Board members, staff and volunteers will meet Thursday, Feb. 2 for the 17th annual Ben M. Elrod Center for Family and Community board meeting.
Ben M. Elrod, the 13th president of Ouachita, established the foundation in 1997 as a way to encourage service within the community of Arkadelphia by helping fund the work of the Elrod Center. Through various community outreach programs, the center seeks to “provide institutional leadership necessary to link the university’s unique resources to meet the human needs of our region,” focusing specifically on initiating, encouraging, coordinating and facilitating public service, volunteerism, service learning, servant leadership and community engagement.
The board meeting will start around 3 p.m. with a time of coffee and fellowship before moving into a general presentation session where students and staff will reflect on the past year and look forward to the center’s 2017 plans. There will then be an executive session, which is exclusively for Ben M. Elrod Center board members. The meeting will end with a dinner in the Walker Conference Center.
The members of the Elrod Center board include: Dr. Ben Sells, Ian Cosh, Dr. and Mrs. Elrod, and their son and daughter Bill Elrod and Cindy Elrod Stroud. During the executive session these six board members will have voting rights on issues regarding the Elrod Center.
Ian Cosh, vice president of community and international engagement, spoke more on the event and how the annual meeting works to keep the Elrod Center’s original vision in mind. “Dr. Sells, the current president of Ouachita, will read a mission statement that Dr. Elrod wrote years ago. It’s a personalized vision that he had for what the center will do,” Cosh said.
As the 17th annual board meeting, Cosh explained how significant this meeting is for the Elrod Center. “We want it to be a celebration of the fact that another year has gone by. We want to highlight all of the good that has been done and all the lives that have been impacted. Secondly, we want to rethink the future and what other new things we might need to do,” Cosh said.
Beyond the formalities of the meeting, Cosh also said that it is good discipline for the staff and for showing thankfulness to the donors. “The Elrods have been incredibly generous with their funding of the work of the center, so it does give us an opportunity just to stop and hit the pause button. This is an opportunity to thank them and let them enjoy what’s going on,” Cosh said.
Donor relationships are another important aspect of the meeting. “I think it’s all part of good donor relationships,” Cosh said. “You want them to feel that you didn’t just take their money and run. You still remember them and express appreciation. They can feel that they have a voice and that we [the Elrod Center] are listening,” Cosh said.
For more information on Elrod Center, visit www.obu.edu/elrod or call the center at (870) 245-5320.
– By AJ Stambolie, student writer
