AU Magazine Archives - ��ҹ�糡

Dr. Whitaker’s Calling is His Legacy

��ҹ�糡 — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 20:17:58 +0000

Across campus, a forest of oak trees held pillows of verdant foliage, a testament to strong roots spreading deep and wide, unseen beneath tufts of perfectly manicured fescue just out of view of the men and women gathered in a windowless auditorium. They took their seats in a structure not 10-years old, a mere vapor of time compared to the ��ҹ�糡 oaks. The history that passed alongside those trees could fill volumes—the last of which would mention the building as a brief footnote.

On stage, President Evans Whitaker, just a few months into his 20th year as president of ��ҹ�糡, took a sip of coffee, cleared his throat and began his address to the campus leaders gathered in the G. Ross Anderson, Jr. Student Center Theater. Called the Internal Planning Group (IPG for short), they numbered about 40—barely a handful smaller, it’s worth nothing, than the size of the University’s full-time faculty when Dr. Whitaker arrived in 2002.

It was now 2022, and the men and women in the room, sitting close together, wore smiles unhidden by masks. Their optimism was well-founded. Along with the relief that COVID-19 had largely abated with the arrival of spring, student enrollment was on pace to break a new record (again.) Fear about the global pandemic’s impact on the University’s bottom line had proven unfounded. The expansion of academic programs was on track. New construction was moving forward. Additional faculty members and administrators were coming on board. It was all a part of the message Dr. Whitaker delivered that afternoon—as were the words he spoke near the end of his presentation.

“It’s time to dream again,” said ��ҹ�糡’s president.

Dreams? Evans Whitaker can tell you a thing or two (or three…or four) about dreams.

Here’s one: he never dreamed—there’s that word again— that he’d become president of a university. Or that he would spend 20 years there, helping build Anderson into the largest private university in South Carolina and ushering in its golden age. That’s no longer a dream. It’s his legacy. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start at the beginning. To understand, you need to put yourself in young Whitaker’s shoes. He grew up on a farm in rural Cleveland County, North Carolina. A pasture was his playground, a creek his swimming pool. It’s not a background that normally predicts a career in academia. That would come much later. As a preschooler, Whitaker says, “I probably wanted to be a cowboy.”

He recalls an early childhood birthday cake of toy horses roaming a buttercream pasture, surrounded by a plastic fence—a miniature family farm. Of course, cowboy aspirations rarely survive adolescence. So, by the time Whitaker enrolled in college, he’d traded dreams of horse riding and a 10-gallon hat for a desk job and a three-piece suit, from life on the range to a career at a bank. He graduated in 1983 with a degree in business administration from Gardner-Webb University.

But investment banking “was just a notion,” he says. “It wasn’t a passion. I soon learned that was not really what I wanted to do. Over a period of time I felt that I might be drawn into church work.”

There’s the second dream. His childhood comes into play here, too. Then, as now, Sandy Plains Baptist Church “was the center of community life. Even though our nearest neighbor was not very close to us, everyone was connected because of the church.” Among worship services, Sunday school and an evening program called Training Union—with the steeple bell tolling between each—most everyone in the community dedicated three hours of every Sunday to gathering at the church.

That sense of church as a faith community played a role in young Whitaker’s interest in ministry. And just maybe he felt the need for penance. Young boys bend toward mischievousness and he was no different.

Consider this his confession: “Between Sunday school and worship services, the kids would go out on the front lawn, where there was this big oak tree near the church bell. We were forbidden to ring that bell, but we would go out on the front lawn and throw acorns at it. That’s how we rang the bell,” he said, a hint of a mischievous grin on his face.

Truth be told, that anecdote is not illustrative of the man he would become—or the dream he would pursue. “It’s much more simple. I was really not wired to be a pastor, but I thought God might be calling me in that direction,” Dr. Whitaker says. “Later I realized God was not calling me into it. I was calling myself.”

But he was—and is—a lifelong learner, passionate about education. What if he could combine the dream of a life in ministry with his love of learning?

The answer came at Vanderbilt University, where, in 1986, Whitaker earned a master of education (M.Ed.) from the George Peabody College for Teachers. Later, he published and defended an award-winning dissertation through Vanderbilt’s Graduate School to earn his doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) degree.

By then, the dream was formed. Almost.

“I came to appreciate the fact that Christian higher education is something special, that not only is it a ministry, but that it could be my ministry. Pretty early in my 20s I became interested in the possibility of being a university president at some point in my life. I knew it would be a long time before I had that opportunity. In the meantime, I wanted to work in higher education and get as much experience as I could,” Dr. Whitaker says.

Becoming the leader of any large organization doesn’t happen overnight.

In fact, part of getting there involves putting yourself through a search process for a job that you may not necessarily want. It’s more about the experience.

By the early 2000s, Dr. Whitaker was making a name for himself in Christian higher education circles, publishing papers and serving as vice president, first at Wingate University and then at Belmont University—both Baptist institutions. In the meantime, he was keeping his eye open for a presidential post, going so far as to interview for at least three positions. Never mind that none of them were the right fit for him (in fact, he pulled his name from consideration after each interview.) He was learning about the process and what it took to be a university president. Among the things he learned was that he didn’t just want to be a president anywhere. He was looking for the perfect circumstance. Dreams demand nothing less.

That was his mindset when Belmont University President Bob Fisher told him that a small Baptist college in Upstate South Carolina—��ҹ�糡—was looking for a new president. “I was curious, but I was skeptical,” Dr. Whitaker says. “I went ahead and applied anyway.” At the very least, he figured he’d get more interview practice.

His skepticism was manifold. While in Nashville (where Belmont is located), he’d met the love of his life, Diane. As a married man, he had to be sure his dream aligned with hers. That was the most important consideration, to be sure. (Coincidentally—or perhaps serendipitously—Diane Whitaker’s mother had lived in Anderson years before. “It never occurred to Diane that she would live in the same town where her mother grew up,” Dr. Whitaker says.)

Complicating matters was the fact that the outgoing president, Dr. Lee Royce, had also worked at Belmont; more to the point, Dr. Whitaker had taken the vice presidential role Dr. Royce vacated upon moving to Anderson. “I thought, ‘How likely would it be that Anderson would hire another president from the same job and the same institution?’ It wasn’t likely,” Dr. Whitaker said.

One final factor was more concerning. “In those years, Anderson was not where it is today,” Dr. Whitaker says. “It had just gone through a very difficult and challenging period of financial pressure. I was told that, around the mid 1990s, it was at the point of potential closure.”* Needless to say, Dr. Whitaker wasn’t sure it was the right time, nor AU the right place, as he pursued his future.

But Dr. Fisher, his boss at Belmont, was insistent. “You were made for this job,” he said.

Twenty years of history have proven the wisdom of those words. Yet the job is unfinished.

Indeed, that was a major theme of Dr. Whitaker’s address to the Internal Planning Group last spring. ��ҹ�糡 had answered another challenge. The global pandemic had faded. The campus community was whole again. And, as he so often does, he shared a quote by Emmett Fields, the former president of Vanderbilt University.**

“‘In the building of a university, there is never an occasion for finishing touches. It’s always a matter of laying new foundations.’ I’ll never forget that comment; it’s etched in my mind,” Dr. Whitaker says.

“I’m not an architect and I’m not a contractor. But what we’ve been doing here for the past 20 years is building a university. To build a highly respected university takes a long time. I know that as long as I get to serve here, I’ll be laying foundations.” To the people who serve at ��ҹ�糡, that is Dr. Whitaker’s challenge. It’s also his dream. It’s ours, too.

The preceding article is a preview of the Spring 2023 edition of ��ҹ�糡 magazine, which is being published to coincide with Founders Day Convocation 2023 and in celebration of Dr. Whitaker and Mrs. Whitaker’s 20-year legacy to the University. For more information, click here.

* You shouldn’t get the wrong impression. Dr. Whitaker is very clear in his appreciation for Dr. Royce, the president from 1995 to 2001. By all accounts, Dr. Royce’s arrival came at a particularly turbulent time for ��ҹ�糡. But “Dr. Royce did an exceptional job getting the institution stabilized,” Dr. Whitaker says. “I always want to acknowledge his contributions, because he got the school in a position where we could think about the future in pretty bold dimensions. Had it not been for his work, we would not have had the opportunity to dream big.”

* * In fact, Dr. Fields is, to date, the only person to serve as Vanderbilt’s president. It was a position created specifically for him by former Chancellor Alexander Heard. At Vanderbilt, the highest office is that of the chancellor, a title akin to a CEO. As president from 1977 to 1982, Dr. Fields was, “the chief academic and administrative officer of the university,” according to his 2005 obituary published by Vanderbilt. Such was his influence that, when he retired, so too was the office of the presidency at Vanderbilt University.

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A True to AU Love Story

��ҹ�糡 — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 16:24:46 +0000

We know them as Dr. Whitaker and Mrs. Whitaker. But to each other, they are just Evans and Diane. Two dreamers who were passionate about people and Christian higher education finally found each other on the campus of Belmont University. This is the story about how they met and fell in love. Out of 25 years of marriage (this April!), they have been at ��ҹ�糡 for 20 of them. And they wouldn’t change a thing.

It was 1997. Diane Owen was bustling around, chatting with students as they made their housing selections in the lobby of Freeman Hall at Belmont University. Evans Whitaker had just been hired in the Office of Development and was passing through with his administrative assistant when he saw her, clearly in her element. She was right at home behind the housing table, never running out of smiles and kind words for the students coming and going.

“Who’s that?” He turned to his assistant. “Oh! Well…that’s Diane Owen.”

Diane had started working at her alma mater, Belmont University, right after graduation. She appreciated that her role in the Office of Admission allowed her to meet so many people but disliked not being able to follow up with them beyond their enrollment. The joy of truly knowing and investing in people brought her to her next job as a residence director in Hail Hall. “Evans says he had to go to ‘Hail’ to find me,” she jokes.

Still thinking about the beautiful blonde with the kind smile, Dr. Whitaker kept inventing excuses to talk to her.

“I kind of blew him off, and then he called me a few weeks later and asked if he could take me to lunch. I said I can’t go, students are moving out, but I proceeded to talk to him. He jokes that I was turning him down, but not really. I was not turning him down because I did not want to go. I literally just knew it was best if I stayed on campus. So, we ultimately went to lunch.”

He was smart about it—he knew lunch would feel more casual, with less pressure than a dinner date. However, the date still did not go as expected.

Right before they went out, Diane told her friend she was going to lunch with “that new guy in Development.” Her friend said, “Diane, he’s married!”

“I was like, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ So we went to lunch and I gave him 50 questions. ‘Are you sure you’ve never been married?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you sure you don’t have any kids?’ ‘Yes.’ It turns out there were two new guys that worked in Development, and Evans was not the married guy. But I was super suspect on our first date.”

To take Diane on a date, Dr. Whitaker had to knock on Hail Hall’s lobby door, get someone to let him in, and then use the lobby phone to call up to her apartment on the second floor to tell her he was there. “I love that he got to see what real student life was like. He’d decorate Christmas trees with my students in the lobby. I had all the international students and it was kind of set up like Village Hall at AU. So, I love that he got to see that.”

Dr. Whitaker was not phased by lobby phone calls or unexpected games of more than 20 questions. “First, I told him no, and then I interrogated him on our first date. But Evans has a vision for everything, and he had waited a long time to find me. He was 36 when we got married, and I was 31.”

Though perhaps a rocky start, was it love at first sight? “After I got over the inquisition, I realized he was a very special guy early on. We found lots of similar interests. We both feel very passionate about Christian higher education. We’re very lucky. I started as a staff member right out of college, so I just understood in a very different way. We probably clicked early on because of our faith and our vision for how we could use our personal gifts to make a difference for the Kingdom of God.”

They started dreaming together very quickly, which is how Diane knew things were getting serious. “I think you start talking about the future more and the ‘what-ifs’ more.” The what-ifs and the dreams were big. Dr. Whitaker shared that he felt called to be a college president someday. “So we started saying things like, ‘this is what we’d do if we were at this school.’ We thought that was a pipe dream. We were young.”

To be fair, Dr. Whitaker had grand, romantic plans for proposing to Diane. The proposal was supposed to happen on a day trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee, in a park with a beautiful walking bridge. She unknowingly altered the plans by agreeing to switch shifts with another RD who was supposed to be on duty that weekend. So, when we asked for their proposal story, Diane couldn’t help but chuckle. “It was pathetic. What ended up happening was, I came to his apartment to help him with his car, and he just had it in his mind he was going to be engaged that weekend. So he asked me to marry him in between working on his car and baking slice and bake cookies. I thought, ‘this is pathetic.’”

“I had it all planned and you messed it up!” Dr. Whitaker said.

“So it was not at all glamorous, but in reality, that’s really more true to who we are.”

Their wedding story aligns well with their proposal. It was in the chapel at Gardner-Webb University, in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. A fancy Nashville wedding was more to Diane’s taste, but the health of family members kept their wedding close to home. “Looking back, I’m super grateful. It really simplified everything.”

They ended up staying at a bed and breakfast on the outskirts of Atlanta on their way to the Virgin Islands for their honeymoon. “It was super fancy. In our room, there was a refrigerator with little painted bottles of raspberry tea and water and all of their dishes were painted glasses and it all felt very special. Well, of course, Evans talked them into selling us these dishes wholesale.” Those glasses came with them to Anderson, and the Whitakers use them for events on campus. It’s one small way their love story reflects that special feeling the people of Anderson feel.

Their journey together began with a shared passion for people, a love for God and a visionary mindset for Christian higher education. Now, after 20 years at ��ҹ�糡 and 25 years as the Whitakers, the pipe dreams they bonded over have materialized into a thriving university built on their unique vision for a college presidency.

There are more pages to the Whitakers’ story waiting to be written.

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Introducing a New Brand Identity for ��ҹ�糡

��ҹ�糡 — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 20:23:01 +0000

Consider the acorn: Small. Humble. Full of potential.

Now, the oak tree: Mighty. Majestic. The promise of potential realized.

The ��ҹ�糡 Office of Marketing and Communication has spent the last two years thinking a lot about the acorn and the oak. One reason is that they are cherished symbols for our University–metaphors for the journey our students take from the moment they arrive on campus as first-year undergraduates, to the moment they join the ranks of our alumni family.

��ҹ�糡 President Evans Whitaker often explains the symbolism of the acorn and the oak with an ancient proverb: “Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow.”

It is that beautifully succinct phrase that served as our foundation. With the support and encouragement of the ��ҹ�糡 Board of Trust and its Senior Leadership Team, we are providing a new visual identity for the University.

It is the first comprehensive rebranding effort in several years. And it all starts with the acorn. And the oak.

Since its foundation in 1911, the story of ��ҹ�糡 has been one of Great Academics, Great Faith, Great Purpose and Great Hospitality. Those foundational pillars are represented in our former brand identity that is both beloved and that has stood the test of time.

Make no mistake: The pillars upon which the University was built and continues to grow has not—and will not—change, said Senior Vice President of Administration and Brand Omar Rashed.

“We often talk about the four pillars of distinction, and how they inform everything we do as a campus community. Academically we are comprehensive, entrepreneurial, and we provide a rigorous learning environment. Of course, faith is central to who we are as well; we are committed to the spiritual growth of our students and our faculty and staff,” Rashed said.

“Great Hospitality speaks to the pride we have in providing a warm, supportive environment, and Great Purpose is all about helping our family members find the unique call on their lives,” he says. “Those foundational values remain even as we seek a new, creative way to present ourselves locally, regionally and globally.”

The new ��ҹ�糡 logo consists of updated typography that is cleaner. It has a more modern look and feel, but holds true to the University’s status as a well-respected institution known as one of the top Christian universities in the country.

Our new shield begins with the gospel truth of Solus Christus, represented by the cross. It professes our Christian faith, reinforcing our Mission Statement, Vision Statement, Values and Statement of Faith. That sacred symbol is central to our identity, and makes clear that ��ҹ�糡 is a diverse community that is intentionally centered on Christ.

And that brings us to the acorn and the oak leaf. Adorning the cross, these two symbols are both literal and figurative. On the one hand, they represent the majestic 100-year old oak trees that adorn the University campus. More significantly, the acorn and the oak leaf are symbolic of our students’ present and future journeys as life-long learners, growing in knowledge, wisdom and truth, enduring with strength.

“We are very excited about our new brand identity, and are certain our entire campus community–faculty, staff and students–will embrace this visual representation of what ��ҹ�糡 is, what we stand for as a family and what the future holds for this place we all love so dearly,” Rashed said.

This story is taken from the Fall 2021 issue of ��ҹ�糡 magazine.

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