ALL ABOUT
RELATIONSHIPS
SCOTT DILLARD‘S EFFORTS ARE BEHIND MANY NEW GEMS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTEVALLO, BUT IF YOU BRING THEM UP, HE’LL JUST POINT YOU TO THE STUDENTS THEY SERVE.
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BY MADOLINE MARKHAM | PHOTOS BY KEITH MCCOY & CONTRIBUTED
Scott Dillard is the kind of person who’d never ask that an article be written about him. He speaks softly but with confidence and a calm demeanor. And he isn’t about fanfare; he’d rather work behind the scenes and not necessarily have anyone know what he’s done. “I think we need more people like that,” says Greg Foust, the recently retired minister of discipleship at Asbury United Methodist Church, where Scott is a member. “He models what you ought to be.” As his friend Phillip Romei describes Scott, he’s patient and understanding, fatherly and dependable, authentic and trustworthy. Scott’s too humble to describe himself in those ways, but those traits come
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alive if you ask about what he is quick to talk about—his passion for his work at the University of Montevallo as the vice president for advancement and external affairs. While the bulk of his job relates to fundraising, Scott’s more likely to talk about relationships than numbers. His colleagues will tell you about how a sevenyear “It’s About Family” campaign he led with a goal of $20 million raised nearly $36.5 million to benefit scholarships, campus improvements, faculty development and more. But Scott will tell you about people. He will tell you about having lunch with an alumna from the 1950s who had a dream
for a new performing arts center on campus to replace a nearly 160-year-old building that was never designed for plays but had been serving that purpose, and how he connected her with the right people that, several years later, gave way to a $20 million new Center for the Arts. He’s quick to note that 80 percent of spaces in that center are named for a donor, from the art gallery to classrooms to the black box theatre, all inside a bricked building that is now seamlessly woven into the stately collegiate master plan the Olmsted brothers—as in the architects of New York City’s Central Park—designed for the campus more than 100 years ago. He will also tell you about Mike Lee
