Nine Months. Over 70 candidates. One New President.
When Dr. Ben R. Sells began feeling the call to become the president of a Christian college in the fall of last year, little did he know that just nine months later, he’d be sitting in a conference room talking to press as the new President of Ouachita Baptist University.
Yet, following a press conference last Thursday in which the Board of Trustees named him President, he began his journey as the 16th president of Ouachita, the first president selected by the board with no ties to the university in 60 years.
“I didn’t know that Ouachita was looking for a president, but I had a colleague at Taylor who told me about it and one of the things that I learned was that I had a longtime friend that I grew up with and a friend I reconnected with in grad school in Amy Sonhiem,” Sells said. “I just began exploring…and then ultimately towards the end of September last year, I sent materials to the search committee.”
Sells mentioned a few main factors that directed him to Ouachita, including its mission and Baptist identity.
“There was a historical part to it as well – I was really captivated with the history behind Ouachita.,” Sells said. “Ouachita to me, in this process, was my interaction with the search committee. The search committee was exemplary of those ideas. “In a process like this, it’s the Lord at work…somehow through this process, I came to the conclusion that I was not just interested, but I was strongly called to this position, knowing that that call had to be confirmed by the search committee and the board.”
This isn’t the first time Sells has been on a college campus, as most of his childhood was spent in the President’s home of Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Mo. The son of a University President, Sells grew into the passion of higher education as he grew out of his adolescence.
Natural curiosity developed into purposeful interest as Sells began to look into his father’s work.
“As I got older, I started reading the papers that were in his briefcase, and that began my interest in Christian higher education and my dad, who is no longer living, was really good to reciprocate that interest and really began to involve me, and just by living in a president’s home and living on a campus, I was naturally involved and I just found that fascinating,” Sells said.
Sells credits his continuous passion for higher education to his father, saying that the time spent with his father was impactful.
“Just like most people, those early years of my life were formative and it still is to me,” Sells said. “I had a father who cultivated my interest.”
Along with living in the house of the President, Sells had other distinct privileges.
“I played basketball in high school and my dad started out his life as a basketball coach. I had the gym 100 yards away and had a key to it, so when campus was closed, I spent a lot of time shooting basketballs,” Sells said.
When it was time to choose an undergraduate college to attend, Sells decided to stay right at home in Bolivar.
“Probably what really was so formative was my own Christian college experience. Like a lot of people, I thought I wanted to move away, but I remember making that decision to go where my dad worked and I didn’t realize the familiar would become so formative. I knew this place well, I knew the professors, but it would literally be life changing for me,” Sells said.
Sells also studied abroad while at Southwest Baptist University. His program took him to England and Oxford College, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics. He was one of the first students at Southwest to experience a study abroad program.
“I got to travel, so it was a terrific experience for me in that collegiate environment, but also to get to travel in Europe as a 21-year-old,” Sells said.
He majored in business at Southwest, eventually earning his Bachelor of Science in Business from the school. Later, Sells also earned a Master of Arts and a PhD in Higher and Adult Education, from the University of Missouri in Columbia.
“I did enjoy business and I thought it was a good degree to have, no matter what I did do, but Southwest Baptist, like Ouachita, also has a liberal arts tradition, and so that broad base was also helpful to me,” Sells added.
The most impactful time of Sells’ collegiate years came during his final year at the school – the spring of 1984.
“It was called the Staley Scholar Lecture, and six of us found ourselves in the prayer chapel of that campus one night, independently drawn there. The Lord was doing something in our lives, but we didn’t know what. All we knew to do was to do the next thing, which was getting together the next day,” Sells said. “For the final 100 days of that semester, we got together every day for prayer and for fellowship. On Friday nights, we’d have times of worship, and since I had access to the President’s home, that’s where we did it. We would find 30-50 students every friday night.”
It was at one of those events that Sells met Lisa Mullen, another senior.
“She had gone home to Oklahoma and we had talked one Sunday night, and we both came to the same conclusion that we felt like the Lord was calling us to stay at Southwest Baptist to work in Campus Ministry. But no one had offered us that job, we had just felt the stirring to do it,” Sells said.
In God’s time, Sells received a call from the campus minister asking Sells to be his assistant. In the coming months, a series of events unfolded leading Sells and Mullen to become extremely close.
“We were together everyday, but the job was for me and not for her, so we just thought, okay, we’ll both find housing, and we’ll divide the housing. Here’s a short version to the long version of the story: about two weeks from graduation…I looked at her and said, ‘the Lord has been calling me and you, we’ve been spending all this time together, why don’t we get married?’ 3 months later, we got married,” Sells said.
So, in a “divinely arranged marriage,” as Sells put it, the couple engaged before actually going out on an official date.
“Almost 32 years later, it worked out. We don’t necessarily encourage that path to our children or others, but it worked for us,” Sells said lightheartedly. “God called us to work in campus ministries and called us to work together and to get married. That was clearly the most formative part of my collegiate experience and our life.”
Sells referenced Acts 13:36 as their approach to life. The verse says of King David, “he wanted to serve the purposes of God and his generation.”
“We probably didn’t say it that clearly at 22, but that was and has always been the motivation of our hearts,” Sells added.
A notable part of Sells’ resume is his time serving with the International Mission Board. In 1997, the IMB was focused on reaching unreached people groups. With that initiative, the process was in place to create a way for missionaries to teach other missionaries in a university-style setting. Sells was hired to develop a program to do so. With his background in higher education, Sells was the perfect match.
“They wanted to develop a leadership program that could happen at the headquarters, could happen in the field, that could happen online, could happen in writing – you know, continuing education for missionaries, and because of my background in missions and my background in higher education, I was asked to come and do that,” Sells said. “It was a terrific experience for seven years – working with the IMB all over the world, developing their version of a university, but internal. In doing that, I met many graduates of Ouachita.”
Eventually, Sells made his way to Taylor University, where he was hired as the vice president for university advancement. During his time at Taylor, he led many fundraising efforts for the University, working to raise money for different projects and ventures while maintaining an affordable tuition and costs for students.
A notable venture that Sells had involvement in was a plan to raise funds for a new campus student center at Taylor. By working with friends and alumni of the University, Sells raised over $20 million in under three years for the construction of the center without a single penny paid at the students’ expense. Along with this venture, Sells also worked with alumni to start a program for graduating students looking to start a new business. The program, called Promising Ventures, was a big success on campus.
“With Promising Ventures, we were noticing that this generation of college students is particularly focused on starting their own business or starting their own nonprofit, and so we were able in that case to secure a million-dollar gift that helped make that more possible,” Sells said.
Sells did mention that his fundraising background would carry over into his new role at Ouachita.
“For most people, their highest priority is scholarships to students. What you have is students that highly value Christian excellence and the community that makes Ouachita, and they also want it to be affordable,” Sells said. “But how do you do both of those things, because primarily a residential, undergraduate college, the way Ouachita does it, is one of the most formative ways to have college, but also one of the most expensive ways – you have to have residence halls, you have full-time faculty and staff, so there’s probably no more expensive way to do higher education, but that’s also why it’s so formative and also why it’s so important to find the resources for students who want to be here that have much to contribute and much to benefit from their four years.”
Along with the fundraising efforts, Sells brings a wide variety of talents to the presidency at Ouachita.
“The presidential search committee’s desire to do a national search was different than all our presidential searches in recent history,” said Board of Trustees Chairman Jay Heflin in a press release last week. “However, I believe that this has resulted in our eyes being opened to several opportunities that we have been able to see in the past. And, ultimately, I believe that this national search has brought Ouachita a new president who is wonderfully gifted in many ways. His experience and giftedness is a wonderful compliment to the unique set of needs that Ouachita has at this time in her history.”
As Sells steps into this critical roll, he wants to be someone who grows “in his commitment and love for the Lord and love for people. I like thinking about how to make Christian higher education more available and better for people,” he added.
In his free time, Sells enjoys running and walking, along with spending significant time reading.
“Lisa and I both love to read. We have a lot of Amazon boxes that come to our home,” Sells said. “My favorite book is always the last book that I’ve read.”
In conclusion, Sells added that input from faculty, staff, alumni and students are what he is looking for now.
“I’m on a journey, and as we think about this as a University, I want us to progress. I’ll find myself asking two questions to everyone: what should change about Ouachita and what shouldn’t? I’m so eager to get to know Ouachita and get to know Ouachita students,” Sells said.
The 16th president of Ouachita will begin his tenure on June 1. Sells will lead Ouachita into the future, with the ultimate goal of progressing the university in a way that is true to its mission. He won’t be afraid to ask the two questions he finds most important: what should change about the university and what shouldn’t?
“We’re eager to get to know you, to become colleagues, to become friends and to be inducted as Ouachitonians,” he told the Ouachita community last week. “It’s our great privilege to come beside you and shepherd the special community and to think about honoring a larger dream that honors God, that reflects and advances Ouachita’s mission, to serve Arkansas Baptists, and to serve the common good.”
