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Heights of Victory with Scott McDowell · Heights of Victory

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: From the Masterminder Capital World headquarters in London, Texas, this is Heights of Victory, a program showcasing businesses and leaders from across the region.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can expect to hear stories of success with massive adversity and resilience, which, when paired with hard work in a little West Texas grid, culminate in the Heights of Victory.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Heights of Victory.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Jeff Horn, CEO of Mass Rider Capital.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're excited that you've joined us today.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here with my good friend, the president of LCU, Scott McDowell.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Had the pleasure of serving on the Lubbock Chamber with your wife, K, and uh have gotten to know Scott over the years.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: For those that don't know, my wife is a graduate of Lubbock Christian University, played volleyball uh in the late 90s.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, thinks the world of Dr.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Rogers, who I think just recently retired.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: But Scott, we're so thankful that you're here today to hear your story and hear about the mission of LCU.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thrilled to be here, grateful for the opportunity to share.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to talk about Love It Christian, so it's good.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, before we get to Love It Christian, we're going to talk about Scott McDowell.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's not quite as exciting, but that's okay.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, from visiting with you and knowing you, you know, you grew up in Western Pennsylvania, which is steel and coal country.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us about your childhood and growing up there.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we start on the family farm.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Dad built a house on the family farm on his dad's place that had the best views of Western PA.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: About everything's about an hour and a half out of Pittsburgh, is where I spent all my time growing up.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: We did we were in three different towns, uh Ligonier, Franklin, and Cattanning.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in La Trobe, which I like to say the claim to fame to La Trobe is Arnold Palmer, of course.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I said uh Arnold Palmer, Fred Rogers, and me.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the trivia question for you.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: But uh no, God family, Pittsburgh Steelers, and deer hunting is the way to summarize it.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I always joke that that those priorities might change a little depending on the season.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we are getting close to the next Pittsburgh Steelers season.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Any any you, you know, Aaron, I think this is Aaron Rodgers last year, and they got Coach McCarthy back.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny because I was oh, I was so disappointed when they brought in Aaron Aaron Rodgers, and then he's done everything right as a Steeler.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then the same kind of thing, disappointed with Mike McCarthy, but you know, because they've they've had a history, only three coaches since 1969.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, he's an older guy, he's about my age, so you know he's not gonna go 20 years.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh I was disappointed, but I'm excited now.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of like cowboy country, it's always our year.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be our year, but uh I like I like having fun with that.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna blow your mind here a little bit.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Chuck Knowle, Bill Cower, and Mike Tomlin.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: There you go, you knew it.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Good job.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good job.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, but when you don't have many coaches, it's easy to know.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So well, you grew up in the in a in a you know, faith was important in that part of the world, and and you know, steel country, a blue-collar mentality.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, tell us a little bit about growing up and the faith-based yeah, you know, I know that was really important to you and your parents.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Again, dad was raised on the farm, and uh one of the things his dad told him one time is, you know, Clarence, if you just work like hard like you work here on the farm, you'll be just fine.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he got a job at La Trobe Steel.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Cool story about that one time.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna be laid off because they lost a contract, and he decided all the other guys were loafing, kind of just mailing it in that last day.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm gonna work as I'm gonna give them uh a picture of what they're missing, work harder than I ever did.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: He worked so hard, did so much stuff that day, the the boss pulled him aside and said, if you can make it for a couple weeks, I'll put you on salary.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So his last day turned out to be his first day.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: But that was a family lure kind of story that work hard.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you work hard, you're gonna always have uh an opportunity.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that was big.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And mom and dad, uh, they were always people of faith.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: They always were believers in in the Lord, but they got really serious about it right before I was born.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I joke, I've got I've got four sisters, I'm number four out of five.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so they had a seven-year-old, a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and one on the way.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that'll drive it to God like nothing else, I'm sure.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're just maybe out of desperation.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: But uh they they were really heavily influenced by a guy that was a preacher up there that had been a graduate of of Lipscomb University and Fried Hardeman.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: They were both colleges back then.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Freed was just a two-year school.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: So a Christian college graduate was a big influence in my family, really getting serious about their walk of the Lord.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so, my whole life, I'm literally raised in a home where Christ is the center of the home and where Christ centered higher education was valued.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Dad was a metallurgical engineer by trade.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: He did the work of a metallurgical engineer at La Trobe Steel, and he was going to Carnegie Tech back then, which is now Carnegie Mellon University, very prestigious school, but he never finished.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, so he didn't finish, but he was always like, All y'all are going to college, y'all are going to go to a Christian college.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a big part of our lives growing up.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Really idyllic, fun time.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he eventually went back, kind of like another guy I know and got his degree after we'd gotten ours.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's that's right.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll talk a little bit more about your father, Clarence.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Clarence.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Here in a minute.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: But tell us a little bit about your mom.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Eileen, uh unbelievable woman.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, you know, little Annie Oakley and her, she she would hunt with us, you know, and and she could she could shoot.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: She had a lot of fun with that.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what was sweet about it is she hunted because that's what dad loved to do.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: He she loved to be with him, loved to be around him.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I had the classic mom that was the neighborhood mom.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd go home from school when we moved to Franklin, Pennsylvania.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: We lived in town, we moved off the farm, and we had this big old house.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was a great three-story Victorian house.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd walk in and just yell for mom, and she'd come running and just always engaged with us kids, you know, center of attention uh in terms of water fight she joined right in.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: They another family lore story is she got came back from the beauty shop one day with her hair done, got hit with a water balloon, never broke stride, just walked inside, crawled out on the balcony with a fire hose, and got all the kids.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the kind of mom I had.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful lady.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, also part of your childhood, or what how old were you whenever your father decided to go from being in the you know, uh in this from the steel industry to the full-time ministry?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that was that was a big deal.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 1977.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: So he broke his leg real bad in an industrial accident in 76, really almost sheared it off at the knee.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when they did the that's way back in the day before they had really good reconstructive surgery, and they said, you may not walk well again, whatever.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: He was fine, but he had several months to really recover and think about life.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so he was born in 35, so 76 would have been 41 years old.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: He was reflective and he'd always wanted to be in ministry.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I found out very late in his life, he even thought about it as a very young man when they're on the honeymoon dreaming about what they want to do with their lives.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to do ministry.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point he said, you know, I'm gonna quit talking about it, I'm gonna do it.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And though it was wonderful, and we moved to Cattanning, Pennsylvania, which was another Allegheny River town, right, and planted a church there.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he cut his income in half to do that.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you put your money where your mouth is, you kind of put your faith into action.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: We never missed a meal.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: We we grew big gardens, I picked a lot of green beans and we hunted a lot of deer, in part just to, you know, make ends meet.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a wonderful life.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a statement to me, both for mom and dad, about what they valued most.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh, you know, they weren't they weren't all about making the money, they were about doing things that mattered.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit about the interesting dynamic of being the only only boy with four other sisters that had to be interested.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it was idyllic, really, because there was no competition.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I got all the cool hunting trips, went to Maine with my dad when I was 12, went to Colorado when I and turned 17 out there and killed a deer on my 17th birthday.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, we just had all this fun stuff that we we shared, hunting and and stealers, and then I got a lot of mothering, got a lot of advice, but I didn't compete with them.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And like any any family, it was not perfect.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you have conflict with your siblings and stuff like that, but it never lasted very long.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: They'd fight with each other a whole lot more than me.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I still play the role of little brother sometimes, just pick at them.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and I, in all seriousness, uh several years ago, maybe 15 years ago, even maybe 20 years ago, I realized that I was a different person when I was around my sisters.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I picked at them all the time.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, I'm kind of an ir irritating kind of person.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I'm not that everywhere else, but I'll pick at my sisters, and I thought I need to treat them better.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the relationship's just gotten better and better and better.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: We have a daily sibling thread where I've laid down the rules, you can't just like stuff, you know, you have to actually put words in.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: But we have a lot of contact and a lot of fun.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: I I imagine that living with that many feet females, it prepared you a little bit for marriage.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh I was uh again, they had lots of advice about the girls I was dating, and and uh whenever whenever I finally brought Kay home, everybody was pleased.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: But uh no, it was fun.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and it was, it was good advice.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I could kind of, if there was a girl that I was interested in, they might they might help me discern whether or not she had a mutual interest or not.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they could kind of coach me up and give me advice whenever I didn't know what to do.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of good stuff.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit about you know high school and and uh there before you go off to college and what those years were like for you.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so again, we moved in in 77, in February 77, so I was in the eighth grade, middle of the eighth grade.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Crazy, crazy story.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's a gap.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think about sometimes COVID, the gaps that are there with students.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Our school district in Franklin, Pennsylvania, had been on strike the entire year.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: So they went on strike.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: We we came back to school in the eighth grade and had only been there a few weeks.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: They went on strike.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: We were on strike the whole fall.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And they went back like right after Christmas, and so I missed that whole thing, and then we moved in February.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like I there are still gaps whenever I got to college and we were talking about parts of speech as I was studying Greek and some of those things.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I don't know any of this stuff.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I laugh about it.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: But we went from a a town where I I had a lot of friends and knew people and to a place where I kind of got bullied.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I experienced what that's like to get bullied and uh how to bow up and kind of you know take care of business sometimes, but just to deal with those stresses, uh got really close to my dad during that time.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but we moved there and planted a church and went to a public high school.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh again, it was not it wasn't hostile to faith, but it wasn't necessarily supportive of faith.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was a for me uh our whole family life, you know, kind of circled around and and was was focused on the church and and the Christian community, and then I'd be in school and be a completely different kind of set of values in play.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And got along, you know, after got getting over the bullying stuff, got along with my friends and everything, but it was it was the highlights were always going to youth rallies in the summer or going to church camp in the summer.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh you know, when I finally got to Christian college, it was like an oasis in the desert.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And probably that experience has really helped you in your career now that you have, you know, spent your whole life, you know, serving students and student bodies and things along those lines.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: No no doubt about it.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing, I laugh because uh, you know, in terms of church sizes, we live in Lubbock, there's a lot of churches in Lubbock.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Church uh there was small churches, what I grew up in.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we when we planted that church in Cataning, Pennsylvania, we had 18 at the first assembly and six had the last name McDowell.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that tells you the kind of small, but it was so tight-knit, we were always in each other's homes, it was wonderful stuff and kind of the center things.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: As a result though, you as a 12-year-old kid, I guess I was 13, we moved and turned 14.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you get forced into service.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm pulled into you know leading singing, which you don't want to hear that.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but but teaching and being a part of of uh leadership roles in a in a faith setting, yeah, that uh I most kids that age aren't you know, aren't in those spots.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in the in those moments, I kind of didn't like it.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I want to be a little bit of a consumer.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, I was kind of poor pushed into a leadership role at a very young age with peers and everything like that.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that ended up being very formative.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because you go back and you start thinking about, well, where did you learn to do that?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I preached the first sermon I ever preached at 14 years of age.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, the number one fear that people have is fear of public speaking.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Getting up in front of people doesn't phase me.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, that's great.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you finish high school there, and uh you decide to go to a Christian college, Freed Hardeman, and uh tell us about that experience.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the, you know, we'll get to it, but the the you know, this is the first of three different universities that you get a degree from.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: But tell us about your time at Freed Hardeman.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so again, the guy that led my family to Christ had been at at Freed Hardman, he was from Sharon, Tennessee, West Tennessee, and uh he'd gone to Fried Hardman and then went to Lipscomb and was up preaching in Pennsylvania.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so though both those schools were kind of like this, you know, almost uh mythical in proportion.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and dad and mom really uh fell in love with Fried Hardiman in particular.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And dad had intended, whenever, as I said, when he came to Christ and got serious about it right before I was born, he decided, okay, I'm gonna go all in and start preaching now, and had actually gone and enrolled at Fried Hardiman and was gonna sell the house and just jump all in.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the house didn't sell, so that that dream was deferred.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so when my oldest sister got ready to go to college, you know, he literally told her, You can go anywhere you want.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'll pay for Fried Hardeman, which was very convincing to her.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then once she went, uh, all of us kind of fell in line.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So she went, and then the second sister, Kim, went, and then Margaret went, and then I'm number four.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was a foregone conclusion, I'm gonna go there.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And again, like I say, it was just phenomenal.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in a situation where there is positive peer pressure to do good.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was like anything else, college campus, you could find anything you wanted, but if it was not good stuff, that was done on the down low.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: People weren't gonna, you know, there was that that pressure to be the best version of yourself.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, an oasis in the desert for me, and that was the first time I've been around people that had shared values, and I discovered that I could lead and I didn't and that people would follow.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I had never even really, never even realized that was a part of what I could be about, but it it kind of blossomed there.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's awesome.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's also where you met Kay.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us tell us that story.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: So Kay is from Southern Illinois, little small town, Goreville, Illinois, and uh like less than 2,000 people, just a uh tiny little place.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Her brother is a very accomplished preacher, and he was he was a year ahead of me.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever I went to Fried Hardeman, he was by RA, Kevin.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Great guy.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: She's two years younger than me, and we joke about it now.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever uh she and her mom and dad would come to visit Kevin, he was kind of always like, Hey, you need to meet my sister.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so then when I'm a junior, she was a freshman, and we knew each other, and again, I was good friends with her brother, but we never dated, and I actually dated a roommate, and she loves to tell a story.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she and her roommate went to Europe over Christmas one year.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: They won some kind of thing to go, and uh, some company paid for them as college students go do a fun little trip to Europe, and they're bouncing all around Europe.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And she said the girl's name was Christine.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Oh, Christine, talk about Scott McDowell.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, What does she see in Scott McDowell?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Little did she know that the joke was gonna be on her.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we didn't date, and then we both landed in Nashville after graduation, and she worked for a PR firm up there, and and uh I finally saw the light and asked her out, and the rest was history.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you finish at Fried Hardeman, and then you find your way to Nashville too, and and go to work at I believe or you know, continue your education at Lipscomb University.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so what had happened is when I first got out, I went to a little church in Tupelo, Mississippi, and I was their associate minister, and they said, We want to send you, you know, they paid me and we're gonna send you to get your master's.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And wisdom would have said, go 90 miles up the road to Memphis.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: There was a grad program up there at Harding Graduate School of Religion, but there was a brand new one at Lipscomb.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And for whatever well, I know exactly what it was.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: The recruiter, the recruiter kind of turned me off.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: He was like dismissive of Lipscomb's new program.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you really want a good education, come here.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, that sounds arrogant.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'll try Lipscomb.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I started commuting, which was a four-hour drive.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh I got a call out of the blue from a friend of mine that I'd been in a couple of grad classes with.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: He said, My assistant in the res hall quit on me.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was like two weeks before school was gonna start.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know you very well, but we get along.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Would you interview?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Absolutely.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went up there and and ended up working five years in running the residence hall, high-rise dorm, 400 plus guys, and uh I got my master's paid for.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it took a little longer, but they they paid me.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: I made six thousand dollars in a stipend, so five hundred dollars a month and free free room and board, and I was in high cotton, man.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was loving life, it was good.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And got it work, absolutely getting you back, preparing you for a career and serving, but also you know, getting you to where you meet your future wife and absolutely.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's unbelievable kind of how that's a good thing.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the real stor the real story, and I didn't tell it, but yeah, is I'm down there in Tupelo, and it was a wonderful experience, and they're letting me preach a lot, all kinds of great experience in church work, but I felt like I was still a a kid playing an adult role, very much felt like a an imposter.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't doing anything wrong or anything like that, but I'm just like, I'm not ready to be a full-grown adult yet.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I try to.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you gotta find your place.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, find my place.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: I go home and I am praying.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Lord, I gotta have some help here.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is just, I'm feeling lonely, I'm feeling lost.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the phone rang while I was praying, and it was a guy calling saying, Hey, my guy just quit.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Would you look at this job?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're praying and the phone rings, usually a good sign that you gotta at least explore those options.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is a that is fantastic.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, what did you get your master's degree in?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: I got a master's in religion.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: So my undergraduate degree was a degree in Bible, okay.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, really with uh uh focus on preaching, and then my master's was in religion.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you finish at Lipscomb with your master's and you go into the full-time ministry uh for the next like seven and a half years.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Where was that at?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And tell us a little bit about that time.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: That that was a very good time, very critical time.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Carl McKelvey, you'll hear me talk about Carl a lot.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's one of my big mentors in life.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: He was the executive vice president at Lipscomb.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was my boss's boss.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: The Dean of Students was my boss, he was my boss's boss, and all I knew was he was a guy I was scared of.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just kind of a I just was intimidated by him.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I had uh I had planned to go preach in Pennsylvania, going to go back there and plant churches, and the opportunity came to preach at a church in Nashville, the Voltee Church of Christ.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was over on Murphy's borough road, it was an old mother church of of Nashville, had it at its apex about a thousand people, and when I was there it was in the 600s, and uh so they invited me to come preach.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Carl was an elder there, and he was also the associate minister, and so when I went to work there, he he and I got really close, and I would credit him with really teaching me how to have a relationship with God.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I I talked about I I was a good kid that wanted to do right, always had a heart for the Lord, but I knew a lot about God.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: I would say I didn't know God.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so he kind of taught me how to have a relationship with God, you know, how to read the Bible and listen for the word of God, listen to for God's voice, how to pray, uh, and just really formative.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember that summer, so it was the summer of 91, and he turned 60 years old.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: His birthday's July 1st.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember going to his birthday party, he is an old man, you know.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's two years uh younger than I am right now.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, but what's so remarkable about that is is you know, at 60 years old, he started really just pouring into me and encouraging me.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: We became good really good friends.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I stayed at that church for a couple years and then had an opportunity to move to Memphis and preach for a church in Memphis.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: But we stayed connected and and uh I brought him to Memphis and he did a retreat for the men and and he really inspired me to do lead men's Bible studies, and we we started that that's a cool story.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: We started a Friday morning men's Bible study that is that continued the whole time.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was there.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: After I left, some of those guys continued at a different congregation where they went to.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: There were two guys there: Ken Stevenson, Dr.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Ken Stevenson, who is an orthopedic surgeon here in Lubbock.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: He'd gone to Lubbock Christian.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was there at the Campbell Clinic in Memphis doing a fellowship.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: He was a part of my Bible study up there.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Dale Mannon, who's the preacher of the Greenlawn Church Christ here in Lubbock, was part of my men's study up there.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: He was doing his doctorate at the University of Memphis.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So both those guys end up in Lubbock.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: They they carry that Bible study on.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: That Bible study is still going on on Friday mornings at 6 a.m.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: at the Green Lawn Church Christ.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can come anytime.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool, but that's the legacy of Carl of just getting men together, reading God's word and talking about it.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it just incredibly powerful.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: So Carl, biggest influence in my life, other than my dad, and it started in that ministry of all T, and then I'm out preaching, and things are going great in preaching.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Loved it.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's still kind of my first love, and I still enjoy it a lot.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I also recognize that sometimes there's a lot of business to church.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a lot just to run the machine.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh trying to think about you got one life to live, what's the most productive way to live that life?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And again, praying about that and trying to discern what I need to do, I get a call from Carl who says, I want you to come back and apply for the dean of students position.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'll teach everything I know about higher ed, and I'll send you to get your doctorate and we'll see what happens.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was in 1998, and I did it.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you're eventually hired at Lipscomb.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're the you served 20 years there as the as the dean of students.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I don't know that you grew up thinking I'm gonna be the dean of students or the president of a university.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and one of my other mentors, a guy named Chip Anderson, said you get into higher ed through back doors, side doors, and alleys.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it was kind of that.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, the the residence hall, running the residence hall, we had 400 plus guys in there.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: They there was an old timer at Lipscomb named Elam, Brother Elam.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: They said, Brother Elam, what do you think of that high-rise dormitory?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, eight floors.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: They said, Yeah, eight floors.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Sounds like it's trouble stacked on top of trouble.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so everything that you could be exposed to in higher ed, you have in the microcosm in a residence hall.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: The good, the bad, and the ugly.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's the same kind of thing in terms of student life, the dean of students, you you spend a lot of time with the absolute best kids on campus, all the social club presidents, all student government kids, all these guys.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're also dealing with the discipline.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you're dealing with people at at some really hard times.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it can be great, uh, but you also, you know, you you get to see it all, and you're dealing with all kinds of crises.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: So again, I had no idea that was preparing me to be a college president, but you you get exposed to everything, and and you better be able to handle some challenges, and you better be able to adapt to uh maybe difficult circumstances.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: You might have just brought up a couple of questions in the around the horn segment when we get there, because I'm real curious about student creativity.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get there.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, after a wonderful 20-year stint, I know that Lipscomb and Fried Hardeman, you know, have you know big places in your heart, and you're real thankful for your time.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: But you decided to really kind of step out out of out of your comfort zone and get a little bit uncomfortable and uh make your way to Abilene Christian University.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us that story.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a that's a fun one, too.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I did the five in the residence hall, went and did seven and a half years of ministry, back 20 at at Lipscomb.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: So 25 total at Lipscomb.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And anytime you're in a role for that long, you're starting to think, okay.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And what had also happened is I had when I did my doctoral work, I did that went back in '99.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: So a year after I started, I went back and did that.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I had really just thought, I just want to be in higher ed, I want to influence people.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: The dean of students is a way that I can do that.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it just kept exp that role just kept expanding more and more responsibility.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I had everything outside the classroom with the exception of athletics and the business office.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so lots of opportunity to do good things with students, but it's also what got awakened in the doctoral study was I think I want to lead, I I think I want to lead a university.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think I want to do more than just this part, I want to lead the whole thing, and I've got some ideas about how we might do it in and uh bring what I can bring to the table to to make that happen.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was awakened in me.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's real funny.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: I tell people, you know, I'd interviewed for a couple of jobs and I actually got offered the job at a couple of different places and turned them down.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started getting turned down when I started interviewing.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I get to that 25-year point and thinking, I still want to be a college president.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: I need to, I need to go spread my wings, go someplace else.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: And Phil Schubert is really the reason.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Phil Schubert's an incredible man, he's the president at ACU, great leader, he's a business guy.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: We used to tease Phil that uh spreadsheets were his love language.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: So he it was he had come and invited me to apply when that job had been open.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was the student life position at ACU, same thing I was doing at Lipscomb.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: He invited me to apply for that.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: I said no the first time.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: It came open five years later.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm at the 25-year mark, and I'm thinking, you know what, it's time.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went down there and interviewed, and everything went well.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went down there largely because of Phil Schubert and got exposed to some really great leadership.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, he was all about the metrics, he was all about, you know, uh the data and and figuring out ways to make it happen.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that we'd done in Nashville and I had some success at was building some new residence halls and updating those things.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so coming in from the outside, I said to the folks at Abilene, I said, Man, you all are all alums and you love this place, and I love this place.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: People are fantastic.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: But you can't imagine somebody not loving it.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you come in here cold and see these old residence halls, you it's you're hard pressed to recruit to that.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I actually got traction with that idea, and we got after it and Phil liked the idea.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: So that we we spent we were just kicking it off, uh, and I think they've spent north of$75 million on residence halls, and they've built some beautiful stuff there, and it's worked real well for them.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: I tell people if I'd known I was gonna be at Lubbock Christian, I'd never ex you know, try to encourage them to build better residence halls.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's a real selling point for ACU.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that is great.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: I can fully endorse your the residence halls aren't great because I lived in Mayborm down there back in 1996 and 97 as a freshman.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: I played both football and baseball there, and they weren't good then.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then my oldest son uh played there his fresh played football there his freshman year.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: This would have been 2018, and he was in the same dorm.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so 2018 was the year I went there.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I know exactly.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: That dorm was had been rode hard and put up wet, as we like to say, West Texas.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're you know, you got a little, you got a little different, you know, it's wide open space in Abilene, and you're not there very long before the Lubbock Christian University job opens up and and uh you knew you knew some people up here and thought you know that was really a position.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us that story of how you landed here.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, it was not a it was it was not a direct path, but I knew I I wanted some different experience.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so Abilene, I went to Abilene uh full fully intending to stay there for a while.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: And again, didn't didn't intend to just jump ship.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I even remember uh Tim Perrin was the president that immediately preceded me at Lubbock Christian, great guy, jurist doctor from Pepperdine.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: He'd actually grown up at Lubbock, got his undergrad at LCU, went to Pepperdine, and was out there.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: But uh he was an excellent president.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the reason we sent our middle son Cade here in 2018, because he had great leadership, and he did some amazing things with the institution.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember uh Pepperdine's presidency was open, and I'm talking, we're at a football game at ACU.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Your your son was probably on that team.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're up there in the president's box watching the game, and Phil and I are handicapping the the president race at Pepperdine, who would get it?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we're both saying, well, it'll probably be Tim Perrin.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know Jim Gash was in the hunt.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, Jim Gash gets that job, and uh whenever that was all going on, I knew Tim was was interviewing.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, well, I might be interested in Lubby Christian.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then he didn't get the job, and I thought, well, that door won't be open.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm just like doubling down and working real hard.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: My my wife and youngest son, he did one year with us as Abilene and went to Abilene High, and then Trent Dilfer got hired as a football coach.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know a little bit about football.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: He got hired as a football coach at Lipscomb Academy, and all all of Cole's buddies said, Come on back, play your senior year.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we did something we thought we'd never do.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: We bought a condo, and Kay and Cole went back to to Nashville, and he played his senior year for Trent Dilfer and converted from quarterback to tight end and uh actually got a college scholarship, went to Murray State and played football.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: So all that's going on, they're up there.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going up every weekend for games, but I'm I'm like living the bachelor's life in Abilene, just doubling down working 80-hour weeks.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: I got nothing else to do.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then surprisingly, Tim Perrin didn't get the presidency, but Jim Gash hired him to be his executive vice president.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that job came open, and then I thought, ah, something I'm real interested in.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh went through the interview process.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: They used the national firm uh out of uh uh Carter Baldwin out of Atlanta.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Great people, and I'd actually even worked with the consultants before, and some of those ones where I got turned down, but uh this was the perfect fit.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a Christ-centered university that's very serious about its faith commitments that aligned with me.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's I think a really good size for there to be really strong personal attention.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I w I wouldn't complain about more students, but w what we have that's so special is our our brand promises we walk with you and really get to execute on that and play that out.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I my son was was here, he loves to say Kate, our middle son, he was in his uh sophomore year uh and and I came in and he liked to say, Hey, I I brought you here, you you know, you follow me, just remember that.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: But he was having a great experience.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we were we were customers before we were ever in any way uh thinking about leading the place.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'd seen as a customer was this is a remarkable institution.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's getting a phenomenal education.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's he was pre-med, he got right into med school at Texas Tech.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the outcomes we have, our our product is really good in terms of education at Lubbeck Christian.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was experiencing that and knowing good things were happening there, and it was just a really good fit.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot there, but like you know, Trent Dilfer played with, you know, my sons have all played at Trinity, and their head coach Jeremy Urban and Trent played together, and they actually, when they travel over there to play Nashville area teams, you know, we'll go do uh go do a walkthrough and go see Trent and all that.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's funny.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then we both have sons in medical school as well, so just crazy.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then we've got both got sons in San Antonio right now as well.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: So but you start your you start your first president role on April 1st, 2020.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: What was going on?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're smack dab in the middle of COVID.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: So what was that like?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's hilarious because I mean it's the dream job.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm finally, I realize I want to be a college president.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now I've got the college presidency, and we're excited about that, and it's a great fit.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's Christ-centered, all these things are great.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: They come and they introduce me late February, and I'm going to start April 1st.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And literally, we got top of the page on the Avalanche Journal, and picture me and you know, LCU, seventh president, all that kind of stuff.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and I did not know until months later, below the fold was this story about COVID-19.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was also a big headline below the fold, and had no idea what an impact that was going to be.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I remember a big receiving line into February, and everybody, I mean, we're all crammed into the Baker Conference Center, everybody's greeting me.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a dad that was working for uh Lubbock Christian who had a son at ACU.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he's pulled me, so I said, Hey, hey, my son's doing study abroad.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hearing about this COVID stuff.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think anything's gonna, you know, are they gonna bring him home?
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't think it'll be anybody.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's not gonna happen.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it'll be fine.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so then just weeks later, everything melts down.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you remember those times.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's spring break, and uh, I'm not supposed to start till April 1st, but spring break happens and and we're making decisions at both Abilene and at Love It Christian whether we're gonna continue.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: They did bring those kids home from Europe from Abilene Christian, and we made the decision.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: I jumped in in the middle of March and we're doing all these phone calls and and you know, you first introduced, I was first introduced, Zoom calls and all that kind of culture.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we made the decision to turn on a dime and go online for the rest of the semester, like most of the institutions did, and that was just crazy.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when I actually, my official start date, I come in April Fool's Day to an empty campus, you know, and you remember essential and non-essential employees.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm an essential employee staying in a staying in an apartment on campus with a completely empty campus.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was just bizarre.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: But the advantage, now again, you go back to being a chief student development officer dealing with all the outside the classroom stuff, you know, crazy is stuff you can deal with.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody else had been through it either.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was the thing.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody knew.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: People to tell you they knew exactly what to do are probably lying to you.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody knew what to do.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: You just do the next right thing and figure your way out and collaborate and talk to as many peers as you can and pull your pull your uh wisdom and go.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was a wild time, and I hope the world never has to go back to that.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you a huge advantage being in West Texas at that point.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because common sense prevails here.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't very long till people, you know, West Texas probably threw the masks away quicker than anybody else did.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and and so uh I think the frontier spirit and just the can-do attitude that is Lubbock in West Texas helped us a lot to get through that.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody hated a mask more than my partner, Dusty Wong.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'll bet you.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he he was not about to wear a mask.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: But let's dig a little deeper.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: I want to talk a little bit about some of the thing, you know, things that you've done in your life and all of that.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: We did talk about Carl.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you talked about Carl McKelvey qu quite extensively as your mentor.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious though, now that you, you know, you said when he was 60 he poured into you.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: What is it like for you now as you're on the other side of that where you're doing some mentoring for people and the, you know, what what what's different about that?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's really a cool thing because it hit me, you know, a few years ago.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember, holy cow, he's been involved in my life for now 35 years.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you get to 62, and some, you know, I've got friends that are thinking, wow, retirement, what am I gonna do?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they're they're thinking about that, winding down.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I it just hit me the impact that man's had in my life in the last 35 years, I can't imagine my life without him.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it struck me that I have the potential to pay it forward and do that same thing for people.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if I can have even a a fraction of the influence on other young younger men that he's had on me, then I'm doing something really, really worthwhile.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, it inspired me.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've got uh my chief staff Keegan Stewart just finished his doctorate and uh have a lot of interaction with him.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I get to work with our cornerstone scholars, that's the high character students that are nominated for a full tuition scholarship.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I had the retreat at our house last night.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: We had 20 plus kids over at the house, and I'm able to pour into those students and and to just, you know, again, you don't beautiful thing about a mentoring relationship, it's not forced, it's just a friendship and it's an advice kind of thing.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and it works best whenever it's uh you you only give advice when you're asked, but it's it's really a cool thing.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: And to be able to pour into other people and and think about the potential of that is is pretty exciting.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: Probably the best mentoring you've done is is with your three boys.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh give us a quick update on where each one of them are.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: So wonderful, yes.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: So Alec is our oldest.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was born in '95, so he turns 31 this December.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: He is a mechanical engineer for Walmart Corporation.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's in Bentonville at their at their headquarters.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he's had a really good career, was with Amazon for a while, then went over to the Sam's Club, and then shifted over to the other side of Walmart.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he's about to get married in a couple of weeks, September 13th, on a Sunday afternoon up in Nashville area.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Alec and Samantha are very proud of them.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And man, bright guy.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's uh, you know, it skipped generation.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: Dad was a metallurgical, but he's mechanical.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: I got none of that, but he has all of that.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we always laugh.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: If Alec's in town, he fixes stuff for us, all that sort of thing.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: But very proud of him.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then uh Kate is just finished third year medical school.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's actually taken a gap year.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: So his wife, who just finished her first year of medical school and is starting second year, they can sink up a little bit and be in the, you know, be able to not be apart whenever they start their residencies and do that stuff.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it freaked mom and I out a little bit when we found out he was doing a gap year, but then everybody who knows what they're talking about, so that's a really good thing, you know.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: So he's he's flourished in med school and is actually uh working on the step two exam and and I think working at Sam's right now, just doing grunt labor and uh making a little money to take care of his family.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh Cole is the youngest, so he played football at Murray State.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, Kate is married to Sasha, so she's she's remarkable.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: He married up, she's a good girl.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Her mother is Russian, her mom and dad are both LCU alums, so we scored big there.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: But her mom was raised in Russia, and and Sasha can speak full-on Russian.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh it's uh the running joke when she and her mom are on the phone talking, it's you feel like you're listening to a spy conversation or something.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: But really impressive young woman and uh very proud of her.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then the youngest Cole is married to Morgan.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: They delivered our first grandbaby to us July 10th, and so I'm actually gonna go see her this weekend.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a lot of reason to go to San Antonio.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Cole is the tight end's coach at University Incarnate Word.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: So he played tight end at Murray State, did an extra year over at uh West Alabama, and got into coaching, and he's he's climbing the coaching ladder and having a great time.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: Most proud, they all have really good hearts, they are all tender-hearted young men and would do anything for you.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm most proud of.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's fantastic.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they're all doing very well and got a lot to be proud of there, and and we know what it's like to have three boys and have that amount of testosterone running through your house and all that.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: But it's uh that's awesome.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: So uh turning our attention to to LCU and and what you're doing now, you know, the the the brand promise is we walk with you.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: How do you live that every day?
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what does that mean to you, and how do you live that out every day as the president of the school?
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it it is very highly relational, and I think that's one of the things about uh uh being in a school of 1700.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: We've got uh you know, 400 faculty and staff, and we can have we got the luxury of getting to know who students really are.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: I say all the time, our highest ambition is to help students discover who it is God created them to be and then to go live that out with intentionality and purpose.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that best happens in relationships, so close proximity.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we got we got faculty that are gonna know your name.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I like I have the opportunity personally to interact with these 20 students and to really get to pour into them.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: I meet with them every Wednesday morning at 7 a.m.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: They think that's really early, and I just let them think that.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: But we uh we get together and and study scripture and and talk about life and bring in different people.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: We may get you and your bride in there to talk to them.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it's been really rewarding.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the the brand promise, as you well know, a brand promise is something that ought to be both true and aspirational.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's very true of us, but it's also aspirational.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can never quite exhaust, you know, how we're gonna take care of these students and get to know them and make sure they have a job on the other side.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: We do good on those things.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, speaking of that and this we walk with you, you literally do because, you know, my niece was part of the graduating class, uh, Hallie Galbreth, okay, uh uh in 2025, and she's now going to uh PT school uh down at at Harden Simmons University.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: But when you take a look at some of these statistics, and I'm gonna look down for a second, but a hundred percent were placed into occupational therapy school that applied, a hundred percent to athletic training school, a hundred percent to physicians assistant school, a hundred percent to physical therapy school, a hundred percent to optometry, a hundred percent to education, and three quarters were accepted in their first time to medical school, which is almost Almost double the national average.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: You literally do walk with them and you walk them to their next place.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and it's as your your niece, you're talking about your niece, Chris Huggins, the PT the kinesiology people are phenomenal with what they do.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh those outcomes are really exciting.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the one I'm another one I'm in there proud of is uh we get kids into the vet school at about seven times the national average.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it really is all about we have world-class faculty that they have made these students their life's work.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so they pour into them.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and the outcomes really do kind of speak for themselves.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're one of the premier, if not the premier, science programs in in West Texas.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly the outcomes would say that, but it's that personal touch and knowing who they are and knowing, and sometimes saying, you know, you might need to think about a different career, right?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh Andy Laughlin is one of our guys that teaches in the animal science program, the ag program, and and he's not above saying, you know what, if you can't do better in this class, you need to figure out another career.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's that heavy relationship kind of stuff.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I would give the credit to the faculty and uh to their commitment to really nurturing.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, there are situations where not everybody, you know, some people really want the big school experience and and thrive in those kind of settings.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: But some people can get lost in those settings.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we we can kind of cater sometimes to somebody to get lost somewhere else.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: I there's a a friend of mine that played golf for us years ago, and uh he got to the end and he he said, Dad, I'm gonna change majors.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: His dad said, That's fine, but I'm only paying for one more year.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: So he literally doubled up and took a full load at Lubett Christian and a full load at Texas Tech so he could finish in a year.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't even let him do that today.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's taking 30 plus hours in a semester.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: And his dad uh, you know, well, uh one of our our our faculty members was always quizzing him, how's what's different?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: How's it going there?
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he would say, uh, you know, we're not able to cover the ground at tech with 200 people in the lecture hall that we can cover here.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually ahead, you know.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it it's one of those things where in a smaller setting you really can get personal attention.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's what makes it so special.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Just because you know, I want to I want to tout the good work that LCU is doing.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna read a few more of these stats, but yeah, you're right.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: Over the past 10 years, the acceptance rates 72 percent into vet school, which is seven times the national average, dental schools at 65 percent, which is well above the national average, physical therapy schools 90 percent, occupational therapies 97 percent, which is double the national averages, and then physicians assistant is almost 90 percent, which is three times the national average.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think I think it's you know this we walk with you uh promise, and then to really have to to have real statistics uh to back that up.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the the I think one of the neatest things that you said was that your faculty, they really do care about students and they they help students who are inevitably going to have challenges along the way.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: They say that's okay.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're big enough to be able to provide these great pathways, but small enough, kind enough, and and uh Christ-centered enough to be able to have compassion to help these students as well.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I I gave a charge yesterday in our opening chapel, and one of the one of the points that I made was that our faculty are gonna demand a lot from you because they expect a lot out of you, and uh and that's just that's a wonderful thing to raise the bar for for some of these students.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's good stuff.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: You recently launched some new graduate and online programs, uh, and you're I know you're exploring some other things, maybe some trade pathways, but tell us about, you know, you've been at LCU now six years.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: What is your vision for the future of LCU?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so certainly, you know, what what I think is the has the biggest impact is the on-campus experience where to undergrads.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you can really shape lives and and uh iron sharpens iron.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't diminish what can happen at the graduate level because I really, when I went and got my doctorate, I I got lifelong friends, I got more mentors in that, so that can be very forming as well.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we're exploring a lot of different things.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: The market is telling us obviously AI is gonna have some impact.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, what are the AI proof kind of things?
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those are questions that you ask.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: But also just look at the aging population.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Seven, I think, out of ten of the of the best opportunities for jobs in the next 20 years are all gonna be in healthcare or healthcare-related fields.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we wanna be in that space.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a very strong nursing program right now.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we train nurse practitioners, we train nurses at the doctoral level, and have a lot of influence in in the hospitals with our our masters and doctoral level nurses.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: But what's the next thing there?
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: Those are some of the questions we're asking because that's where the market's going.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the puck's gonna be to use that kind of language.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: What about some of these things that like we'll go back to your Western Pennsylvania days, but true, you know, West Texas roots too, a blue collar of like, you know, I do think, I mean, we're mass rider capital is very bullish on Lubbock in West Texas and think we're fixing to experience a lot of what Austin experienced with these data centers being built here and and these wonderful universities of like I don't think today is far away where we're gonna have a half million, maybe 750,000 people, but you're still gonna need plumbers, absolutely, you know, uh mechanics, yeah, electrical, you know, worker.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, all right, all these different trades of like, do you see universities playing a role in that?
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's in our heritage.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: We actually, when we started out as a two-year institution, we had trades, was part of what we did.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of like a South Plains sort of thing.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think I think there's a big future there for training, particularly.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's think about a plumber.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we may not provide the training to be a plumber.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: We might not do the trades.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're not close to that, we're not too good to do that.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, do we reinvent the wheel when South Plains is in that space or a lot of the high schools in that space?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: But what are we can come alongside is a certificate program, for instance, in in entrepreneurship.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you're an entrepreneur, you've done a lot of different things like that.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and you know, how can we help somebody uh because the the downside trades, they're AI proof.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: But you get to 62 years old, I don't want to get down on my hands and knees again.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I installed carpet as a summer job.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've done a little bit of that kind of stuff.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one of my guys is on my board, his dad was a plumber, and he said, you know, crawling under that house in the middle of winter made his decision, I don't want to do this for my whole life.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there are literally physical limitations sometimes to the trades where you age out of them.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: What about all these different tradesmen that now own their company?
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: Are they really prepared for that?
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: And how can we step into that space and help provide maybe the upskilling that is that is connected to that?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I we we're looking hard at ways to do that.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, last question before we turn to around the horn and have a little fun here.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: A real serious question is like higher education does face real challenges across the country with this population cliff or whatever enrollment cliff that they're calling it.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um many small schools, LCU's not in this, but you know, and and and you know, we talked about tech and their growth earlier before we started recording, but how are they going to combat that as well as the cost?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: Those two things seem to be real challenges for higher education.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think collaboration is gonna be a big part of that.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta you gotta find places that you can share costs, you know.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's back back office kinds of things.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're we talk about those things a lot.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's more theoretical than practical or actual.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I think it's very practical, but people are very hesitant to do it.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're exploring those kinds of things.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think you've also got again what we what can differentiate us is our Christ-centered mission and and the character.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've got graduates that really are difference makers in their in their careers.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh Marvin uh uh Marvin over at Conetrix is a dear friend of mine.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: We we play some racquetball together and he's 81, likes, takes great pleasure when he can beat me.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was coming back from my hip surgery, he was unmerciful because he was running up the score on me.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: But Marvin Crosno is just a wonderful guy.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: Russ Horn, who's the CEO, is an alum, and we we did our retreat over there in their new facility, and and they've got like almost half of their employees are LCU alums.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I said that we're just gonna call this LCU West.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh Russ Horn said that was a good designation.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but uh, you know, we're producing the kind of people that are out there being entrepreneurs and are out there.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: Marvin Cross I like to say I hire really smart people, give them impossible tasks.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he's hiring a lot of LCU people.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: So as we're adding value, that's part of it.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if we are producing the kind of people the workforce needs, that's how that's your path to longevity.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I'm very uh uh bold about saying we invite God into everything and we invite God to be our provider.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know I was reading this morning about the you know, it's our 70th year, and after 70 years of Babylonian captivity, the last it's like 2 Chronicles 36, 22, very obscure, but it says God moved the heart of Cyrus to send the people back to Israel and build a temple.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: The most powerful man in the world was not a Yahweh follower, but God said, I got a job for you to do.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I lean into that and say, you know, part of what helps us be not just survive but thrive is God's provision.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we lean into that and and want to take full advantage of that.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I appreciate really appreciate the work you and the LCU um faculty and and all of the administration is doing and just doing a wonderful job with higher education.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: So before we end up, we're gonna have a little fun.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: All right these are quick hitters.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: So five, ten second answers are are appropriate here, but you you haven't seen these, so we'll get right to it.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: So exactly how tall are you?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: I am six foot eight.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: And with the boots on, maybe six nine.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I I've got a I've got the oldest son's six five, the middle one's six eleven, so he makes me look small, and then the baby's six four.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: So our youngest son, we always tease him, he says, Yeah, I'm tall everywhere but home, but I'm six eight.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe may I may have shrunk a little, I might be six seven in my soccer feed.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: But when you line up all the relatives, that's I bet that's a sight to see, isn't it?
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: It it is.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: And my mother was 5'11, my dad was 6'2 and a half, so I think I get it from my mom's side.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I've got a nephew that's a little over six foot, and I've got a another nephew that's an aspiring football player who is desperately praying for some genetics that would come his way.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: He's hoping to get a little bigger.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you gave away your favorite sports team in the first five seconds of the show.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't take long.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: Terry Bradshaw or Ben Roth?
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: Terry Bradshaw, all-time favorite, not even a no hesitation.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: You've been involved with students now for over three, I'll go on four decades.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious how creative are students and does their ingenuity ever surprise you?
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, never underestimate.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: I always say this, I get thrown back at me, never underestimate a college student's ability to be duplicitous.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: They can feed you a line, they can kind of lead you down a way.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I told my tell my boys sometimes if they're trying to pull some of that on me, I'd always say, fellas, you know what I've been doing for a living for a long time.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've pretty much been there done that.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: But uh there's been some very creative things that I've seen happen.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh, you know, uh they used to do hall slides at uh that in that high rise, they'd they'd stop up the showers and make them overflow into the halls and put put soap down and just go running, and it was just like a big slipping slide up there.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: But those were the milder things that I witnessed.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you're a hunter.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: So what's your best hunt of all time?
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, I've had I've had some really good hunts.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've it since I've been in Texas, uh killed an Axis deer on Terry Creature's ranch down in the hill country.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: But the best of all time was last November in Turkey, Texas.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: Tim Leslie, the renowned uh dentist from here in Lubbock, has a ranch up there, and he took me with him, and I shot the buck for a lifetime.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: A whitetail eight-point with a kicker, so made him a nine-point, biggest thing I'd ever seen in the woods, about a 21-22-inch spread.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we had been watching another one all morning and debating about it.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: When we saw this one, there was no debate.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we laughed.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Now be real careful.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he was gonna, he was about to say, take your time and and and aim careful.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Take your time and boom, I shot.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna give him time to change his mind and say, let that one walk.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: But lots of fun.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's so fun for me.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: What's your dream hunt?
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I've been looking at, I've been if you looked at my reels when I look when I do Doom Scroll, it's all elk hunting.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm watching, I'd love to kill a big monster elk.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: With a gun or a bow?
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd love to kill it with a bow.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: My left shoulder is so toast I couldn't draw a bow back.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: It'd have to be a crossbow.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: But you've got to be right on top of them for that.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: And all these videos, they're right on top of them.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I wouldn't mind uh I wouldn't mind a gun hunt with a for an elk or a moose.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: That would be fun too.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've got I've got the big one that I killed in November at the taxidermist.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'd be able to get another one by the boss.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: She may not let me mount another one.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'd have to do something else.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: My ex sales manager at Benchmark names Rich Cardillo.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's a hilarious guy, but he goes elk hunting every year.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: He's there September 1st, you know, trying to kill uh kill one with a with bow and arrow.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think he shot one like 20 years ago in the last 17 years, you know, nothing.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I always give him a hard time of like, when are you going elk watching?
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've done a lot of watching.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've done a lot of watching.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's why they call it hunting, not killing.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: What's the biggest obstacle you've faced uh inside of any of the universities that you've been been with?
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, that's a great question.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: Biggest obstacle.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think I think the the pressure on affordability, I mean, you're always conscious of that, and it's you know, and every institution faces it just a different scale.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: I talked to my friends at Pepperdine, they're they're always talking about you know, a few more dollars would help.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: But uh making the mission affordable.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we're doing important work, so sometimes that's just you know convincing donors to come along with you on that, but keeping it where a kid from West Texas can afford to go there.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's I think all of higher ed is is feeling that pinch.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: Private feels it perhaps even more because we don't get the subsidies that some of the public get.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you want to take care of your your own people that are providing this great work, and then you also want to make it a I mean, it is a yeah, you feel that pinch.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the affordability is probably the biggest, hardest thing.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: What was the aha moment at LCU for you that said, I'm where I'm supposed to be?
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, another good question.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, I uh I I remember I remember a moment in chapel at homecoming uh where I kind of looked around and we talk a lot about the great cloud of witnesses that's on the wall when you walk into our lobby of our administration building, and and I I was hearing the stories and feeling the vibe of all these people just so grateful for what that place had done for them.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and I feel now in my seventh year that I'm I'm not an outsider, I'm part of that.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh probably though, so so I remember feeling that there, but one of the best ones was watching one of these cornerstone scholars.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's got ten siblings.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: Ten siblings, and he was the first one in his family to go to college, and last May he was the first one to graduate from college.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I got to be a part of that.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so that one, that one will choke me up and say, yeah, if I don't do anything else, I did something really good right there.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: Any similarities between Western Pennsylvania and West Texas?
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, yeah, I mean, there's that blue-collar mentality, let's get her done.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh the old, who was it?
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Charlie Daniels had that, you just lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steeler fan and you'll find something out, right?
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that same kind of just tough we can handle it, we don't need anybody's help, is the same kind of thing you have in West Texas.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then lastly, you know, Kay has served in public as as the in a public role at the Lubbock Chamber, and then you've been in a you're in a private school, but in a public role.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: Give us a neat story about the two of you.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's great question.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, just silly things.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, you know, you she got on because I was I went to I went to Market Street one time just in in shorts and a t-shirt and didn't didn't look very presidential.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I think that was the time I ran into Mark Griffin.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: She said, but thankfully Mark's not pretentious at all, but she says, see, you gotta look like a president all the time.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that's uh you get a little coaching at home like the rest of us.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: Get a little bit of coaching, yeah.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can't go out looking like that.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: Scott, thank you so much for joining us today on the Heights of Victory and for your incredible uh leadership that you've given to that you give and are continuing to give to Lubbock Christian University.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: The impact that you've made on students' lives for uh nearly uh, you know, we're going between 30 and 40 years now is just is remarkable and we really appreciate that.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, Jeff.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks to Dusty, thanks to Brooke, thanks for what you do with Mass Rider Capital and and the impact you guys have had in Lubbock, what you what what Dusty's done with Tyler Technologies, what y'all are doing and investing in this community.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of stuff that makes a difference.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's why West Texas can be a destination, that's why we got a bullet behind us and we're growing and we're gonna be at half a million people before we know it.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: We can figure out the water thing, we'll be all good.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: But uh no, I'm deeply appreciative for what you do.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Scott.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: You've you're a role model for many.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_01: You've you've embodied a uh a life of faith and hard work and service, and we're honored to call you a friend and grateful for your time today.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_01: That does it for this episode of the Heights of Victory.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you want to leave us a comment or send us an email, uh, you can do so at heights of victory at mashrider.com.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh check out the YouTube uh channel here and subscribe.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we really appreciate you tuning in today for this episode, and we'll see you next time on the Heights of Victory.