Despite Fib About Prayer, Westmoreland to Lead Baptist University

c. 2006 Religion News Service ARKADELPHIA, Ark. _ It’s not every day a university president admits he told a whopper to a former governor. Especially when the president is head of a Baptist school. Meet Andrew Westmoreland _ Andy to just about everybody at Ouachita Baptist University, situated in this town of 10,000 about an […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

ARKADELPHIA, Ark. _ It’s not every day a university president admits he told a whopper to a former governor. Especially when the president is head of a Baptist school.

Meet Andrew Westmoreland _ Andy to just about everybody at Ouachita Baptist University, situated in this town of 10,000 about an hour’s drive south of Little Rock.


At the end of May, Westmoreland will leave Ouachita _ a school he has called home as a student, employee, teacher, administrator and president since stepping foot on campus as a freshman 31 years ago _ to become the 18th president at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., which is affiliated with the Alabama State Baptist Convention.

It’s a job Westmoreland said he did not seek and had no intention of pursuing when he was contacted about it last fall by Albert Brewer, co-chair of Samford’s presidential search committee, former Alabama governor and longtime professor of law and government at Samford.

“The call came out of the blue,” Westmoreland said.

Brewer said he’d been given Westmoreland’s name as someone who might have insights about what kind of person the committee should be looking for. After a few more calls, Westmoreland said, Brewer asked if he might have an interest in the job and if he would visit Samford.

Westmoreland declined, but Brewer called again. And again.

“It was during one of those calls he asked me if I would pray about all this, and he told me he was going to keep calling until I just didn’t return his call,” Westmoreland said. “Well, I told Gov. Brewer I would pray _ but I didn’t. He called back and asked if I was praying and I told him yes, but I hadn’t. I had no reason to pray about something I had no intention of doing.”

Brewer persisted and, in October, Westmoreland caved and agreed to visit Samford.

“We really, really got along so well,” Westmoreland said of his visit with Brewer and others on the search committee. “There was a real connection made. … We talked about our visions, about the mission of our schools, about a whole range of things.”

Returning home, Westmoreland actually started praying for guidance. He didn’t hear an answer.

“I prayed and prayed for clarity and didn’t feel I received it,” he said. “Maybe the Lord was a little put out that I had lied about praying.”

After more time and more praying, Westmoreland still felt he had no clear sign as to what to do. Finally, his wife, Jeanna, who is chair of the Arkansas State Board of Education and dean of Ouachita’s College of Education, provided the clarity.


“She told me, `I don’t know what’s going on here, but maybe you’re not really listening to the Lord,”’ Westmoreland said. “And I guess I wasn’t. Here I was, at the same school since 1975, a place I love and could not imagine leaving and in fact was imagining leaving. It just suddenly became clear to me that maybe it was time to go and maybe Samford was the place to go to.”

Westmoreland, 49, eventually interviewed with the Samford board of trustees, met with various groups on campus and accepted the job.

“I will miss Ouachita. It has been our home and it is full of friends, but I’m at peace with the idea of leaving and, in fact, I’m excited about the opportunities ahead,” he said.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Westmoreland grew up in Batesville, Ark., the son of a country Baptist preacher and a hard-working mother, Fred and Elda Westmoreland. He hardly remembers a time when he was not working after starting a paper route in the sixth grade.

His father, pastor of small Baptist churches that didn’t pay enough to meet all the family’s obligations, worked other jobs such as delivering flowers.

“Looking back,” Westmoreland said, “I didn’t realize we had so little.”

Still, he said he lived a “charmed life” growing up.

President of his senior class at Batesville High, Westmoreland was the first in his family to go to college. He thought he’d end up going to the University of Arkansas. But once he visited Ouachita, he never left.


He said he chose Ouachita because it featured an outstanding political science department whose dean, Bob Riley, had been an Arkansas lieutenant governor.

Thinking of a career in politics, Westmoreland did internships in Washington and Little Rock before returning to Ouachita, where he and his wife met and have raised their daughter, Riley, named for his friend and school dean.

During his 30-plus years at Ouachita, Westmoreland has worked in various capacities, including teacher and administrator. Named president in 1998, he still teaches a class in political science each semester.

“It keeps me close to the students, in tune to what they are thinking and feeling,” he said. “It’s easy to become isolated from the kids, too easy, and this keeps me in touch.”

Doug Reed, chairman of the political science department, calls Westmoreland a great teacher and said teaching also sends a message to the faculty.

“It tells the faculty that he knows what they face,” Reed said. “It allows him to talk shop with the guys in a way he could not if he did not teach a class, have to grade papers, have to listen to all the hopes and problems students bring with them when they come into that classroom.”


Westmoreland has been at the heart of one of the most important jobs a university president has: raising money.

Before becoming president, he was head of Ouachita’s development office, where one of his prime jobs was fund-raising. That has not ceased since he moved to his present job.

In all, Westmoreland has raised close to $160 million for the school over the past decade or so. Those dollars have gone to renovate and build classrooms, dorms and labs, construct a cafeteria and update administrative offices.

The key to fund-raising, he said, “is getting people to buy into the fact that they can be a big part of preserving something we all care about _ the university.”

MO/JL END RNS

(Charles Dean writes for The Birmingham News in Birmingham, Ala.)

Editors: To obtain a photo of Andrew Westmoreland go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

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