Grant 1970-1988

Ben M. Elrod 1988-1998

Andrew Westmoreland 1998-2006

Rex M. Horne, Jr. 2006-Present

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OBU cheerleaders promote Tiger spirit at Homecoming football game.

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It All Started with a Pair of Shoes

By Cliff Harris

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he fun and excitement of competing in a conference similar to the old AIC (Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference) is back!

With the creation of the new Great American Conference, Ouachita will be playing in-state rivals as well as other regional schools in neighboring states. The GAC promises to generate enthusiasm for a new level of competition for all of the schools involved. I am excited about the OBU Tigers’ new era of football.

Through the generosity of donors and the commitment of the university, Ouachita’s football program has certainly come a long way from the time I was a freshman. Through the generosity of the Quintus Crews family, a new Indoor Athletic Pavilion opened in 2003. Improvements are continuing to be made to athletic fields and facilities. Also, the quality of the equipment has dramatically improved and the number of football scholarships offered has increased.

When I first attended Ouachita in the late ’60s, OBU’s football program and most others elsewhere were not as well funded. The big money days of football had not yet arrived. Our uniforms were not like the slick ones the Tigers wear today. There also were fewer scholarships available which made decisions about which players stayed and which ones were cut especially difficult for Head Coach Buddy Bob Benson and his staff. Great players were sometimes overlooked. My first year, Doug Freeze, who set longstanding pass receiving records during his football career at Ouachita, paid his own way his freshman year.

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“I had the good fortune of being one of the very few players in the NFL Destiny: Ouachita Tigers football

one morning coffee session, Red happened to mention that Buddy Harris had a son who was a good player that Coach Benson should consider bringing to OBU. Red reminded Buddy Bob that one time he had told my dad during a game, “Buddy, do you know you close your eyes when you tackle? You hit me the hardest I have ever been hit and broke my nose and had your eyes closed.” Red told Buddy Bob he should consider recruiting me because my dad was an outstanding football player and a fighter pilot in World War II. He was shot down by the Japanese and paddled to the only American-occupied island in the South China Sea. There was more at work. Strategically, when Buddy Bob considered giving me the scholarship, he knew that the great John Wayne would probably come to OBU if I did. Coach Benson watched some of the Des Arc game films, took a chance, and gave John Wayne and me both scholarships to Ouachita. Once on campus, instead of becoming the doctor my dad wanted me to be, my life’s destiny changed. None of my early teammates in Hot Springs would have ever guessed that this skinny kid they remembered would eventually have a life and career that revolved around football.

I

t seemed I had little choice where I would play college football, however. I was destined to go to college in Arkadelphia, Arkansas.

Both my mother and grandmother were the presidents of their senior class at what is now Henderson State University. At the same time my mother attended Henderson, my father, O.J. “Buddy” Harris, was playing football for the Ouachita Tigers.

I had grown up in Hot Springs, but my dad was transferred to Des Arc my senior year. At that time, the Hot Springs Trojans were suffering through dismal football seasons. My dad gave me the option to stay in Hot Springs, but I chose to go to Des Arc with the family. We had a great team with a top running back named John Wayne Cunningham, who led the state in scoring. I was the new guy quarterback who was fortunate enough to help lead that team to an undefeated season and change my destiny.

The link to my future was my father’s roommate, Robert “Red” Nelson. After graduating from OBU, Red started the very successful Southwest Sporting Goods in Arkadelphia. In a back corner of Southwest, there was a small table where just about every morning, Coach Benson and some of his assistants drank coffee and talked football with Red. God was quietly working in my life as my college football career started in this rather random way. At

A small gesture can change a life

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t any level from junior high to college in those days, not having well-funded football programs meant only the top players on teams were given good equipment. The rest of us “scrubs” suffered with old, worn-out equipment. Throughout my years in football in Hot Springs, the skinny kid, needless to say, never wore any new equipment. My first pair of football cleats came from a pile of old, unpaired, worn-out “high-tops” in the dirt basement of Southwest Junior High, underneath the hillside gym. That day, after the coaches had given out new shoes to their “stars,” they told the rest of us our shoes were under the gym. We all took off and scrambled to find a pair that fit.

Everyone who has ever “strapped on pads” knows that football shoes are the badge of honor among football players at any level.

After about a month, which seemed more like six months, our tough two-a-day practices were over. One evening during a team

Cliff Harris runs with the ball during his days as a Ouachita Tiger.

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to play in five Super Bowls.”

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Cliff Harris goes airborne as he blitzes Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw.

meeting, Coach Benson named his starting lineup for the season.

He named me the only freshman starter. I was so excited but did not know that with starting came a new pair of shoes. I will never forget when Coach Benson handed me a brand-new pair of Wilson XPs. Wow! They were the best and hottest shoes of the day. They were also my first pair of new football shoes—ever. I doubt that Coach Benson ever knew the impact of what those shoes meant to me. It was a major shot of confidence. It said to me that he expected high levels of performance from me, and I sure wanted to deliver for him!

I worked hard to live up to his expectations of me. The rest of my years at Ouachita, I gave all I had all the time and left nothing on the field—and it all started with a pair of shoes.

Receiving those football shoes reminds me that you never know how you might change someone’s life by doing something you may think is small, but for that person, it may be enormous. Just as it did for me, a small gesture may give someone a boost of confidence that will impact their life for years to come. Something small may mean a lot.

Emotions and passions play such integral roles in life. Passion can make the most difficult and tiring tasks easier and even enjoyable. The real test of an athlete’s commitment to football is making it through two-a-days—especially if Buddy Bob Benson is your coach and you are in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and it is over 100 degrees in the shade!

Young men wanting to become Tigers are pushed to their limit of endurance and true commitment. Those days turn boys into men and helped me compete at a higher level in the pros. I had the good fortune of being one of the very few players in the NFL to play in five Super Bowls. I also experienced the thrill of earning two World Championship rings, playing in six Pro Bowls and being inducted into the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor.

I loved the fall and the beginning of football season every year

at Ouachita. No matter what age or level, if you are into football, the beginning of the season always seems to sneak up. One day, you get a jolt and know the new season is approaching. At the end of one hot summer day, when you least expect it, you feel a soft, cool, gentle breeze which means fall and football are just around the corner.

I am so grateful for my time at Ouachita, which led to a wonderful and exciting life and professional football career with the Dallas Cowboys. I am grateful to Coach Benson and thankful for all the close friends I still have from my days at Ouachita. If I had the chance to do it all again, I would do it the same way. I felt I did it the “Arkansas way” and the whole state was behind me, supporting this free-agent kid out of Ouachita. Everywhere I went all over the world, it seemed that I was always greeted by someone who would say, “Hey, Cliff, I went to Ouachita!” It sure made me proud that I did, too.

See you this fall as we root on the Tigers!

Cliff Harris, a 1970 Ouachita graduate, was inducted into the inaugural class of the OBU Athletic Hall of Fame. He went on to an All-Pro NFL career with the Dallas Cowboys, playing in six Pro Bowls, five Super Bowls and, being named to the elite Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor. Today, he is a principal in Energy Transfer Technologies in Dallas.

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I Would Still Choose Ouachita

By Gov. Mike Huckabee

Reporters interview Gov. Huckabee at the Governor’s Gala as Dr. Andy Westmoreland looks on.

I

was the first male in my entire family lineage to graduate from high school, much less dream of going to college. I knew that an education was more than just credentials for the job market; it was the pathway out of poverty and a pathway to a life purpose.

I now have the distinct advantage of looking back over nearly forty years of a relationship with Ouachita in roles ranging from student to alumnus, to a pastor urging young high school students to study there, to a trustee, a parent of two OBU graduates plus a daughter-in-law, a donor, a person for whom the School of Education was named, to one who will forever support Ouachita because it provides outstanding Christian and academic excellence for its students.

I can still recall the anxiety of walking onto the campus as a freshly minted high school graduate who felt overwhelmed at the thought of competing against highly motivated, bright, ambitious students who were as eager as I to excel. My older sister had chosen Ouachita two years earlier, so I had made visits to the campus and had some familiarity with the school. But it is one thing to be a visitor and quite another to carry boxes to Daniel North dormitory room 114 to move in amid a freshman class of largely unfamiliar faces.

Life-shaping decision

I

now have the perspective of thirty-eight years since that August day in 1973, and of one thing I’m absolutely certain, with all the adult decisions I’ve made, I have never regretted becoming a Ouachitonian. It was life-changing at the time, and it has been

“I knew that an education …

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life-shaping ever since.

College is a major moment of transition for most of us. We leave the order, discipline and security of our homes where our parents were in charge to a world in which we’re expected to be adults. No one will force us to get out of bed, show up for class or check a clock as to when we come in at night. For many college freshmen, the peer pressure is overwhelming to rebel, to be different, to experiment, to “break loose.” The peer pressure at Ouachita is to excel. As I’ve said to parents and prospective students through the years, OBU is not a monastery and if a person wants to get into trouble, it’s possible, even at OBU. But the mainstream for an OBU student is not alcohol, drugs, promiscuous behavior or rebellion. It’s excellence—personal, spiritual and academic excellence.

I had to work to pay my way through Ouachita and because it was costly, I decided from my first day to make the most of it.

I was working forty hours a week and carrying as full a load as was allowed, which would ultimately result in my being able to complete my four-year degree in two-and-a-half years. My reasons for accelerating my education were largely financial, but few universities would have been as accommodating and helpful as Ouachita was to help me accomplish it. There is a remarkable attitude from the faculty and staff at Ouachita that treats students as valued individuals. No one is “babysat” or coddled, but the unique atmosphere of the campus is to create an accepting, encouraging and affirming experience for the student. Every person is treated with respect and dignity and as a person with God-given worth and value. The impact that had on me as a student cannot be overstated. I was welcomed as a peer and an equal even though I probably was not attired in the most fashionable labels.

The enviable student/teacher ratio and the intimate size of the student body means Ouachita students have ensured a very personal and close relationship with the faculty. Professors know students by name, and within a few weeks, it is not unusual for a professor to speak by name to a student even though that professor might not have the student in his or her class. It’s difficult for a student at Ouachita to “get lost in the crowd” and feel isolated or alone. It is one of the most endearing qualities of OBU—the Christian emphasis extends beyond the classroom and

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Gov. Huckabee visits with Ouachita students after speaking on campus.

permeates the dining hall, the dorms, the recreational facilities and the student center to create a true sense of community.

I am an unabashed advocate for a liberal arts education at the university level—more now than ever in light of the way in which a student is likely to face many twists and turns in his or her career and is better prepared for life when one is exposed to and participates in a wide variety of academic pursuits across the spectrum of math, science, language, history, art and the humanities.

Grateful for Ouachita’s impact

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he further I have traveled from OBU and my experience as a student, the more grateful I am for the way in which Ouachita prepared me for the various roles I’ve played as a communications executive, a pastor, a public official, and a political commentator and author.

Harvard Law graduates, Ivy League MBA graduates and others who have studied at some of the finest universities in the world have challenged me in debates during my political life. I have never felt unprepared or under-prepared intellectually or academically, but sometimes have almost felt sympathy for those whose education seemed to have been one-dimensional and lacking in the kind of

was the pathway out of poverty and a pathway to a life purpose.”

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state government!

It was easy for the cynics to dismiss my dependence on fellow Ouachitonians as cronyism, but the reason was much more substantive than that. While I certainly selected trusted advisors and colleagues from among those I knew—and I knew many from Ouachita—the underlying factor was that I had confidence that a Ouachita alum would likely have a Christian worldview, unshakable integrity, outstanding intellectual capacity, and genuine and heartfelt compassion for people from everywhere on the economic spectrum.

Before I went to Ouachita in the fall of 1973, an attorney in my hometown of Hope, Arkansas, who knew my family, took me aside to give me some advice. He knew that as it related to going to college, there was no one upstream from me in the family who could relate to what college was about. The advice he gave me was helpful, but in large measure because it proved to be exactly what Ouachita was all about. He told me that college would not give me all the information and knowledge that I needed for life, but that it would give me the tools to “learn how to learn.” He exhorted me to commit to being a student for the rest of my life and to understand that I would never stop learning.

While Ouachita certainly “filled my wagon” with many wonderful academic tools, it most importantly equipped me to learn how to learn, and to never cease being hungry for knowledge and even more significantly, to be hungry for wisdom. The Biblical truth tempered with very solid academic curriculum has served me well.

Two of my three children are Ouachita grads, and the one who isn’t had the good sense to marry an OBU girl.

If I were 18 again and had to decide where I could best be prepared for life, even with all I have experienced and done, I would still choose Ouachita. I felt it was right then. I know it was now.

Gov. Huckabee received an honorary doctorate from Ouachita in 1997.

“mind, body and soul” integrated approach that I took for granted at Ouachita.

The loyalty of Ouachita alumni is a factor that is not to be underestimated. I have met fellow Tigers on literally every continent on the earth, and the fraternal spirit among those who have shared the Ouachita experience creates a bond of friendship and camaraderie that transcends age, race, ethnicity, gender or faith.

During the years I served as a pastor in the 1980s, I did all I could to encourage students in my congregations to consider Ouachita and had the pleasure of seeing my church at one time sending more students to OBU than any other. More rewarding than seeing a student start at Ouachita was to watch their lives, their careers and their families in the years after their graduation.

I have watched OBU grads become leaders in politics, education, music, business, philanthropy, evangelism and missions.

During my tenure as governor of Arkansas (1996-2007), there came to be a standing joke as to a critical qualification to be a member of the governor’s staff—what year did you graduate from Ouachita? That, of course, was not entirely accurate, but without doubt or apology, there was a decidedly large number of OBU grads upon whom I called to serve as senior staffers, cabinet members and members of boards. During those ten-and-a-half years, it is fair to say that Ouachita dominated in its influence on

Governor Mike Huckabee, a 1976 Ouachita graduate, served more than ten years as governor of Arkansas. A former pastor and president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, he also served two terms on the Ouachita Board of Trustees. Governor Huckabee also has been a national candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. presidency. The Michael D. Huckabee School of Education was named in his honor in 2005.

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Point of Grace: The Ride of Our Lives

By Terry Jones

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s I sit back and remember my times at OBU, such fond memories come to mind. It was a time of discovering myself, my potential and my life’s direction.

What sweet memories I have of being able to represent my college as Miss OBU, stepping up to the challenge of competing in Miss Arkansas as an 18-year-old girl! The reason I was so proud to represent my college is because of the great people there.

People make the difference

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eople make OBU what it is, from Randy Garner in admissions finding me my sweet freshman roomie, who is still now one of my best buddies, to Dr. Wesley Kluck’s undying support and excitement for four silly college girls with the dream of starting a singing group. From Ouachita President Ben Elrod’s faithful smile and constant encouragement to the students’ zeal for life and drive to be the best we could be. Mrs. Mary Shambarger, my Ouachitones director, became for so many of us our second momma, always pushing us for our best musically and as individuals.

The original members of Point of Grace—Denise (Masters) Jones, Shelley (Phillips) Breen, Heather (Floyd) Payne and Terry (Lang) Jones—have been effective ambassadors for Ouachita throughout their careers as contemporary Christian recording artists.

“I believe my life’s calling is to love God and to love people. Ouachita gets that.”

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“From the beginning of our Point of Grace days … Ouachita blood has run through I remember so many wonderful moments at Ouachita. I met my husband, Chris, at OBU, and we began this crazy adventure of life together at this great college. Together, he and I share the joy of life with three beautiful children. Today, I am so grateful for the path I chose of attending Ouachita because of what happened during those years and because of the path my life took as a result of going to school there.

I sang in a million settings from Ouachitones to Chamber Singers (sweet Mr. DeArmond) to talent shows, chapel, banquets, Miss OBU and on and on. Taking voice lessons and getting so much stage experience during my years at Ouachita was absolutely priceless for me and the path God would take me down as I had the privilege of performing thousands of concerts during the years to come.

All of these experiences prepared me for what was to come when my three college friends—Denise, Heather and Shelley—and I would embark on a journey only God could have shaped and one we never could have dreamed up: Point of Grace. Originally we were Say So. I remember the night we thought up forming this group, and we wanted to be sure we would sound good together so we ran from our dorm rooms over to the OBU music building and

plunked out some notes on the piano and started harmonizing. It sounded good to us, and we were off—for the biggest ride of our lives.

From there we began singing all around Arkansas at any event we could schedule, from Valentine’s banquets to chapel at OBU. The first time we did a “concert” was for Dr. Kluck’s doctors’ banquet. We were paid $25 each, and you would have thought we had struck gold!

Ouachita was so good to us and even loaned us the school van and sound system for a summer when no one else on campus was using it. The love and support from Ouachita and the staff and faculty there went far beyond borrowing a van, for this college would become the springboard from which we would always have a group of loving people to support us and welcome us back. And we did come back, singing at many Ouachita events throughout the years. One of my favorites was the concert we did in the new Jones Performing Arts Center. Of course, we never had that beautiful of a facility when we were in college there!

But I’m not bitter. s I loved when we were touring around the country and we would come across a random OBUer in Colorado or Seattle or New York.

Point of Grace in concert

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A Proud Tiger is Restored to Glory

me, always grounding me.”

Ouachita’s beloved Tiger statue has stood in silent vigil over the campus for more than seventyfive years. Tailless and weather-beaten for many of those years, the Tiger received a muchneeded restoration that was unveiled during Homecoming 2010.

The Ouachita people always carry a kindness, graciousness and sweet support with them even when they are scattered all over the nation in different cities. From the beginning of our Point of Grace days when we could barely afford to eat at McDonald’s to later recording platinum albums, Ouachita blood has run through me, always grounding me and reminding me where I came from and where I was going.

Ouachita shaped who I am today

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od truly used my days at Ouachita to shape who I am today. I am now retired from Point of Grace, married to a wonderful man and love being a mom to my three awesome kids. As I continue growing to know the Lord in deeper ways, I will always fondly remember my days at Ouachita. Chris and I love going back to visit and sharing our memories there with our children. Actually, even as I write this, Chris is headed to OBU with one of our boys to go to the Ouachita vs. Henderson basketball game! Big night! Go, Tigers!

That reminds me of how I used to love watching my boyfriend then, hubby now, play basketball there, too! I remember growing up at Ouachita, discovering who I truly was—no parents there each day, on my own. What an awesome time for a young person to discover the beginning of her life’s potential. I am ever so grateful that this California/Oklahoma transplant found her way to an unassuming Baptist university in the middle of Arkansas, where my life’s direction began to take root, where I will always remember those roots beginning to grow, and where the greatest journeys of my life began.

I believe my life’s calling is to love God and to love people.

Ouachita gets that, for it has loved me well through the years, causing me to love my God even more. Thank you, OBU, for all you have done for me!

The statue, carved by student B.F. Worley in lieu of tuition payments during the Great Depression, was presented to Ouachita during the 1934-35 academic year. Members of Worley’s family were among the guests attending the 2010 rededication service.

Welcoming alumni, students, faculty, staff and other guests to the ceremony, Chris Babb, external director of alumni, declared, “After many years of surviving without a tail, the Ouachita Tiger has now been restored to its original splendor.”

Jacob Lively, president of the Ouachita Student Senate, noted that “this Tiger means so much to the students here at Ouachita. It’s great to see the Tiger back to how it looked originally.”

Phil Hardin, assistant to the president for administration, coordinated the restoration effort which was funded by the Worley family, alumni and other friends of the university. Describing the landmark statue as “a symbol of Tiger spirit and Ouachita spirit,” Hardin said the refurbished Tiger remains “a strong and beautiful symbol of Ouachita.”

Terry Jones, one of the founding members of Point of Grace, is a 1992 Ouachita graduate and a former Miss OBU. During her years in Point of Grace, the group produced a record twenty-four consecutive No. 1 hits.

Emphasizing that the Tiger is “part of the story of Ouachita,” President Rex Horne posed the question, “What does the Tiger represent to us?” In addition to being “a link to our past,” he said the Tiger is special to Ouachitonians in the present as well as an ongoing connection to the university’s future vision and growth.

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The Lord Guides Our Steps

By Dr. Scott Duvall

I

came to Ouachita almost by accident. The plan was to go to Texas Tech. I was born in Lubbock while my dad was attending Tech, and years of listening to Jack Dale announce football and basketball games left me with dreams of becoming a Red Raider. It really was that simple.

About the same time, my high school basketball coach, Don Purdy, left to become Bill Vining’s assistant at Ouachita, that small Baptist college in Arkansas with a name no one can pronounce. I had never visited the place, but one trip did the trick. My first attraction to OBU was the pine trees. That may sound superficial, but if you’ve grown up around a lot of concrete and steel as I did in the DFW area, then you fall in love with how creation is beautifully displayed in Arkansas.

On my first visit, I attended the insanely crowded and crazy OBU-HSU basketball game. Ouachita was on my college radar.

When your mom is the high school counselor, you apply for scholarships. You guessed it; I applied to Tech and OBU. The letter from Ouachita announcing the four-year, all-tuition-paid University Scholarship (totaling in that day $5,000) sealed the deal. (I always felt guilty about taking the Division of Education scholarship in order to double major in Business and Economics until some years later when Dr. Charles Chambliss reminded me that I had returned to OBU as a teacher after all.) The Lord does indeed guide our steps.

Student days

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“Through the tutelage of caring and competent faculty members, I learned difficult experiences of my life was graduation day at OBU. You spend four years creating community—you live, eat, pray, laugh and cry together and then one day in May, it all vanishes in about two hours. Ouachita was more than a college; it had become my community. And no one should be forced to dismantle their community so quickly. In spite of being told that commencement meant a new chapter, a new beginning, I knew we were walking away from something we would rarely see again this side of heaven.

But they made me leave, so I did … for a while.

O

uachita was an academic challenge so I had to learn how to organize, prioritize and study, and some of the OBU professors delighted in forcing the issue. Yet through the tutelage of caring and competent faculty members, I learned how to think, learn and work, and those virtues have served me well ever since.

Learning to live in Daniel South was also an experience—practical jokes, laundry, annoying personalities, dorm checks, late-night fun, the search for solitude and so on. When I made a snap decision to pledge Beta in the spring of my first year, I endured a week I’ll never forget. I’m not sure I’ve ever done a push-up since. Through it all, I became best friends with Jim McGee, and we roomed together our last three years. I’ve always admired Jim’s thoughtful savoring of life. We lived in old Conger dorm under the care of Mom Burleson (“Mom B”), who proved that “Res Life” leaders are often on the front lines of changing lives. During that time, Kenny Burt and I shared a passion for running. Our sophomore year we trained for and completed the Dallas White Rock marathon. I’ve always admired Burt’s faithfulness and loyalty.

Ouachita also made a deep impact on my walk with the Lord.

God used Elmer Goble (BSU), Van Barrett and Mark Baber (Richwoods Baptist Church) and Keith Chancey (fellow student and FCA leader) to shape me in deep ways. It was at OBU that I first began to understand the Biblical concept of grace. As many of you know, once you’ve tasted the grace of God, everything changes from religion to a dynamic relationship with a loving and compassionate God. Van and Mark helped me see how teaching could figure into a lifelong calling. My very first sermon was a one-hour, detailed explanation of 1 Corinthians 15 at Richwoods.

I feel sorry for those who had to endure that experience. Now my sermons are a lot shorter.

Without a doubt, the most important thing that happened to me while I was a student at OBU is that I met and fell in love with Judy Bumgardner. (Thanks to Susan Voris Atkinson for the introduction.)

We began dating when I was a senior and she was a freshman and married two years later. She has been the most devoted, delightful life partner I could imagine, and I thank God for her daily. We will have been married thirty years on May 15, 2012.

The student days were amazing. Honestly, one of the most

Coming back to Ouachita

“Insanely crowded and crazy” Battle of the Ravine basketball games between Ouachita and Henderson are among lasting campus memories for many Ouachita students, recalls Scott Duvall.

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how to think, learn and work.”

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a productive writing ministry. This would never have happened at other schools that value only research or only teaching.

Ouachita has always been a place of integration and balance.

In the late 1990s, Chesley and Elizabeth Pruet of El Dorado, Arkansas, generously endowed the OBU Religion Department. I was invited to serve as the first dean of the new Pruet School of Christian Studies. We were blessed when Tracey Knight came on board as the dean’s secretary, and everyone knows she is the one who truly holds Pruet together. We were able to hire additional faculty members. I became especially close to Randy Richards and Preben Vang—both first-class human beings and teachers extraordinaire.

We reshaped the curriculum and poured a great deal of energy into making Pruet one of the top evangelical schools of Christian Studies in the nation. We established new traditions such as the Senior Cookout, a Christian Studies honor society and our first female faculty member (Dr. Barbara Pemberton).

We put together a team of faculty who loved both the academy and the church. It’s rare when almost every Christian Studies faculty member is involved in local church ministry, but that is the case with the Pruet faculty. The Pruets’ gift made possible additional resources and opportunities, and for this we will always be grateful. But the uniqueness of Pruet continues to be the relationship between the faculty and the students.

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here are sometimes pleasant surprises in life that are also quite unexpected. Returning to Ouachita as a faculty member was one of them. Bud Fray, then chair of the Religion Department at OBU, took a chance on a young, inexperienced teacher, and we returned to Arkadelphia. In many ways, this was a dream come true—the opportunity to return to a place that had formed me deeply in order to invest in the spiritual growth of students. Through this season of life, Judy and I focused on loving our three daughters—Ashley, Amy and Meagan—and loving our students.

Those early years of teaching were difficult—the salary was meager, the teaching load was heavy, the dissertation was still in progress, and the part-time pastorate was good but demanding.

But those days were also extremely rewarding. We were mentored by wise, caring colleagues in the Religion Department—Craig Price, Bill Steeger, Jim Berryman, Bob Stagg and Byron Eubanks.

The faculty potlucks, the trips to ETS/SBL (Evangelical Theological Society/Society of Biblical Literature) meetings and the office experiences made memories we will always treasure.

The students were bright and eager to learn, and it was a huge blessing to invest in their lives. I will never forget the generation of students who affectionately called me “Coach,” although I’d like to forget a few of the practical jokes they played on this freshman faculty member.

Pretty soon Terry Carter and Danny Hays joined our team, and we became lifelong friends. I will never forget how our faculty basketball team won the lower-division championship or how we were forced to retire from flag football after a series of old-man injuries. Ouachita is a bit unusual in the world of higher education as a place where teachers often come and stay for a career. It’s not the salary or the cutting-edge resources; it’s the people with whom you work to carry out a common mission.

In addition to teaching, Ouachita provided the ideal atmosphere to write books for use in the undergraduate classroom. When Danny Hays and I co-authored Grasping God’s Word, a book about how to interpret the Bible that is used in many colleges and seminaries, it proved to be the beginning of

Returning to my first love

I

was an average administrator, but it was never my first love or my best quality. I have always felt called first and foremost to helping students grow in Christ through the ministry of teaching God’s Word. So after almost a decade of serving as dean, I returned to the classroom full time a few years ago. Change is never easy, but it is often quite good. I now have the privilege of teaching Spiritual Formation, Interpreting the Bible, Life of Christ, Revelation, and Greek Exegesis. The students are just as bright and eager, although they have more gadgets to distract them and the world is more complex. Judy is thriving in her role as assistant director of the Ben M. Elrod Center for Family and Community, and our youngest daughter is about to leave home to attend OBU. As with all things relational, teaching is a delicate and risky (yet deeply rewarding) enterprise. Every teacher treasures those

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Dr. Duvall delivers an outdoor lecture at the International Flag Plaza.

moments when you know the students “get it,” times you can almost see the lights flip on in their minds. We also treasure the unexpected funny moments, such as the time in Life of Christ when we were discussing the ascension of Jesus and a maintenance man in a bucket lift slowly rose outside the window.

Or that time in Revelation class when we were discussing how the locusts in Revelation 9 are probably not Russian helicopters when we hear a squadron of helicopters fly directly over Berry Bible Building. Teachers also prize the more serious moments such as when a student pours out his or her heart to the entire class and we surround them in prayer.

The hardest part of being a teacher is knowing that you have only a few years with your students before they grow up and leave.

It’s the bittersweet part of getting close to people you know will be moving on soon. I’ve created a “rewards” box that sits on a high shelf in my office. Every time I get one of those unexpected “thank you” notes, it gets shoved into the rewards box. Perhaps someday I will read them all again.

I mentally compare Ouachita to Nazareth. For twenty-seven (or thirty) years, Jesus lived in a small, obscure village, following a fairly simple routine of work, worship, study and play. In the common village of Nazareth, the Father prepared Him for three years of public ministry that would culminate in His obedience unto death on the cross—thirty years of routine preparation for three years of intense engagement leading to three hours that would forever change the universe. Ouachita is much like Nazareth in that it provides a common place (that is in reality very uncommon) for the Father to mold and shape students so that they will be ready to follow Jesus in the way of the cross.

Dr. J. Scott Duvall, a 1980 summa cum laude graduate of Ouachita, is the J.C. & Mae Fuller Professor of Biblical Studies and chair of the Department of Biblical Studies. He previously served as the founding dean of the Chesley and Elizabeth Pruet School of Christian Studies.

“Every teacher treasures those moments when you know the students ‘get it.’”

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Ouachita Is …

People

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Berry Chapel’s stately steeple, installed five decades ago, remains a major campus landmark.

By Dr. Joe Jeffers

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hat is Ouachita? Ouachita is a name. Ouachita is a place.

Ouachita is an institution. Ouachita is … people. Only the name and the institution remain (fairly) constant.

The others change. About the name: It was Ouachita Baptist College for its first seventy-nine years. It was Ouachita Baptist College when I enrolled as a freshman, and it became Ouachita Baptist University in 1965 during my junior year. President Ralph Phelps was responsible for the name change. Pretty minor for 125 years.

The physical location on the bank of the Ouachita River hasn’t changed, but the buildings that make up the campus certainly have. I first visited Ouachita in 1957 when my brother enrolled as a freshman. I immediately fell in love with Ouachita.

Even between his entrance in 1957 and mine in 1962, a few things changed. Berry Chapel now has a steeple, the football field was moved to its current location and some dorms were built. I moved into the one-year-old Northwest dorm, later to be renamed Ernest Bailey after the original Ernest Bailey classroom building was razed. Even that dorm has now been demolished. The only buildings on Ouachita’s present campus remaining from the campus I first attended are Cone-Bottoms, Moses-Provine (then Hamilton Moses), Berry Bible Building and Chapel, O.C. Bailey and Flippen-Perrin. Cone-Bottoms was a girls’ dorm then, and Hamilton Moses was the science building. Anyone who started with me as a freshman, left after the first semester, and only now returned for the first time would not recognize the place.

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“The faculty are the brains. They have to be to keep a step ahead of the students.”

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he Ouachita campus for most students is the one frozen in their minds during the four or five years of their collegiate tenures. Their memories, their stories took place on that campus.

Of course, many faithful alumni return again and again and keep pace with the changes, but legions do not. My brother’s generation saw the Berry steeple lying on the ground, looking for all the world like an ICBM (missile). The day after it was raised into place, a sign declaring “It is risen” took its former position on the ground. And for its baptism, a few enterprising students— my brother swears he was not among them—used a weather balloon to hoist a tractor inner tube to the top of the steeple before shooting the balloon to drop the inner tube onto the steeple. Fair to say there are a few ringers in every class.

Every student group focusing on a particular building has its stories. Generations of Ouachita students lived for the basketball games in Walton Gymnasium. Talk about noise. It was like having a sixth player on the team. During my junior year, we moved into the new Rockefeller Gymnasium late in the season. Even with a team that finished third in the national tournament that year and all the enthusiasm that such an experience generates, Rockefeller was a tomb by comparison. We felt like we had no voice. Sorry, guys.

You are back to only five players. My building was Hamilton Moses.

I won’t bore you now with those stories. But I reserve the right to revisit as we talk about the next version of Ouachita—people.

People make the place—students, faculty, administrators and staff. While students have a shorter tenure on average than any other group, they are the heart of Ouachita. (I’ll come back to the brain shortly.) They have the energy and drive; in short, they have the bull by the horns. From a student perspective, most of the Ouachita people are other students. They eat with them, they live with them and they study with them. They share their most intimate moments of life together, and they provide a support network that is as strong as family; in some cases stronger. Students’ network of friends falls into four general groups, with much overlap. There are the dorm friends, the club friends, the class friends and the discipline friends. Students mature immensely in four years. The freshmen who enter and the seniors who graduate only vaguely resemble one another. A metamorphosis occurs.

As a faculty member, it is quite gratifying to play a role in the dénouement of a particular student’s story. And there are always stories.

The faculty are the brains. They have to be to keep a step ahead of the students. Faculty stories are legend. Former students visiting campus after graduation don’t necessarily expect to see their student friends after the first couple of years, but they do expect to see their mentors. Former students aren’t students anymore; they are friends. Relationships established during the mentor-mentee period become richer, more nuanced. Often a different kind of reciprocal respect emerges. Never is a faculty member more fulfilled than when such a relationship takes root.

These individual stories are difficult to voice; a name evokes a panoply of pleasurable thoughts, a host of moments to savor.

Nevertheless, start mentioning faculty names and graduates begin to light up—Fay Holiman, Betty Raspberry McCommas, Vester Wolber, Carl Goodson, Francis McBeth, Charles Wesley, Jim Berryman, Joe Nix, Lavell Cole, Johnny Wink, George Keck, Tom Greer, Charles Wright, Margaret Wright, Glenn Good, Jim Ranchino, Tom Auffenberg, Hal Bass, Randall Wight and a host of others, older and younger. We all have our heroes and heroines.

When my daughter entered Ouachita as a freshman, she had a list— her list, not mine. She planned to take a course under each of the

Dr. Joe Jeffers, who has taught at Ouachita since 1972, emphasizes that helping students make connections and succeed “is a professor’s delight.”

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six faculty members on the list. The course didn’t matter, only the experience of having that particular professor did. And she had all six.

My major mentor at Ouachita was Joe Nix, not in a professorstudent role, even though that interaction was important, but in a junior professor-senior professor one. He taught me the value of involvement in faculty governance, the importance of speaking up when critical issues were at hand, and, most importantly, of being active. Almost everyone has good ideas, but if one doesn’t act on them, they are of little value.

Amusing encounters

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One final student story and I promise to move on. In the olden days, biological supply houses did not sell cats with latex-filled veins and arteries as they do now. It was up to the individual students in Comparative Anatomy to procure their own specimens. The day arrived when each student had his or her specimen laid out and ready to begin the dissection. Dr. J.R. Mundie, chair of biology and instructor for the course, walked through the door, hesitated aghast, and exclaimed in his best Virginia accent, “Wuh, wuh, that’s my cat!” Years after that practice ceased, the Biology Department continued to receive calls any time someone’s cat was missing.

Harvey Jones Science Center, dedicated in 1997, houses the J.D. Patterson School of Natural Sciences.

umor is the best medicine.

The stories we remember best are often the amusing ones.

When I was a freshman, we had to wear beanies. And yes, we had to kowtow to upperclassmen. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I was visiting a friend in O.C. Bailey. His room was the first one near the end door. All of a sudden the door opened, and I saw what for all the world looked like a ninth grader.

“Freshman!” I exclaimed as I arose to haze my very first victim. My friend grabbed my arm and said, “No, no, no! That’s Dr. Nisbet, the new chemistry professor.” He really did look like a ninth grader.

During the time West Hall was being constructed, a group of merry malcontents in Northwest Hall were having a lessthan-pleasant tête-à-tête with the dorm mom in Northwest. One Saturday morning, Mom May opened her corridor door only to find a cinder block wall built in front of it. Later that weekend, I encountered one of the would-be perpetrators and made the comment, “Bill, understand that I have no idea who built that wall in front of Mom May’s door, but I was surprised that whoever built it didn’t use any mortar.” Bill retorted, “Jeffers, understand that I don’t know who built it either, but I imagine that whoever built it looked for some.”

Four decades later …

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s of 2012, I will have completed forty years on the faculty at Ouachita.

Needless to say, I have seen a lot of changes. The students are as bright as ever, maybe brighter, but they bring with them fewer academic skills than generations before; high schools are not as demanding as they once were.

Today’s student task is much greater than ours because they have to get from where they are as entering freshmen to the same place we were as graduating seniors. The faculty—always good—is even better. We recruit from a larger pool, and we have more opportunities for faculty improvement—sabbaticals, research grants, funds for travel to professional meetings, support services, lecture series, endowed chairs, evaluations, etc. And the campus: We have moved from a cinder block campus that was quite functional, if not aesthetically pleasing, to a beautiful campus that is highly functional and quite inspiring. Best of all, we have done so without losing the camaraderie that makes Ouachita a special place to be. Never once have I thought I have to go to work today, dreading the prospect. Rather, I look forward to what each day brings. Okay, I am a bleeding optimist, but I enjoy my students and my colleagues. Felicity is probably the best word to describe 83

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Dr. Jeffers recalls that various campus pranks have been a longstanding tradition among many Ouachita students.

what being at Ouachita means to me.

The three courses I have taught the most are Organic Chemistry, Life Science and Biochemistry. Getting to know each student, making him or her feel special, but keeping a respectful distance is my goal. They don’t need me as a friend just yet; they need a mentor. Friendship comes later. Still, they are a joy.

Watching students wrestle with ideas and patterns, helping them make connections and celebrating with them when they do is a professor’s delight. One can see the individual epiphanies as they occur. The light bulbs actually go off. It’s written on their faces.

And we learn from them, too. It is a rare year when a student question or comment doesn’t make me see a pattern I had never seen before.

Finally, there is the institution that is Ouachita. It is the most enduring constant of all. It is and has been for its 125 years a college with a strong liberal arts tradition. It is not a “Bible school.” It prides itself in helping students and faculty grow.

Part of that growth requires questioning, developing a critical and discerning mind, learning a body of knowledge, building a sense of the aesthetic, honing the art of conversation, engaging the world, fighting bigotry and prejudice, and focusing on opportunities and obligations for service. But all of these are enmeshed in the nurturing warmth of a place that is unabashedly Christian. We only grow when we are challenged, and we need to grow for a lifetime. That’s the Ouachita of which I am proud to be a part.

Dr. Joe Jeffers, a 1966 Ouachita graduate, is dean of the J.D. Patterson School of Natural Sciences and professor of chemistry. Jeffers, who holds a PhD in biochemistry from Purdue University, has served on the Ouachita faculty since 1972.

“We only grow when we are challenged, and we need to grow for a lifetime.”

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Students make their way to Mitchell Hall.

Making Meaningful Connections

By Dr. George Keck

Mitchell Hall! Above the front entrance, the large block letters clearly stated “Conservatory of Music,” but we knew that it was not a conservatory at all but a School of Music—the only one in the state of Arkansas, the second music program in the state accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music in 1954 and with a reputation for excellence that extended far beyond the borders of southern Arkansas. The building was named for Professor Livingston Harvey Mitchell, who virtually created Ouachita’s music department. He had retired long before I arrived in the fall of 1969, but his reputation lived on almost as if he were still present in his former studio.

By 1969, Mitchell Hall was showing signs of its hasty World War II construction. Whenever there was a heavy rain, all of the classrooms downstairs flooded with water. Fortunately, the floor

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n the first crisp, cool day of autumn every year I imagine the row of beautiful maple trees across the street from Mitchell Hall. Lined up along Ouachita Street, the maples turned brilliant red and yellow every October. Walking across campus on such an autumn morning, I can almost hear the music pouring out of the wide-open second-story windows of the un-airconditioned practice rooms. The sound could be heard all over campus, a sound that is one of the few fond memories of Mitchell Hall.

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“Professor Mitchell’s reputation

sloped slightly so that the water stood in one corner of the room.

We just ignored the water and tried to walk around the puddles.

The bats in the recital hall were a little more exciting, as they swooped through the hall during recitals and lectures. There was no sound proofing. Dr. William Trantham, whose studio was just beneath mine on the floor below, often had to pause and wait for the loud passages in my studio to end so that he could continue with his teaching. I never missed any of that when we moved to the new building in February of 1975.

forty years of their lives to one institution as Mitchell, Bowden, Queen and Keck did. It is even rarer that the connections from teacher to student at an institution would continue for more than one hundred years. The stability and experience of these faculty members contributed greatly to the excellence of the music programs at Ouachita.

Dr. Trantham, the first dean of the School of Music and professor of piano, retired in 1992. The administration agreed to hire an artist-in-residence to replace him. We were very fortunate to hire David Allen Wehr for the position. Wehr contributed a great deal to enhancing the reputation of the Music Department, raising the level of professionalism and creativity through his beautiful and exciting piano performances. In addition, he traveled throughout the world, spreading the reputation of Ouachita and bringing back to campus the world of music. He invited to campus inspiring performers who were his personal friends; he added courses to the curriculum such as Piano Seminar; he arranged joint faculty recitals devoted to anniversaries of composers; and he arranged for concert conversations before performances, helping audiences to be informed about the music.

Early in the summer before his arrival on campus, David had said to me, “Let me know what events I should attend and I will arrange to be there.” So I told him, “Attend the Faculty/Staff Banquet this first year and you will not have to go ever again.”

So he came—and sat at a table about three feet in front of where the Faculty Quartet stood to sing. No expression crossed his face during the performance—neither pleasure nor pain. David never mentioned the experience for more than two years but finally said one evening, “I cancelled a cruise to Alaska to listen to the Faculty Quartet at that banquet!”

A sense of history

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ut I did miss the sense of history I found in that old building.

Professor Mitchell began his career at Ouachita in 1909 and retired in 1949. Though Mitchell had been gone for years when I arrived on campus, two of his students were members of the faculty. Evelyn Bowden and Virginia Queen were both students of Mitchell, and Miss Queen had studied piano with Miss Bowden during her first two years at Ouachita before completing her degree as Mitchell’s student. Dr. Ouida Keck, still a member of the piano faculty, was a piano student of Virginia Queen and studied organ with Evelyn Bowden. The careers of those four members of the piano faculty span virtually the history of the music department at Ouachita. It is very rare in the academic world for faculty to give

An outstanding reputation

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he excellence of the music program at Ouachita can be measured in the many outstanding performances, the successes of our graduates and our reputation throughout the region from the 1920s to the present. Mention Ouachita and someone will immediately respond, “Oh yes, I have heard that Ouachita has a wonderful music program.” With only 161 undergraduate students, the Music Division

Dr. George Keck, a longtime professor of music, was named professor emeritus in 2011.

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lived on almost as if he were still present in his former studio.” recently produced a complete opera in a foreign language with orchestra, produced a Broadway play with orchestra and presented Orff’s Carmina Burana. All of these long, demanding works were prepared during one academic year while carrying on the many other activities of the Music Division. And the performances were all truly excellent as measured by any standard.

The instrumental area has also developed an outstanding and renowned program. When Dr. Francis McBeth first came to Ouachita in the early 1950s, there really was no marching band and no instrumental area. At the beginning of the fall semester of his first year, Dr. McBeth relates that he went through the dorms asking anyone he met, “Have you ever played in the band?” If the student answered yes, he offered a scholarship there on the spot to play in the band. He managed to field a band that fall, and Ouachita has had a marching band ever since. Marvin Lawson continued to build the program, and Dr. Craig Hamilton has guided the instrumental area to establish a Wind Ensemble, jazz band and numerous instrumental ensembles. The Wind Ensemble has received very favorable reviews for their CD recordings. My favorite endorsement came from a music department chair from Ohio at a recent National Association of Schools of Music annual conference. As he sat down next to me, he read my name badge. His face lit up and he said that he knew Ouachita because he had received a CD recording of the Wind Ensemble. He went on to state, “You must have an outstanding instrumental program because that CD is incredible.” You can’t beat that for publicity!

The Music Division’s graduates are very successful because they are prepared for the real world. A recent Ouachita student applied for the graduate music program at a major university and was accepted. After taking the entrance exams in theory and history, the student was crossing the campus of her new university when she met a man who stopped her and asked her name. When she told him, he said, “Oh, yes. Where did you get your undergraduate degree?” She was able to tell him Ouachita Baptist University. He then told her he was the dean of the School of Music, and that she made the highest scores on the entrance exams of any student. He never forgot who she was, and her reputation at that school was made.

Ouachita’s first Pew Scholar was a double major in music

Even Dr. Keck couldn’t resist a piano bash fundraising event.

and history and received a Pew Fellowship for graduate study in musicology. He also quickly earned a reputation for himself by sailing through the entrance exams and by working with one of the leading musicologists in the nation. He is now a professor at a major university where he has won multiple awards for teaching excellence.

I have experienced the sad loss of three colleagues in music during my years at Ouachita. The first came within three weeks of the beginning of my first semester here when David Scott suffered a heart attack and died in the middle of the night. The second came with the death of Charles Wesley, whom I had known as a fellow student at the University of Arkansas and then as a colleague at Ouachita. On the last day of final exams in 1979, he collapsed on the stairs between the second and third floors of Mabee. He was gone by the time he was discovered. Charles was the campus intellectual, a gifted musician and inspiring teacher. David DeArmond, who had been one of my students in Music Lit, also died of a heart attack in the middle of the night. He was still so 87

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young with his career as a choral conductor and teacher ahead of him.

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University with my wife, Ouida. In spite of the fact that Tom and others believed that we would not survive in China with the dust and pollution, I returned to Ouachita almost as devoted as Tom. The following spring Tom organized a Faculty Seminar at Peking University with five professors who traveled together to China to read papers in a seminar setting on the topic of American culture. In attendance were faculty and students from the English language program. Tom asked me to assume responsibility for the seminar for 2000, and I continued to organize the event annually until 2007. In all, approximately one-third of the Ouachita faculty traveled to Beijing to participate in the seminars. In addition, several faculty members spent a full semester teaching as exchange professors at Peking University.

That program was a fantastic opportunity for Ouachita students and faculty to visit a part of the world that many people will never have the chance to see. It was also a wonderful opportunity to see our colleagues in a professional setting as experts in their fields and to become acquainted personally with so many excellent scholars and teachers outside our disciplines.

I once had a colleague on the faculty who said to me that the only thing that mattered was Ouachita as an institution. But I disagree. I think that the only thing that matters are the people whose lives are connected because they pass through the beautiful grounds, classrooms, dorms, chapel and hearts of those of us lucky enough to be in this place.

I often think about how my life is connected to Ouachita in so many different ways. I feel that it has not been that long since L.H. Mitchell came here when time is considered in terms of his connection to Evelyn Bowden, hers to Virginia Queen and Ouida’s to Virginia. And in the forty-two years that I have been a member of the faculty, I have enjoyed so many meaningful connections to my colleagues and students. I continue to enjoy those special relationships. That is why I am still here.

Memorable Ouachita moments

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had the pleasure of participating in two of the most original and inspired programs at Ouachita. Both of them were due to the enormous creativity of Dr. Tom Greer. Tom and Lavell Cole conceived and planned the curriculum for the course, Folkways of the Red River Region. The course was taught annually during the first summer session but not on campus. It was taught in Hempstead County, mostly in the historic area of Old Washington State Park.

This interdisciplinary course included history, geology, politics, music, art, architecture, creative writing, business and religion.

Paul Hammond and I taught the music section until Paul left the faculty, and I taught it alone after that. We met for music classes in the sanctuary of the First Presbyterian Church where there was a piano available. Tom and Lavell took the students all over southern Arkansas to meet artists and craftsmen who preserved traditional folk life of the region. Tom enjoyed driving the van while traveling down dirt pig trails with brush scraping the sides and top of the van, all the time talking and looking at Lavell or the students instead of the road ahead.

Students in the course included not only our OBU undergraduates but students from other universities, public school teachers, residents of Old Washington and many who took the course simply for enjoyment. I still hear from former students in the class that this was the best course they ever had.

The other program was also the result of the creative energy of Tom Greer. In the early 1980s, Ouachita had entered the world of international studies under the guidance of Dr. Trey Berry, who had arranged for a professor to spend a year teaching in Guangzhou, China. Tom and Angie Greer spent one year there, and Tom spent the rest of his life with one foot in Arkansas and the other in China.

Tom was the first professor from Ouachita to travel to Peking University with a group of students for summer study; he was the first to spend a semester at Peking University as an exchange professor. In all, he traveled to China nineteen times.

In 1998, I was chosen to accompany the students to Peking

Dr. George Keck, named Professor Emeritus of Music in 2011, is a graduate of the University of Arkansas and the University of Iowa. Joining the Ouachita faculty in 1969, he has served as the Addie Mae Maddox Professor of Music and chair of the Division of Music.

“The Music Division’s graduates are very successful because they are prepared for the real world.”

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Relationships Form Common Thread

By Dr. Deborah Root

was when I was home visiting my parents. It was proof that you’re never too old to have your work hanging on your parents’ refrigerator. It was right up there with the grandchildren’s band photos.

My Ouachita career began in 1985 when my dear friend Andy Westmoreland, who would later become Ouachita’s fourteenth president, hired me to be his secretary for Student Support Services and the Ouachita Student Foundation. In fact, one of my first jobs was to help coordinate one hundred birthday parties around the world in celebration of Ouachita’s centennial. I am forever grateful to Andy and to Ouachita’s twelfth president, Dr.

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recent development office mailing included a quote from me which stated, “My students don’t come into my life for just a semester, or even four years. They become part of my life and my family. The relationships developed at Ouachita are not for a short time— they are for a lifetime.”

The first time I saw this in print Jeff and Deborah Root work together on a publication project during their years as Ouachita students. He was editor-inchief of The Signal and she was editor of the Ouachitonian yearbook.

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“One of my first jobs was to help coordinate 100 birthday parties around the world in Daniel R. Grant, for opening the door to my career path.

Two years later I became news bureau director and sports information director. While I enjoyed my job, and my husband, Jeff, enjoyed teaching at Arkadelphia High School, we decided if we were going to pursue our doctoral degrees, it was time. We left Arkadelphia in 1989 to attend Oklahoma State University. After graduating in 1991, we were blessed to find ourselves back in Arkadelphia, and both with jobs at Ouachita, thanks to Andy and Ouachita’s thirteenth president, Dr. Ben Elrod.

A photo of Dr. Root’s first While I have had a variety of jobs trip to New York to take in my twenty-five years at Ouachita, one students to a journalism common thread has been the relationships convention remains a reminder of eventual with students and colleagues, and how success and tragedy those individuals have been a blessing faced by students. to me and my family.

recommendation from Andy Westmoreland for my acceptance to the doctoral program at OSU. Let’s just say he was not kind.

He used words like “irresponsible” and “incompetent.” OK, so it’s not the one he actually sent, but I was thrilled to find that piece of history from our friendship.

I remember the first time I walked in the Ouachitonian office and met my first yearbook staff when we returned in 1991. Little did I know that the relationships built through long nights of meeting deadlines and road trips to journalism conventions would become key memorable moments.

I have a photo from our first trip to New York to take students to the Columbia Scholastic Press Association Convention. Jeff and I had attended the same meeting as students, and now we were the sponsors. The picture was taken outside the WABC headquarters in New York following a tour led

by Ouachita alumnus and WABC videographer Kelvin Story. When I look at that picture, I don’t just see faces with names. I see relationships.

In that photo is Jennifer Tolbert Byrd, a former Signal editor and friend who would later serve as news bureau director at Ouachita. Also in that picture is Rachael Ward Talley, who edited three editions of the Ouachitonian and who was not only my editor, but who would become a colleague in the development office and a dear friend. Five years ago, Rachael died in an accident at her home, and I miss her every day. Since the first day I met her in that fall of 1991, she taught me to smile in adversity, to laugh daily and to always be kind to others. As professors, we are often encouraged to be mentors and role models. With Rachael, the role was often reversed.

The profession

My students

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hen I served as news bureau director and SID, I was working in the same Flenniken Hall where Jeff and I met as students. And I was working alongside my major professor and mentor, Dr. Bill Downs. While I did know what a first down was, I had to learn to keep basketball stats so that rebounds equaled missed shots. And this was before computers did all the math for you.

Jeff was on the radio broadcast team, so we spent our weekends with student statisticians on road trips from Weatherford, Oklahoma, to Abilene, Texas. We shared stories and became family around red-checkered tables at local cafes and we endured (enjoyed) some country music by Darrell Potts on long, dark roads in eastern Oklahoma.

It was hard to leave Ouachita and the students and friends we had made and pack our U-Haul for Stillwater.

I recently rearranged my office and came across a letter of 90

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celebration of Ouachita’s centennial.”

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had to step outside my comfort zone, which has reinforced a very important point we make in the class—that being an educated person is not something you ever attain; we are always learning. ost of my career at Ouachita has been in administration, And it is teaching in the CORE curriculum that has allowed while teaching one class a semester. Five years ago, as me to build relationships outside my department. The Liberal we said goodbye to Andy and Jeanna Westmoreland and we Arts faculty meets each week to discuss the next week’s readings welcomed Ouachita’s fifteenth president, Dr. Rex Horne, I and to offer ideas on how to present the material. Those Monday transitioned to full-time faculty, which has challenged me to grow afternoons with colleagues from across campus are both stimulating in my teaching field and as an educator. and refreshing. At commencement last year, I watched my first Soon after this change, Dr. Downs retired after forty years Liberal Arts class walk across the stage. They were from majors of service to Ouachita, and I stepped in as chair of the Mass across campus, but we all had that common experience in class Communications Department. I first met Dr. Downs when I was their freshman year. a junior in high school and attended the high school journalism Yes, I love meetings. While some complain of too many workshop he sponsored each year. It was also during this time meetings and an overabundance of committees and task forces, that I met my friend and colleague for over twenty years, Mac I thrive on being locked in a room with colleagues as we discuss Sisson. When I returned to Ouachita and began teaching in the goals and strategies—and try to solve all the world’s problems. I’ve department, I mistakenly addressed had the privilege of serving on Dr. Downs as “Bill,” to which he numerous committees, but two replied, “It’s Dr. Downs to you.” more recent appointments have To which I replied (fresh from a been most rewarding as Ouachita doctoral degree), “It’s Dr. Root to prepares for a new era in its you!” And I would often remind history. him, jokingly, “Dr. Downs, we The University Committee don’t yell at our students!” meets weekly to discuss everything Serving as department chair in from tenure and promotion to the midst of university assessment university policy, and it’s exciting and accreditation has been to be part of the decision-making challenging and rewarding. It’s process in these areas. Once again a privilege and blessing to lead a I am able to interact with faculty wonderful team of colleagues in and administrative staff from outlining our department’s goals, across campus. While important Dr. Bill Downs, a mentor to hundreds of students over the years, taught strategies, assessment and growth. business is being conducted, mass communications at Ouachita for more than forty years.

And while it’s important to outline friendships and relationships are all of these areas on paper, it’s all about the students we teach and formed. send out into the world prepared to be professionals who will make In the summer of 2010, I had the opportunity to serve on the a difference wherever they serve. writing team for the Self-Study and Strategic Plan in preparation In addition to teaching courses I am most comfortable with, for the university’s accreditation visit from the Higher Learning such as Feature Writing and Publication Design, I have had the Commission. Those summer Wednesdays with Randall Wight, privilege of teaching freshmen in the Introduction to the Liberal Stan Poole, Tim Knight and Trennis Henderson were immensely Arts class. Along with the students, I have read and discussed rewarding because we were at the center of presenting Ouachita’s Tolstoy, Plato and Locke. I have asked the questions: “Why are we current story, while outlining goals and strategies for the future. I here?” “How do we learn?” and “How do we live responsibly?” I’ve often reflect on what a huge responsibility this has been, but at the

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same time I count it a blessing to be part of planning for Ouachita’s future.

Whether it is helping students redesign their hometown newspapers in Publication Design class, or working on Criterion 5 of the Self-Study Report, I continue to gain opportunities at Ouachita to grow and learn, and to stretch myself professionally.

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were our children. For the past sixteen years, they have been great brothers and sisters to Abby. Her first walk down the aisle as a flower girl was in 1998 for the wedding of our Signal editor, Chris Bosen. That was her first of six weddings, and each one was very special for our family.

Those late nights in the Signal and Ouachitonian offices taught Abby at an early age what AP style was to the point we had to teach her AP was not acceptable in her high school English classes!

One of the most rewarding aspects of raising a child at Ouachita is the influence the students have on raising that child.

Abby’s childhood memories will include never missing a Tiger Tunes show, spending the night in the dorm with Maggie Taylor, and discipleship studies with Emily Jackson.

While Abby has traveled the country with our students, it was relationships built on the Beehive hand-me-down couch in the yearbook office that I cherish the most. It was there that my yearbook staff members Erin Smith and Nicole Mealer talked with Abby about what it means to be a Christian. It was after several weeks of questions and answers that Abby asked Jesus into her heart. And, yes, the girls were at her baptism and gave her a Bible to mark the occasion.

Jeff grew up in Ouachita Hills and was a faculty kid for part of his childhood. We consider it a privilege and a blessing for our family to now reside in Ouachita Hills, in a house once owned by the Elrods and surrounded by homes of past and current Ouachita faculty members.

We can walk to a football game, hear the afternoon band practices and see the soccer games from our front window.

We are blessed.

My family

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ince returning in 1991, I have served as adviser of the Ouachitonian yearbook, and Jeff has served as adviser of The Signal newspaper. Ironic, since we met as students at Ouachita when I was the yearbook editor and he was a semester away from becoming the newspaper editor. We always told our parents we had a working relationship, and since he is now my dean and I’m his department chair, the same holds true today. We’ve been married for twenty-nine years, and our office doors are some fifteen feet apart.

I count it a blessing to get to come to work with my husband, attend colloquia and committee meetings, share class notes and teaching strategies, and at the end of the day, perhaps go home, or more often than not, attend a lecture, dinner or ballgame.

Our students have always been part of our family. Since our early days at Ouachita, we’ve served lasagna to new student groups just minutes after their parents left them to begin college life.

Traditions also include staff parties for Halloween, Christmas and end-of-the-year cookouts at the Root house. More recently, an Oscar-watch party has been added to the list, complete with students dressing as their favorite actor/actress and walking the red carpet.

For almost ten years, Jeff and I worked with the Ouachita Student Foundation (both former OSFers), and I continue to serve as sponsor of the EEE women’s social club. As an alum, I recently attended the Homecoming EEE Tea, and it was quite a revelation to see that many of my EEE sisters now have daughters who are club members.

Before our daughter, Abby, was born in 1995, our students

Dr. Deborah Root, chair of the Rogers Department of Communications, holds both bachelor’s (1981) and master’s (1983) degrees from Ouachita Baptist University and a doctorate from Oklahoma State University. She has served twenty-five years in staff and faculty positions at Ouachita.

“It’s all about the students we teach and send out into the world prepared to … make a difference wherever they serve.”

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Joyfully Surprised

by Ouachita

By Dr. Amy Sonheim

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hen my husband, Doug, and I joined Ouachita’s faculty nearly twenty years ago with our 3-year-old Joe and our 6-month-old Will, our best friends from college and graduate school traveled from their faraway homes in Massachusetts, Oregon and Ohio to check out what a town called “Arkadelphia” might offer.

While two of the three were certain they could never make the switch to a small, south Arkansas community, my Buckeye friend was a bit more upbeat. “Lake DeGray is nice,” she encouraged.

Although I had grown up in the South (even in a town half the size of Arkadelphia), in pursuing our PhDs, my husband and I had grown accustomed to the joys of variety—so accustomed that, as strange as it sounds, in my first couple of years in Arkadelphia, I experienced reverse culture shock. In the wake of those first tremors, I, like many of our international students and missionary kids at Ouachita, found myself missing familiar food. So, in a weak, lamentable moment, I crooned this country-western original to the since-disbanded Ouachita Women’s Club: “I moved to Ar-kan-sas from Mi-zourah— Thought that it would be just one state … down— But, I had a rest-less-ness and long-ing— Be-cause there was no ba-gel shop in … town!

Ba-gel shop—we’d smoke salmon ’til we dropped, ‘Have some lox; pass some more cre-am cheese—’…”

Dr. Amy Sonheim enthusiastically participates in a ropes course during a retreat with honors students.

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“In The Bugtruck, it is hard to determine if one’s work becomes one’s passion misunderstood the song, worried that Ouachita had gone liberal with its latest hire. “Amy who?” they wondered. “Sonheim?”

outside of Ruston, Louisiana. Crowning these ventures was my first-time reading of literary masterpieces, elbow to elbow with absolutely brilliant students, one of the most rewarding ways for me to understand James Joyce’s Ulysses and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. Less surprising is that these same remarkable students have grown into remarkable colleagues, PhDs themselves hailing from Massachusetts, Emory, Rice and St. Andrew’s.

Rich, unexpected experiences

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ctually, I was the one who early on misunderstood Ouachita.

When I was a young PhD with a fresh dissertation in nineteenth-century British Literature and Art History, hired to teach for the English Department, I mistakenly thought I would be among those bringing variety to campus. In fact, Ouachita has brought me time and again rich experiences in the unexpected.

One night, the doorbell rang. Three French tennis players, replete in toques and aprons, were door-to-door selling, not bagels, but even better, hot loaves of bread—authentic French bread in Arkadelphia. One faculty colloquium, Californian chemist Dr. Randy Miller, who lived across the street from me at the time, performed science experiments as if performing acts of magic. For months afterward, on my office wall, I kept the cellular structure of sucrose, designed amazingly in geometric balance. One birthday, for Zimbabwean philosophy professor Isaac Mwase and his wife, Ruth Anne, my friend Cindy Phillips staged a luau at a Mongolian yurt that her husband, Eric, had built in Cedar Grove. And then, there was the unforgettable surprise: During the theater department’s run of Grapes of Wrath, Eric Phillips and Scott Holsclaw made it rain—on stage. Yes, my Ohio friend had relocated to New Jersey, only forty-five minutes away from Broadway, but—surprise, surprise—my family and I were only five minutes away from Beckett, Stoppard, Pinter, Shakespeare, Pirandello and Ives, staged one block from our front door.

Expected to teach, I was unexpectedly given semesters to learn.

I took Russian from Dr. Irene Trofimova, French from Dr. Jan Duncan and Advanced Grammar from Dr. Susan Wink. Byron and Amy Eubanks, lifelong friends, but also in the departments, respectively, of philosophy and biology, taught me how to kayak and canoe, transporting me to the exotic Cossatot River or toting me to the milder Caddo in their own backyard. My thirst to study grew unbounded, as Ouachita financed conferences for me to present and receive research in Canada, Scotland, France, China, and even an abandoned nineteenth-century utopian community

Learning to expect the unexpected

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t a Baptist college, I naturally expected to learn also about God’s love, but I did not expect to learn about His redemptive grace via the Theatre Department. Again, my close experiences with Ouachita’s theatre program have been providentially timed and completely unexpected. During a particular icy patch in my younger parenting years, I suffered, as many women do, a miscarriage. The way I responded to the loss was by being unable to face the bright sanctuary of the church;

As director of the Carl Goodson Honors Program in 2007-2010, Dr. Sonheim served as a mentor and encourager to Ouachita’s honors program students.

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or one’s passion becomes one’s work.”

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whole venture was that, at Ouachita, my colleagues and students representing three separate departments—Music, History and English—brought their own enthusiasm to the project. For a packed house with a reception to follow in the art gallery, inter-disciplined faculty and students performed Sitwell’s Façade on September 29, 1998. Craig Hamilton conducted the chamber orchestra and vocalists. Not only could Craig finesse William Walton’s daunting modernistic rhythm that shifted as unpredictably as a Groucho Marx punch line, but he was also jazzed at each of the extra rehearsals. Our own then newly hired professor Caroline Taylor played her saxophone in McBeth as if it were Carnegie Hall.

History professors Jim Caudle and Pamela Edwards syncopated hornpipes and waltzed lullabies. English students Corey Green (now a poet himself), Myles Werntz (now a professor himself) and John Thomas Smith (then and now an actor) polkaed, yodeled and fox-trotted Sitwell’s verses, as if the lines of poetry tripping off their tongues were dance partners supported by their stance. Finally, Debbie Pounders and Johnny Wink served as rhapsodists from my own English Department.

I was drawn, however, to the dark shadows of the theatre. Two weeks into the grieving, I attended Ouachita’s Grapes of Wrath, and lo, the final act focused on Rose of Sharon. Rose of Sharon, expecting for the whole plot, at the end, loses her child stillborn.

Redeeming the life she lost, she chooses to sustain a dying stranger. The lesson was not lost on me. I filled my empty hands with applause, lauding the experience as if I were a patron of the art of living life well.

When I was director of the Carl Goodson Honors Program from 2007 to 2010, I was moved to applaud the unforeseeably exhilarating students’ work. With beauty as sweet as the molecular formula of C12H22O11, the senior Scholars Day presentation of mathematician Austin Phillips, “3n + 1: A Deceptively Simple Problem,” moved me to tears. In high school algebra, I had wept over the rigors of math, yet never before had I wept at the elegance of numerical rigor. It wasn’t only Austin’s sleek analysis, but also his poignant delivery that I found so heartrending.

For me, Scholars Day—the day on which Ouachita students showcase their discoveries in diverse academic disciplines—is an eye opener to all the surprising studies that occur weekly. Ouachita, located in the river bottoms of the rural South, is as fertile as ever in surprisingly gifted students. I find myself applauding welldirected films, well-run basketball plays, spine-tingling arias, artfully painted canvases, sensitively tutored children, enthusiastically organized dance numbers, velvety spoken languages, superbly prepared broadcasts, clearly laid-out newspapers, well-thrown pots, award-winning experiments, carefully analyzed nutritional strategies, professionally rendered therapy, fast-paced soccer, nationally ranked swimming, unbelievable instrumentalists, masterfully designed logos, life-improving psychological research, and, my favorite, wellwritten essays. The students set the bar of surprise high. By working with these types of students for the past two decades, I have been shaped, ironically, into a teacher who expects the unexpected.

By 1998, in fact, I expected that Ouachita could offer me unprecedented collaboration with talented faculty across campus.

“Dream big,” Trey Berry used to tell his honors students. At Ouachita, my dreams grew bigger. My lifelong dream had been to produce Dame Edith Sitwell’s poetry spoken animatedly to accompanying chamber music: Façade. The best surprise of the

Life in “The Bugtruck”

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o one on campus cultivates an air of surprise more than our English Department. My English colleagues have thrown themselves the gauntlet of surprising each other daily as often as possible. In fact, our term of endearment for the English Department, “The Bugtruck,” is based on an actual daily occurrence in which Johnny Wink used to literally jump out of a closet to surprise Tom Greer.

When Johnny Wink tells the story of how The Bugtruck became our name, one feels the saucy rhythm of the place: frenzied salsa with soulful blues. As Johnny tells it, back in the ’90s, he heard an exterminator for Terminix voicing his own blues, complaining about the relentlessness of his job: “At seven at night, I was at home with my family,” says the exterminator.

“Seven o’clock,” echoes Johnny.

“And, I get this call from a lady—at seven o’clock at night,” continues the exterminator, “who wants me to come, right then, and service her convenience store, and I say, ‘Lady, I don’t live in this Bugtruck!’”

The story gave Johnny pause. At the time, Johnny and Tom

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“Scholars Day is an eye opener to all the surprising studies that occur weekly.” were, metaphorically speaking, living in their Bugtruck, our English Department. These two had fallen into a rhythm of beating the sun and each other to work, then trying to outlast both. As Johnny tells it, shortly before five o’clock in the morning, he would slip into the closet next to Tom’s office. When Tom arrived at 5:00 a.m., dapper as Detective Clouseau, Johnny would jump him with a Cato-karate chop. After that, time flew.

There’s never been a dull moment in The Bugtruck because the people I work with are, as President Horne says, “difference makers.” What could have been countless hours of marking time has turned into rewarding days of life lived colorfully. In The Bugtruck, it is hard to determine if one’s work becomes one’s passion or one’s passion becomes one’s work. Johnny Wink, our own mythologizer, has taken our simple roles—that of Jay, Susan, John, Mary Beth, Cookie, Doug and Amy—to recast us as quasi-super heroes with names to match our powers: Jay Curlin is Pickwick, Susan Wink is Railwoman, Johnny calls himself Beefboy, Mary Beth Long is Tonks, Cookie Flora is Crustulum, Doug is the Emperor of Ice Cream and I am Mary Poppins on Speed, but you can call me “Pop.” Before Tom Greer slipped away from us almost five years ago, we’d call him “White Rabbit.” Still throughout The Bugtruck, White Rabbit is felt making our lives brightly different. Gracing our walls are pieces of his Beehive art, and resting in the drawer are his chopsticks.

And so it was that the humdrum setting I thought I was bracing for nearly two decades ago turned into the joyful surprise of a lifetime.

The OBU English Department, known for more than a decade as “The Bugtruck,” was nicknamed by Dr. Johnny Wink, longtime professor of English.

Dr. Amy Sonheim, professor of English, is a former director of the Carl Goodson Honors Program. A graduate of Wheaton College, Baylor University and the University of Missouri, she has served at Ouachita since 1993.

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Annual Scholars Day offers “one great afternoon of sparkling curiosities and wonder” It’s not unusual for an enthusiastic crowd of university students to gather for a football or basketball game. But what about gathering to support fellow students who are presenting honors theses, research projects or creative writing? That’s the idea behind Ouachita’s annual Scholars Day program.

Scholars Day provides the opportunity for students from every academic department on campus to present their best work to peers and faculty. Participants share a variety of natural and social sciences posters, instrumental and voice recitals and a juried student art show as well as papers and theses. The annual event, hosted by the university’s Carl Goodson Honors Program, is a joint effort of students, faculty and staff. Interested students must apply for participation in the program and recruit a faculty sponsor for their project.

Dr. Amy Sonheim, professor of English, coordinated the event for three years in her role as director of the Goodson Honors Program. She describes Scholars Day as “one great afternoon of sparkling curiosities and wonder.”

More than 150 students, representing more than 10 percent of the university’s student population, made presentations during Scholars Day 2010. Categories ranged from Creative Nonfiction and Musical Compositions to Business, Chemistry and History.

Among the many intriguing topics participants addressed were: “Civilizational Self-Identity: Rethinking West-Middle East Relations,” “Approaching Autism: A Documentary,” “Bright Points in a Dark Time: Rescuers of the Holocaust,” “National Debt Knowledge Assessment” and “If Only We Were All June Cleaver.”

Students highlight research projects and other academic achievements during Ouachita’s annual Scholars Day.

Ouachita’s chapter of TriBeta National Biological Honor Society added a new element to Scholars Day 2010 by introducing juried poster presentations for the natural and social sciences. The top three posters, which each earned cash awards, explored: “The Effects of Cannabinoids on Pediatric Tumors,” “Methanol Recovery from Biodiesel Waste Products” and “Genes Involved in Ajulemic AcidInduced Cell Apoptosis.”

As Ouachita embraces the liberal arts tradition, Scholars Day showcases student learning and effective teaching. It offers student scholars an opportunity to take center stage and present quality academic work before an attentive audience of peers and professors.

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Ouachita trustees, faculty, staff, students and guests form a prayer circle as part of the Student Village dedication service held in August of 2009.

| CHAPTER FIVE: TRUSTEE VOICES

Deep Ouachita Roots

By Frank D. Hickingbotham

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n a late summer Sunday afternoon in 1954, I began my association with Ouachita Baptist University. After I loaded my few clothes and personal belongings into my 1949 Plymouth automobile, I began my first trip to the campus.

Ouachita was a place I had only heard about but had never visited.

I am not really sure why I had chosen Ouachita except that I had known since the ninth grade, somehow, I was going to the university.

At that time, the road to Arkadelphia, Arkansas, was two lanes, curvy and large parts gravel. It was not the easiest place to get to from McGehee, Arkansas, approximately 125 miles away.

I should have realized then that the road was just an indicator of how tough my trip to college was going to be. I had very little money and was totally depending upon the Lord to provide a way for me to be there. I had secured all the scholarships and grants I possibly could—band, ROTC and a work grant of 50 cents an hour working for a professor as a secretary. (Thank God I knew how to type.)

When I finally reached the campus, I immediately fell in love with what I saw. I knew it was just buildings, streets, trees and grass, but for me, it looked like an oasis in the desert. It made me feel welcome and at home, even though I was just one of hundreds who would be there. I looked for my new home, otherwise known as North Dorm. It was the oldest dorm and building on the campus. It was a two-story, red brick manse that could not hide its age. This was clearly confirmed when you went into the inside of the old structure. I was in North Dorm only because I had convinced a longtime friend from McGehee, who was a junior by classification, to room with a

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“That freshman year placed Ouachita roots deeply within my soul.” lowly freshman. By doing this, I escaped the freshman dorm that had no character and was a converted remnant of World War II.

be headed. I did not realize that God would someday bring me back to the campus to be an instrument for His glory.

My second association with Ouachita began sometime in the early 1980s. Dr. Daniel Grant was the president and leading the school to great accomplishments and expansion. I remember well when he was challenged to return to Ouachita to take up the leadership role that his father had so magnificently carried in the years before. Times were tough for his father, and they were as tough for Dr. Daniel Grant. It was a Sunday morning in 1969 or 1970 when W.O. Vaught, the pastor of the great Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, stood before his congregation and said that he had talked that morning to Dr. Grant at Vanderbilt University and God wanted him to come back to Ouachita as president.

He told the church that he promised Dr. Grant that Immanuel Baptist Church and he personally would lead a campaign to raise major funding for the school. Some years later, I would meet Dr. Grant and would begin my return to Ouachita.

Remembering my financial difficulties in attending the school, I was led to establish a scholarship fund for students from First Baptist Church in McGehee who desired to attend Ouachita. I knew there would be those who wanted to go, but might have to consider somewhere else because of lack of money. There have been dozens of students in the last twenty-five years who have benefitted from the grants. It was a few years later that Dr. Grant shared with me some pressing needs concerning the library on campus. It was sadly inadequate for the times and reflected on the accreditation of the school. The problem had to be fixed.

Roger Harrod, a longtime personal friend and vice president of development at the school, brought Dr. Grant to see me, and he asked for help for the library. Soon after, a greatly remodeled and expanded library was dedicated.

Forming lifelong friendships

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y freshman year was one of the happiest years of my life. It was challenging in the classroom but great fun on the social side. I am afraid my grades show an improper amount of emphasis on the social as opposed to the academic. Nevertheless, the friends I made were to last a lifetime, and the academics would eventually find their rightful place. I am not sure how it happened nor even when, but that freshman year placed Ouachita roots deeply within my soul. The roots would be dormant for decades but would someday spring to life.

My time as a student at Ouachita was difficult for me financially, and by the end of the first semester of my sophomore year, I had to leave the university for a more affordable Arkansas A&M College in Monticello. It was one of the saddest days of my life when I drove away from the campus, refusing to even look back. It would be almost thirty years before I would return to the school. We sometimes question God’s will for our lives when it seems to take us away from our understanding of where we should

God’s men for God’s time

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t is amazing how God has it all figured out long before any of us realize there is a need. Such was the case when he placed His hand on Daniel Grant and moved him from a most successful career and sent him home to Ouachita. He was the man for the hour and the time. His character and leadership were needed

Frank Hickingbotham and his grandchildren cut the ribbon for Hickingbotham Hall during the facility’s 2006 dedication service.

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for the times. Trust had to be returned to those who had loved and supported Ouachita. His gentle but firm spirit was the rallying point for all. He brought the university back to her vitality and relevance for the generations to come.

The mantle was changed and God brought back another great son from her past—a man of strength and vision who immediately launched her into the last decade of the twentieth century. Dr. Ben Elrod was a Ouachita graduate who had given most of his life either at Ouachita or for the benefit of Ouachita. He had raised millions of dollars to help keep her going when times were tough. He led when forces would change her leadership course and take away her God-inspired autonomy. He would bring great healing between the school and those who did or had loved her.

He was another of God’s men for God’s time.

My relationship with Ouachita took a deeper turn under Dr. Elrod. He was one man whose vision became his obsession.

He wanted Ouachita to move to another level of service and influence. He knew it would have to grow and become more visible in the competitive student world. He listened as a group of former students in the Business Department—led by Mrs. Margaret Wright, a legend among her students—talked and prayed about a greater impact on the lives of those students going from Ouachita into the business world. They felt the department should become a school with expanded faculty and curriculum. Dr. Elrod, Mrs. Wright and others visited with me about their vision and need to bring this to reality. At TCBY, the yogurt company, I had observed the type of students we hired from Ouachita. They were different, and they made a difference in our company. I believed that Ouachita was doing an outstanding job in training Christian men and women to enter the job force. I knew their lives and testimonies would

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A crowd gathers for the dedication of Hickingbotham Hall, home of the Frank D. Hickingbotham School of Business.

make a difference. I was led to provide some of the funding necessary to form the school of business and will be forever grateful to Dr. Elrod and Mrs. Wright for allowing me to be a part of God’s work.

When Dr. Elrod was led to move into the role of chancellor in his retirement years, God had another Ouachita alumnus waiting in the wings. Dr. Andrew Westmoreland took up the role of president and marched forward on the shoulders of the giants before him. Ouachita had continued to grow in quality and strength and continued to establish various academic schools within the university. The School of Business had been the leader in this movement and had grown by bringing more and more alumni into a continuing relationship with the university. The faculty was being enriched with additional programs and opportunities. Construction was going on all around the campus, adding to the school’s beauty.

The School of Business grew with the support of Dr. Westmoreland and the other academic communities. In the early 2000s, I approached the president and Dr. Phil Rice, the 101

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founding dean of the School of Business, with the idea that the school needed a facility dedicated to the work and students studying the business curriculum. They agreed, and discussions were held with other advisory board members of the school who also concurred with the idea. The trustees were favorable to the construction, subject to the financing being raised for the project. This was a task that was embraced by everyone involved and successfully completed with the wide support of a multitude of former students.

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president of the university. He accepted God’s calling to Ouachita and quickly began to impact the school.

We know it is easier to see God’s work looking back than it is to see it looking forward. No one could see the financial storms coming to the economy. The challenges thrust upon the president would be too heavy for many men. I have learned that Rex Horne is no ordinary man, and instead of just holding on, he decided, with great faith, to push Ouachita forward. The changes he has brought to the university, both internal and external, are overwhelming.

The enrichment of the relations with the faculty, students, alumni and church support are historical. The footprint of the campus has changed, and a beauty and harmony exist that I have never seen before now.

When I look back over my six decades of association with Ouachita, I am consumed by gratitude and thankfulness that I found my way to the campus that long ago Sunday afternoon.

The impact it has had on my life will not be fully measured until I go a little further on down the road. I have been blessed in an incalculable way for which I have no explanation. High on that list of blessings is my good fortune of having known closely four of the finest men and leaders who ever served a university. They have been her captain for almost a third of her life. They have endured difficulty, but they have never wavered in their vision, faith or commitment to their calling. The future of Ouachita is solid and exciting. Every generation of the past 125 years is linked to her magnificent future of the next 125 years. My relationship with Ouachita, the students, the dedicated faculty and administration, the trustees, and most of all its presidents, is one of the divine blessings of my entire life.

A new leader for Ouachita

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od doesn’t always follow the norm or the expected. When Dr. Westmoreland chose to accept a calling to another university, the trustees faced a challenging task. There was not an obvious presidential candidate waiting in the wings to be selected as the next president. There was no immediate Ouachita-related choice handy or standing by. The selection committee was appointed by the trustees and charged to find the will of God and follow it to the right man or woman for the times, and they were indeed going to be tough times once again.

The challenge was more difficult than any of us realized at the time. The economic downturn that was to come would be a part of unreal pressures put on the operating finances of the school. God needed someone special to lead Ouachita at this time. I was a member of the search committee and didn’t realize that the new president stood at the front of Immanuel Baptist Church every Sunday and had even baptized my granddaughter and oldest grandson. He had been my pastor and

“The future of Ouachita is solid and exciting.”

Frank D. Hickingbotham, a student at Ouachita in the 1950s, began serving as a Ouachita trustee in 1999. A successful entrepreneur, Hickingbotham founded TCBY Enterprises and Hickingbotham Investments, Inc., and was inducted into the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame in 2006. The Frank D. Hickingbotham School of Business was named in his honor in 1993, and Hickingbotham Hall was dedicated in 2006 in recognition of his generous contributions to Ouachita.

friend for several years. He was a visionary extraordinaire who had demonstrated leadership almost beyond comprehension. He had led Immanuel Baptist Church to relocate the church from a stately location that had been the home for the church for almost one hundred years to a new home in west Little Rock. This was no easy sell to the members, especially with a cost of over $40 million. It was God’s will and it was done. Never had I seen such faith and courage demonstrated by a church or pastor. This was the new leader for Ouachita, and everyone on the search committee quickly came to 100 percent support for Dr. Rex Horne to become the new 102

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Ouachita Tiptoes into Your Heart

By Rita Lewis Spillyards

Rita Lewis Spillyards, who has served as a Ouachita trustee since 2007, fulfilled one of her childhood dreams by becoming a Ouachita cheerleader as a student in the 1970s.

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can barely remember a time when I didn’t love Ouachita. Although I was invited to write from the perspective of a trustee, my personal Ouachita story began long before I knew the meaning of the word “trustee.”

As a young child, I discovered my mother’s 1947 Ouachitonian yearbook. Intrigued by those sleek pages of black-and-white photos, I pored over names and faces. Kathleen Jolly (Burton) was one of my favorites. Her charming dimples punctuated her cheerful name, and I imagined her to be smart and friendly. J.R. Grant was a kindly, yet imposing figure, and I often wondered what exactly the president of Ouachita Baptist College did all day. I was fascinated by the dated fashions and hairstyles (Oh, the hairstyles!), and I tried to envision living in a place called a dormitory, attending classes taught by professors. I envied those spunky Tiger cheerleaders, and I desperately wanted to know the secret meaning of EEE. An alluring introduction

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ar more than a peek into the youth of my precious mother, the yearbook was an alluring introduction to this place called Ouachita. I was pretty sure I loved this school.

A few years later, I was thrilled to actually visit the campus.

Choir festivals and music camps beckoned. Ah, music camp.

Combining a passion for music with the ever-so-grown-up experience of living in a real dorm was exhilarating. I’m smiling as I write. Those weeks were the best; and for me, they sealed

“You step foot on campus and find you have been adopted into a unique family.”

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Dr. Patterson reflects on legacy of Dr. Provine & impact of education

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“I’m happy and proud to have loved

Looking back on my life, I have wondered what people saw in me during my education—not only at Ouachita Baptist College (as it was known in 1947), but also at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

the deal. I wanted to go to Ouachita!

“The Queen of the College World” did not disappoint.

My years at Ouachita were magical. My childhood friend, Beverly Bentley (Kleweno), and I packed up big dreams along with our few belongings and piled them all into Perrin 206.

Donning freshman beanies, we sang to the Tiger with gusto.

Professors, classes, Noonday, Homecoming, Rush, Pledge Week—all contributed to a full college experience. Eventually, I became one of those spunky cheerleaders, and during a solemn, secretive ceremony, I actually learned the meaning of EEE. Lavell Cole challenged us to think until our heads hurt, Jake Shambarger tolerated—but not without great displays of humor— my lack of athletic ability, and Fay Holiman, bless her sweet and patient heart, spared no effort to instill a little culture in all of us. Neno Flaig guided eighteen young women as we chartered Chi Delta, a new social club; and Russ Arnold, as Ouachita professors tend to do, became a great friend while overseeing my major studies.

I never understood why some students went home on weekends; I was too afraid I’d miss something.

I didn’t miss this: Some say girls go to Ouachita not so much to find a husband as to find bridesmaids. I went looking for neither, but found both. For me, one of the great blessings of my time at Ouachita was leaving hand-in-hand with my life partner. And after thirty-eight years, Tom and I think we just might be in this for the long haul.

Beginning with those early glimpses into a treasured yearbook, I have loved Ouachita.

This love came easy and has been returned many times over.

As a student, you quickly learn one doesn’t enroll and simply attend Ouachita. You step foot on campus and find you have been adopted into a unique family—one that cares for you, nurtures you, advocates for your success and follows you forever.

Ouachita tiptoes into your heart and never leaves.

Think I’ve overstated that? Move to a new community or another state. While attempting to adjust, visit a church or attend a business conference where you know no one. Watch what happens when, during an introductory conversation, you learn the stranger standing before you has some connection to

Dr. E.A. Provine, the chemistry professor at Ouachita, asked me in my junior year to be a lab assistant. I certainly wasn’t the smartest student. Virgil Waggoner, a fellow student, went on in life to become president of a chemical company.

I was ill once and missed an exam. When I recovered, Dr. Provine made arrangements for me to come to his home and take the exam. Trusting me, he laid the exam on the table and left the room.

After receiving my dental degree, whenever I was near or passing through Arkadelphia, I made a point to visit Dr. Provine at his home. He made a lasting impression on me.

Also, Mrs. Denty, the cafeteria dietician, hired me after I substituted for a student over the weekend, dumping cafeteria trays. Eventually, she awarded me the position of “head kitchen boy.”

Why did everything work well for me? Was it because I was willing to work? My basis—education—helped me climb the ladder of success.

Dr. J.D. Patterson, a 1947 Ouachita graduate and longtime dentist in Searcy, Arkansas, has served on the Ouachita Board of Trustees since 2005. In addition to funding an endowed chair of chemistry in memory of Dr. Provine and other generous gifts to the university, Dr. Patterson has faithfully supported the J.D. Patterson School of Natural Sciences named in his honor in 2002.

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Ouachita Baptist University for as long as I can remember.”

Ouachita. Suddenly, you’re home, you’re comfortable, and that stranger is family.

Ouachita Baptist College was founded in 1886. It is an understatement to say she has seen change. Her founders might not recognize the current campus or her updated title of “University,” but their hearts, no doubt, would sing to learn of her faithfulness to her calling. She has emphasized “Academic and Christian Excellence” for 125 years, and we celebrate that anniversary this year.

College in the South, a twelve-state region stretching from Arkansas to Florida.

• The Student Village residence halls (which include Gosser Hall and East Village Hall) were dedicated in 2009.

• Ben and Betty Elrod Boulevard and a beautiful new campus entrance were dedicated in 2009.

• Heflin Plaza, which includes the spacious pedestrian bridge over the Ravine, was dedicated in 2010.

• Westside One and Westside Two residence halls opened in 2010.

• Two athletic teams (men’s wrestling and women’s golf) debuted in 2010, increasing the Tigers’ intercollegiate teams to sixteen.

Surely these are blessings of the Lord. They are some of His most visible gifts to our school, and we give thanks. But we also give thanks for the countless quiet ways in which He has touched and continues to touch Ouachita.

We are thankful for a university where, for 125 years, a quality education could be pursued in a Christian environment.

We are thankful for thousands of students who have gone from this place equipped both academically and spiritually to live life to its fullest.

We are thankful for faculty and staff members who have responded to a call upon their lives to invest themselves in young people at Ouachita.

Tom and I were pleased our daughter, Suzanne, chose Ouachita. We are proud that eighteen of our family members are graduates or former students. I’m glad my mother kept her yearbook, and I’m happy and proud to have loved Ouachita Baptist University for as long as I can remember.

Happy Anniversary, Ouachita!

Major campus accomplishments

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hat a humbling privilege it is for me to serve Ouachita as a trustee. Indeed, it is one of the high honors of my life.

Although I certainly didn’t foresee this role as I flipped through those yearbook pages as a child, I am grateful for the opportunity.

My time of service as a trustee has come during Dr. Rex Horne’s presidency. During the years of his able and faithful leadership, impressive strides have been made at our university, and we give God the glory. These major campus accomplishments include: • Ouachita has been recognized by U.S. News & World Report for four consecutive years (2008-2011) as the No. 1 Regional

Rita Lewis Spillyards, a 1973 graduate of Ouachita, has worked as a high school teacher, minister of education and outreach director. She has served as a member of the Ouachita Board of Trustees since 2007.

Heflin Plaza and the Student Village residence halls are among major additions to the Ouachita campus in recent years.

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Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant

By William H. “Buddy” Sutton

stayed the course in those worthy endeavors as well. According to a recent report presented by President Rex Horne to the Board of Trustees, Ouachita has trained 225 of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board personnel currently serving on mission fields around the world, the second largest total among all universities. Additionally, Ouachita ranks No. 1 among schools that have trained IMB missionaries appointed since 2005.

And when one sees the fruit of today’s graduates as they fill pulpits, answer God’s call to full-time Christian service and provide strong lay leadership in our churches here in Arkansas and elsewhere, it appears that Ouachita clearly has held fast to her spiritual calling.

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did not attend Ouachita as a student and cannot match the rich stories told by some about their student days.

My serious relationship with Ouachita began in the Grant-Elrod era when I was invited to join in the great work of Christian education as a university trustee. My understanding of the need for Christian schools was shallow, but I respected the people I knew at Ouachita and agreed to serve.

As I witnessed the passion for the vision of young minds being taught with excellence at the same time they were being spiritually fed by those trusted in the Word, I felt blessed to be a part of it.

It has been my special privilege to serve as a member and former chairman of the Ouachita Board of Trustees.

Over the years, I was pleased to have all of my children, all of my grandchildren and all of my nieces and nephews gain the benefits of the Ouachita experience.

Like many who are old, I have concerns about changing times changing the things I love the most. I grieve about visions lost, energy flagging, mistakes made and hope abandoned. I am duty bound to ask: Has Ouachita lost any of the zeal or sense of purpose that stirred the hearts of those who brought it into being 125 years ago? I believe the resounding answer is no.

When I look at the recognition Ouachita has earned from such prestigious honors as U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking as the No. 1 Regional College in the South for four consecutive years, I am convinced the university has not lost anything in educational excellence but indeed has continued to advance.

When I look at Ouachita’s dominant numbers in the area of training international missionaries as well as the number of missionary children on campus as current students, I believe it has

Consistent Christian commitment

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onfirmation of all that I believe about Ouachita is illustrated by the following story: In 2007, I was privileged to accompany President Horne, his wife, Becky, and their son, Truett, to Indonesia where we were guests of James Riady. The Riady family has earned considerable influence in that and other parts of the world. James Riady explains that in the early 1990s, the Lord touched his life in a special way.

He has responded by building schools and personally teaching Bible throughout the island nation that is home to the greatest number of Muslims in the world.

One of the Riady family’s major enterprises is Universitas Telita Harapan, a nine-thousand-student Christian university in Jakarta. A high priority for our trip was the exchange of ideas about effectively leading a Christian university in today’s world. In Jakarta, Mr. Riady has enlisted outstanding Christian professors from all over the world to work in the serious business of Christian education going on there.

Dr. Horne was asked to address the student body and faculty of Universitas Telita Harapan. As you would know, he delivered a splendid message. Afterward in meetings with the university’s department heads and leading faculty personnel, he repeatedly

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was asked this profound question: How has Ouachita managed to stay the course of remaining Christian when so many of the great schools formed for that purpose have abandoned their original calling?

The questioners had done their homework. They knew the specific history of schools in the United States that started as Christian and lost their way. I was so proud that they, on the other side of the world, also knew that Ouachita was not among those institutions.

With passion, Dr. Horne spoke of faithful, believing people in the past who poured themselves into the dream of providing a quality education in a Spirit-filled environment. He was convincing in his proclamation that those currently answering the call of duty are of the same stuff. Even today they are truly committed to honoring the name of Christ as they remain focused on the pivotal consequences that help turn the world based on how well they do their jobs.

At the end of our meetings in Indonesia, agreements were

Buddy Sutton, a longtime Ouachita trustee and former board chairman, was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1993 in recognition of his distinguished service to the university.

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reached in specific areas of cross support and exchange. It was sobering and exhilarating to hear many of these courageous Christians who had embarked on a relatively new venture declare that they wanted to faithfully account for their opportunity to serve as Ouachita has done.

This may be the best “well done, good and faithful servant” we shall hear this side of the cross. It remains my privilege to serve and support Ouachita as it faithfully serves and supports current and future leaders dedicated to the cause of Christ.

William H. “Buddy” Sutton, a longtime Little Rock attorney with Friday, Eldredge & Clark, holds a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Arkansas. Sutton, who served ten years as chairman of the Ouachita Board of Trustees, also served two terms as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention and chaired the 1989 Little Rock Billy Graham Crusade. Fellow trustees named the W.H. Sutton School of Social Sciences in his honor in 2008.

Dr. Rex Horne; his wife, Becky; their son, Truett; and Ouachita trustee Buddy Sutton visit with Dr. James Riady (center) during a 2007 trip to Universitas Telita Harapan in Jakarta, Indonesia.

“Ouachita clearly has held fast to her spiritual calling.”

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Pursuing a Standard of Excellence

By Alyse Eady

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hen I arrived on campus at Ouachita in the fall of 2006, I was nervous, yet filled with excitement over what the next four years would hold for my life. My experience began as the typical college freshman story: moved into the dorms, became used to the cafeteria food over home cooking, began to make a new set of friends, learned what it meant to live on no sleep and attempted to stay on top of my class assignments without my parents there to force me to do homework.

It was in the fall of my freshman year, when I received word that my precious mother was in the hospital and was suffering from a stroke, that I realized the atmosphere of OBU was anything but typical. One of the reasons I had wondered if OBU was the right school for me was my timid feelings about how small it actually was. However, during that time of my life as I walked through my mother’s health scare, I realized one of the reasons I was growing to love OBU was that it was small enough for me to develop genuine relationships with people I could depend upon as I faced the challenges of life.

When I arrived back on campus for the spring semester of my freshman year, my OBU life began an incredible new chapter.

My decision to pledge one of OBU’s social clubs gave me a sense of a legacy, a heritage rich with tradition, loyalty and sisterhood.

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“My OBU experience is something I will cherish for all my days.”

This decision opened up many doors for me during my experience at Ouachita and even still today. With pledging came all the activities that so many of my fond OBU memories are made of: Tiger Tunes and the countless hours practicing and laughing with my closest friends, intramural sports, date nights, mixers and outings. Those moments at Ouachita are something I will always carry with me and will never be able to replace or reproduce!

horizons and embark on a grand adventure that many people never get to experience.

In the days since my graduation from Ouachita Baptist University, I have approached life with a deep sense of respect for my liberal arts education that I received in the valley of Arkadelphia, Arkansas. My education at OBU gave me not only a diploma; it gave me a values system that has helped me become more of the person I want to be. It has instilled in me a high standard of excellence which I believe has helped me reach some of my highest aspirations in becoming Miss Arkansas and going on to compete in the Miss America Pageant.

My OBU experience is something I will cherish for all my days and always will look back on fondly as I walk through life.

Tiger Tunes memories

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ne of my proudest moments at OBU was being selected as a Tiger Tunes hostess. What an incredible experience! Those months of preparation strengthened my work ethic, stretched me as a performer, encouraged me as a leader and brought a sense of pride and joy to my life that has been so valuable to me in the years since.

Ouachita also afforded me the opportunity to study abroad in Spain. This experience, one of the unique growth opportunities available in OBU’s educational system, allowed me to broaden my

Alyse Eady is a 2010 Ouachita graduate with a double major in mass communications and speech communication. She was crowned Miss Arkansas 2010 and was named first runner-up to Miss America 2011.

She is co-anchor of “Today’s THV This Morning” in Little Rock.

Alyse Eady, first runner-up to Miss America 2011, performs her signature musical ventriloquist act for the pageant’s talent competition.

Photo courtesy of Miss America Organization

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Defining Moments in Life

By Jacob Lively

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remember one day I was sitting in Dr. Rex Horne’s Servant Leadership class and he started discussing defining moments in one’s life. Dr. Horne shared with us how these moments have a huge impact on the path one chooses to take through life. He asked the students to come up with a short list of what defining moments we have faced in our lives. Since I was just 20 years old, I did not have near the experiences Dr. Horne had. However, I do know that the defining moment at the top of my list was choosing to come to Ouachita Baptist University.

My journey to Ouachita was not the normal one. My parents did not attend OBU, I was not coming to play sports and I was not coming to be a Christian Studies major! It was the influence of a friend of mine, OBU alumnus Todd Denton, that really made me look into what Ouachita had to offer. Mr. Denton told me there was this connection made at Ouachita that was like nothing any other school around could offer. Becoming a Ouachitonian meant that I was becoming part of something larger than just a university community. I would become part of a family that reaches back for 125 years. In that family are many distinguished siblings. From governors to beauty queens, the Ouachita family is very rich in history and diversity.

Not only have I personally experienced a defining moment in the past couple of years, but the campus of Ouachita also has experienced a defining moment. As a freshman, I lived in the great dormitory, Daniel Hall. Since the days of Daniel, I have witnessed the construction of a beautiful new Student Village, a new bridge crossing the Ravine, new plazas built and additional

Tiger Serve Day has been a highly successful student-led community service emphasis since its debut in 1997.

“Ouachita has taught me the importance of having a servant’s heart.”

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“The defining moment at the top of my list was choosing to come to new residence halls on the south side of campus. The progress that is being made on the physical campus reflects the progress Ouachita students and alumni are making today. Ouachita continues to grow, even through tough times.

university, a variety of students have the opportunity to serve in leadership positions. Students are being exposed to what it takes to be a leader, which ultimately leads them to being difference makers on campus, in Arkansas and beyond.

Growing with the campus

Difference makers in the classroom

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s I continue to reflect on what Ouachita stands for, it is hard to forget the professors who continue to be difference makers in the classroom. I truly believe that Ouachita has the most dedicated professors around. Where else could you find professors who open up their homes to incoming freshmen and host them for dinner during orientation? Where else could you find professors who care so much for their students and want them to succeed? Where else could you find professors who are not afraid to challenge their students because they know that in the long run it is best for the students? Ouachita professors teach because they feel led to teach, but they teach at Ouachita because they feel called to equip young Christian students to be the leaders of tomorrow.

When one thinks of Ouachita, another major focus is tradition. Ouachita does not fall short when it comes to university traditions. Social clubs are a big part of our campus community. Since the clubs on campus are located only at Ouachita, the clubs are very special and unique. Club pride runs deep through the members. Each club works hard to carry on the traditions that have been passed down from generations of members.

Speaking of social clubs also brings up Tiger Tunes. The excitement that Tunes brings to campus and alumni is clearly evident. Although other schools may have a production similar to Tunes, there are very few that match its energy and impact.

Tunes is another example of the type of servant’s heart our students have. Students run the show, which is sponsored by the Ouachita Student Foundation. The purpose is to raise money for scholarships. The profits from the show make up the majority of the money OSF raises for its student scholarship fund. Tunes is not just a great show, but also promotes a great cause.

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s a student at Ouachita, I have grown along with the campus.

Ouachita has taught me the importance of having a servant’s heart. In fact, not only has Ouachita instilled that theme in my heart but it is reflected among my classmates as well. I cannot think of another university in the nation where over 60 percent of the student body participates in a campus-wide community service event like Tiger Serve Day. Ouachita teaches students to always act humbly through service and to not be ashamed to promote Christ through these works.

One major theme that frequently appears at Ouachita is making a difference. Dr. Horne challenges students to be difference makers. As a freshman, I remember during convocation chapel, my classmates and I were introduced as new Ouachitonians and were challenged to become difference makers during our time on campus. Ouachita has the perfect conditions to develop difference makers. I believe that being a difference maker is not about just making a difference when you graduate. All around campus, students are putting Dr. Horne’s challenge into action.

I have been blessed to serve the past year as Student Senate president. When I decided to run, I was only a sophomore. It took me a long time to decide whether or not running for such a position while I was younger was a good idea. Here I am a year later, though, and I would not have changed my decision for anything. The experiences I have been a part of have made an impact on my life that I will cherish forever. Ouachita has provided me the opportunity to explore what it means to be a leader. Effective leadership is not something that happens overnight. Instead, it comes through hard work, dedication, passion and, most importantly, experience. I have had the chance to gain experience through my time as president. That is something that is great about Ouachita. Since it is a smaller 112

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Ouachita Baptist University.”

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world who are constantly learning and growing. Ouachita’s liberal arts education requires students to take a range of classes across the various academic schools, allowing Ouachitonians to make connections with people from diverse educational backgrounds. This is another way in which Ouachita graduates are set apart from the crowd.

Ouachita not only teaches students academically, but individuals are shaped socially. Coming to college as a freshman, I knew only one person in my incoming class. I had met my roommate only once before in my life. College is a difficult time at first because incoming freshmen are ripped out of their comfort zone and placed in a world that is like no other.

Ouachita creates an environment that is nourishing to students who fear this transition. The people on campus are very friendly and welcoming to students. After living on campus for a little over a month, I felt like I had been part of the Ouachita

The campus tradition that sticks out the most in my mind is the Tiger. Today our Tiger stands on our campus restored to its beautiful white original color. With its tail back in place and a fence surrounding it for protection, the Tiger stands as a symbol of Ouachita’s steadfast perseverance. Through the 125 years that Ouachita has been in existence, we have faced challenges.

However, God continues to bless our university and provide us with steadfast leadership.

As I reflect on the past and all of the great memories that come to mind, the most exciting thing to me about Ouachita is the future. The future for Ouachita is so bright. These are great times to be a student here. Since I have been a student, I have seen our university’s campus be transformed from good to great.

The progress that has been made reflects the vision of our hope for continued growth and strength in the years ahead.

Not only does Ouachita’s future excite me, but most of all it is my future that I am excited about. For many college students, life after college can be a very scary thought.

As Ouachita students, we know that we have been equipped with the tools to go out into the world and be successful as we pursue our dreams.

The liberal arts education we receive helps transform us into students of the

Student Senate President Jacob Lively speaks during the Tiger restoration ceremony as part of Homecoming 2010’s OcTiger Fest activities.

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Tiger Serve Day promotes selfless community service

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community for years. From the professors to the staff to the president, people are genuinely glad to see students on campus.

Environment for spiritual growth

It has become a familiar sight each semester on the streets, sidewalks and parking lots surrounding Ouachita’s Ben M. Elrod Center for Family & Community: hundreds of university students gathering at 8:30 a.m. on a designated Saturday morning to spend the next several hours doing community service projects for elderly and underprivileged neighbors throughout Arkadelphia. In the fall of 2010, more than 60 percent of Ouachita’s student population chose to abandon an extra few hours of sleep to volunteer for such tasks as raking yards, painting houses, washing windows and other acts of service.

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firmly believe that the most important value Ouachita provides is an environment for spiritual growth. Ouachita is not ashamed of the Baptist heritage that comes with our university.

Students take classes to gain knowledge to help them understand God’s Word more effectively. While the classes are useful and helpful, the classroom experience is not primarily what sets Ouachita apart. Unlike many Christian universities, the mission and focus of Ouachita is completely Christ-centered and it is very evident. Everything Ouachita does is in a manner that respects and reflects the Christian values and lifestyle that one should live.

Students are challenged to develop their faith in the time they are at college. I can say that Ouachita turned my spiritual life upside down and gave me such a new perspective of the world. That perspective is focused on having a servant’s heart.

When spring commencement rolls around each May, Ouachita gets ready to release another set of difference makers into the world. These students have been transformed since they were first welcomed and introduced as Ouachitonians. As students cross the stage in front of Cone-Bottoms to receive their degrees, each one walks across as a new person. Ouachita has instilled in them the three core values of the university: They are men and women who possess integrity in their daily lives, have a heart for serving others and are equipped with the tools to visualize their future and pursue it. Although the landscape and students of Ouachita change, nothing will ever take away the underlying goal and mission of the university—to produce educated Christian leaders.

Why? To demonstrate Christ’s love to the community while building camaraderie with fellow students, faculty and staff members in dozens of organized teams throughout the area. Tiger Serve Day, the university’s semi-annual community service event, is planned and organized by a team of student leaders who work together throughout each semester to prepare for the day. Since the program’s inception in 1997, Tiger Serve Day volunteers have logged more than forty thousand community service hours.

As Ouachita “seeks to foster a love of God and a love of learning [through] dynamic growth opportunities both on campus and throughout the world,” Tiger Serve Day is a practical, hands-on example of that commitment.

“Life on earth is about proclaiming the kingdom of God and reaching out to those in need,” explained Nancy Christner, a dietetics/nutrition major from Denton, Texas. “I believe that Tiger Serve Day is a true representation of what Ouachita is really about: vision, integrity and service.”

Jacob Lively, a senior biology major from Queen City, Texas, plans to attend law school upon graduation from Ouachita in 2012. He was elected to two terms as president of the Ouachita Student Senate for the 2010-2012 academic years.

“I enjoy Tiger Serve Day because I love being able to share God’s love with people in the community,” said Emma Smith, a mass communications major from Little Rock. Recalling the emotional response of one woman her team served, Smith added, “You could just tell she felt blessed to have us there.”

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“I learned from my professors that I could succeed not only in college, but in life after Ouachita.”

Ouachita’s Senior Sidewalk honors the university’s recent graduates, beginning with the class of 2000.

Ouachita Milestones and Memories

By Philip Williamson

to start with activities and organizations I had been in, and reflect on Ouachita from there. In truth, I did not and do not love Ouachita because of the things in which I was involved; I became involved because I loved Ouachita, for a number of reasons I would like to share.

First and foremost, Ouachita was home. My immediate predecessor as Senior Class president, Jeff “Juice” Garner, was once asked to sum up his OBU experience in one word. His now-famous reply was “Life-changing … and that’s hyphenated.” Members of the class of 2010 were put to the same question as our graduation approached, and overwhelmingly the word of choice was “Home.”

And for four years, Ouachita was just that, complete with a mailbox, dinner table and a community that felt like family.

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was invited to write about my “milestones and memories” at Ouachita, especially as they related to some of the roles I have been privileged to play there. I would like to think I had a full experience in four jam-packed years as a Tiger, so you can imagine my surprise as I found that writing this essay proved particularly difficult. A few months and several attempts later, I realized that I had been writing from a completely backward perspective; I tried 115

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“Everything good about Ouachita can not just what was on my admissions profile, but things I had talked about on visits and off-hand comments I had made on the phone.

The feeling of being wanted at OBU proved to be a major factor in finally deciding to come here.

During my four years at Ouachita, I sat under at least thirty different professors from across the academic disciplines, and I owe an immense debt of gratitude to all of them. I learned from my professors that I could succeed not only in college, but in life after Ouachita. They taught me how to think, to argue, to write and to ask, “Why?” I discovered that “it depends” is a perfectly acceptable answer, even in physics; that history matters; Pop-Tarts are dangerous; and there is a wide world worth exploring. I learned how to speak French and buy insurance. My professors gave me a love for classical music, and yes, Professor Handiboe, an ongoing love of the theatre.

Philip Williamson was honored as Ouachita’s 2010 Top Academic Achiever.

Extraordinary faculty members

The Ouachita family

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believe there are two things about Ouachita faculty that make them extraordinary, besides being first-class scholars. The first is that professors you do not have in class still care about your academic achievement. It is surprising to look back and realize that I never had a class with Dr. Casey Motl, yet I was accepted into law school because he wrote one of the letters of recommendation and graciously offered to serve as one of my thesis readers. While I suspect he still has not forgiven me for not taking Business Law, Dean Bryan McKinney also wrote one of my letters of recommendation, and spent an inordinate number of hours talking political theory with me. Dr. Joey Dodson mentored me through my senior year, and reshaped my understanding of theology, discipleship and the church; it is amazing what you can cover over a few cups of Starbucks. Whether you take a class from them or not, Ouachita professors still take an interest in you, and are willing to help you succeed in any way they can.

The second distinguishing feature of Ouachita professors is their concern for individual students outside of the classroom. I remember walking into Dr. Scott Duvall’s office, devastated after losing the election for freshman class president, and certain that my already short political career had reached a definitive end. In retrospect, it must have taken extraordinary self-control to listen to

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hat sense of family was something I started to feel before I even considered attending Ouachita. I had the benefit of two parents who are alumni, and trips through Arkadelphia were a common part of my childhood. For many years, my dad’s college roommate, Dr. Lewis Shepherd, worked in the president’s office at Ouachita, and the president was himself a contemporary of my parents. As a result, I spent a lot of time on campus and experienced firsthand the sort of ties Ouachita builds between individuals. It was a weird phenomenon to me: My dad and Dr. Shepherd could go months without seeing each other, but every time they talked it was as though they had not missed a beat. I still look to them and see what a true friendship ought to look like.

I may be more sentimental than most, but having your birthday remembered is a big deal, especially when it’s someone who has no particular reason to do so. During both my junior and senior years of high school, I remember receiving birthday cards from my admissions counselor. And these were not your stock “I hope the day is great, don’t forget to finish your application” birthday cards you might expect an admissions team to send out. Rather, the messages I received indicated that my counselor remembered 116

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be traced back to the people who occupy its offices, classrooms and dorms.” my melodramatic lament with a straight face. He gently reminded me that my life was hardly over, and that I still had a Spiritual Formation test to study for. Dean McKinney is still willing and able to correct my Facebook grammar, while Dr. Tully Borland and I have spent many an hour bonding over our mutual love for the Ohio State Buckeyes.

These are not academics locked away in their ivory towers; they are real people who also happen to be brilliant.

It is virtually impossible to talk about my Ouachita experience without talking about Dr. Barbara Pemberton, who seems to embody all things good about OBU professors. As a teacher, she changed my academic world; her World Religions and Islam classes gave me the interest in international affairs that drives my writing to this day. I have never seen someone so excited about student papers, but she takes a genuine joy in seeing what her students learn. She continues to support my every academic endeavor and even my wild ambitions for elected office. But perhaps most impacting is the simple fact that she took care of me. Regardless of what else was going on, she would drop everything when I came to her office with a crisis (and I use that term loosely). From breakups to my senior thesis to grad school directions and a twenty-three-credit semester, Dr. Pemberton never let me down.

All totaled, I am where I am today in large part because of the incredible professors I had the opportunity to interact with both inside and outside of the classroom. So here’s a big thank-you to the finest faculty around.

Faculty members are not the only ones who make Ouachita feel like home; the staff and administration are a critical part of what makes Ouachita special. Ouachita presidents have a history of being accessible to students, which goes as far back as the first president, Dr. Conger himself. Dr. Horne has continued this longstanding tradition. He has been seen playing upper-division flag football, judging midnight costume contests and hosting many a party for a number of student organizations around campus. He seemed to make a point of not merely being the decision-maker in the office, but being genuinely visible and accessible around campus. That accessibility did not stop at his office door. I made a point to meet with Dr. Horne at the beginning and end of every semester, and occasionally some days in between.

I feel confident in asserting that few administrators anywhere care as much about the well-being of students as Dr.

Keldon Henley. His role as chief disciplinarian is, as one might naturally expect, an unpopular one. That said, in my offices on Student Judicial Council and Student Senate, I have had many opportunities to work through disciplinary and policy decisions with him, and he does not take his responsibilities lightly.

For more than two years, I was mentored by Chris Kear, then the Student Financial Services director, which included some of the busiest and darkest days of my life. The bookstore became my regular hangout spot on free afternoons. I still receive e-mails, phone calls and even Facebook messages from many, many friends in the staff and administration at OBU. Committed Christian university

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would be remiss not to acknowledge that I have had a plethora of opportunities to impact my school, meet interesting and influential people (including two governors and a former president), and grow academically and personally. Ouachita set me up for success, as it does for so many of its students. But at the end of the day, everything good about Ouachita can be traced back to the people who occupy its offices, classrooms and dorms. To that end, Ouachita is an unashamedly Christian university. The presence of God on the campus makes an immeasurable difference. Everything about the school, from the choice of students to the intentional promotion of community, is touched with the school’s Christian mission.

In sum, when put to the question of what I want Ouachita to be in its next 125 years, it would be much the same as what I experienced in my time there: A deeply committed Christian university where the Kingdom of God is the first consideration and students are cared for and given a genuine opportunity to succeed.

This is the place I called home for four years, and what I hope will be home to many students in years to come.

Philip Williamson, a 2010 summa cum laude graduate of Ouachita and senior class president, was named Ouachita’s 2010 Top Academic Achiever. He is pursuing a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.

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there could be a waiting list to get in to Ouachita!

The future years will testify of excellence all around campus.

Our teaching, student life, athletics, facilities and expectations will be marked by excellence. I know of no other word that should more fully describe Ouachita Baptist University. A graduate of Ouachita will cherish his or her education throughout future years and for a lifetime. I know this to be true as I have visited with many who graduated from Ouachita fifty, sixty or more years ago. Our faculty and staff prepare our graduates for the world. The world is not so much shrinking as it has become highly accessible due to enhanced travel, communication and technology.

Ouachita faculty and students deserve the opportunity to know and impact the nations of this world.

By Dr. Rex M. Horne, Jr. We have and will have men and women representing the cause of Christ to the find it interesting to write an essay nations. We will see increasing research and concerning the future. I sit in an office medical treatments in which our alumni that is an hour away from the town of will be leaders. We are relational people and my childhood and youth. I never would committed to public service as educators, have dreamed that I would have had the elected officials and observers of mankind, opportunity to serve great churches, know communicating news, opportunities and wonderful people and even be the pastor of a ideas. Hundreds of men and women will be United States president. innovators in business with great expertise Surely the thought of being president of and a Christian ethic that will shine today a great university would have been a fleeting and in tomorrow’s world. Our people are thought at most. I have so enjoyed my years compassionate and will always be involved here at Ouachita. I marvel at the faculty, in humanitarian efforts while also lifting the students and staff who study and serve here. spirits of all people through the arts. The The point I am attempting to make is that Ouachita of tomorrow will be awesome! while I cannot predict the future, there are While I am currently only an hour away some things I pray will occur in the coming from my boyhood home, my life journey years. has taken me through many experiences.

Historic Cone-Bottoms Hall, Ouachita’s oldest current facilityLeading Ouachita into the future is a true Ouachita is widely recognized as an excellent university. In the coming years, blessing. The foundation for the future is the knowledge of our university should grow regionally and beyond. being constructed today. Today is all we really have, so I invite you In order for this to occur, it is vital that friends and alumni support to join the Ouachita community and me as we embrace today and our mission with their influence and resources. Our greatest dream of tomorrow. limitation is not our vision, energy and dreams but the resources to carry them to reality. I think the day may come that acceptance to Ouachita is a truly exceptional achievement. While we always want to be accessible and affordable, as the quality of our university is learned, more prospective students will apply. We all smile to think

Embrace Today and Dream of Tomorrow I

“The Ouachita of tomorrow will be awesome!”

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“Ouachita tiptoes into your heart and never leaves.”

—OBU Trustee Rita Spillyards “The sense of shared heritage and lifelong camaraderie embraced by the Ouachita family is a timeless treasure.”

—Trennis Henderson, OBU Vice President for Communications “Everything good about Ouachita can be traced back to the people who occupy its offices, classrooms and dorms.”

—Philip Williamson, 2009-2010 Senior Class President “Leading Ouachita into the future is a true blessing. …

The Ouachita of tomorrow will be awesome!”

—OBU President Rex Horne