SEARCY — Picture David Burks sitting before the large windows of his executive’s office, looking out upon a gray empty academic quad, the heart of Harding University. Tomorrow the kids return, er, students, and the thought gladdens him. It will also be the first day of his very last semester, after 26 years as the university’s president, and that saddens him.
“This is really my family,” he says.
It’s hardly a metaphor. Searcy is where he raised his boys, watched them grow, saw them graduate then return as professors. Now, his grandchildren are at the university-affiliated Harding Academy. Between the years he spent at Harding as a student in the 1960s, and then as a teacher, then an administrator and finally the school’s president, Burks has been in the university system for 50 years.
His list of accomplishments off campus are impressive enough. A board member of the Central Arkansas Radiation Therapy Institute and First Security Bank; member, board member and finally board president of the Higher Learning Commission and a board member of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities; past president of the Searcy Industrial Development Committee and Kiwanis Club. But Harding University is his Camelot.
Since assuming the presidency in 1987, enrollment has increased from fewer than 3,000 to well over 7,000. Assets have ballooned proportionally — from more than $100 million to more than $300 million. The university’s endowment has grown from less than $20 million to $120 million.
Capital projects have totaled about $250 billion — that’s evident walking around campus.
“I would say half the campus [is new], and when you include renovations, because the old buildings have been kept intact and utilized, it’s closer to 80 percent since he came on as president,” says Bryan Burks, dean of the college of business and his son. “That’s been one of his legacies, just the professional, academic look of this campus.”
The Paul R. Carter College of Business, named for the former CFO of Wal-Mart. The Pryor-England Center for Science and Engineering, named for former professors Joe Pryor and Don England. Recently, David Burks has been traveling the state, the country, working over alumni and benefactors for the scratch to build the school’s second health sciences building, a $9 million project.
“I love talking to [potential donors]. Frankly, I have adopted the attitude — I have now for a long time — the attitude that it really is not up to me whether they’re going to make that gift. My role is to make the case as clearly as I can.”
And the building, it will be named after you?
“N-o-o-o,” he says, a kind of whinnying dismissal, like Mr. Ed in the face of a sugar-cube bribe. His bequest, unnamed to date, is the campus, the whole footprint, and wider, even — something statewide, regional.
“He’s taken a small college here in Searcy, Ark., a rural area, and has basically grown it every year probably in the 3 percent range,” says Reynie Rutledge, chairman of the board of First Security Bank. “Certainly one of the top colleges in the state as well as in the region, very well ranked by U.S. News and World Report.”
Harding was recently placed 20th in U.S. News College Rankings for regional universities in the South.
“It’s not just the reputation but quality and the number of students at the school,” Rutledge says.
TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES
If Burks set out to write his story and wished to take a page from Bill Clinton’s book — and, let’s be honest, he wouldn’t — he might begin, “I grew up in a place called Truth or Consequences, N.M.” Coincidentally, before it was changed in 1950 as part of a Ralph Edwards publicity stunt, the original Anglo name was Hot Springs — so Burks and Clinton went to the same high school, in a manner of speaking.
“I was 7, I remember standing between my dad and mom in the car on the way to church, protesting the name change because I had just learned to spell ‘Hot Springs’ and I would never learn to spell ‘Consequences,’” he says. “The town was really in a poor part of the state. This ‘Truth or Consequences’ [gimmick] was supposed to put them on the map, but it never really did.”
His father was fit, tall, a basketball coach, and though Burks reached his full 6-foot-4-inches by eighth grade he never looked like a promising athlete. He looked like a gangly galoot. His dad didn’t deride him, but Burks says the shame of his uncoordinated play chafed at him.
This year Burks’ grandson Carter was part of the state champion Harding Academy football team as a junior, 29 years after Burks’ son Bryan was a state champion football player, also as a junior. So being an athlete does run in the family, it just doesn’t run in David Burks. Nonetheless, he has been a vocal champion for athletics on campus, and a few years ago was inducted into the university’s sports Hall of Fame. How he might have enjoyed sharing that with his dad!
On the other hand, Burks’ father was a teacher and eventually a superintendent and that was a gig young Burks wanted no part of.
He came to Harding and Arkansas from New Mexico because his hometown Church of Christ preacher, Brodie Crouch, was an alumnus. When Burks arrived on campus he intended to be an architect, and since Harding had no such program, he decided to attend Harding for a year, take a lot of Bible courses, immerse himself in this faith community, “then transfer back to the University of New Mexico and get a good education.”
Turning back to the picture windows and the gray tableau, he adds, “I say that with some laughter.”
Five years ago Burks and the administration approved a strategic plan of raising the number of undergraduates majoring in Bible to 10 percent. Burks said in an interview with the alumni magazine such a goal helps “maintain our spiritual focus,” and “this has always been my major objective since becoming president.”
Did you meet the goal?
“No, we did not. That was the goal — we didn’t do it. That was a tough one.”
Turns out, parents today don’t accede readily to a major in Bible. They prefer a professional degree.
Right now, the segment of Bible majors stands at about 8 percent.
AT THE FOOT OF THE MASTER
How easily Burks might have spun that shortcoming. Might have said, “Now, but, hold on. Look at it this way ...” For his position as president of a university unrepentantly evangelical, Burks doesn’t pretend to be a saint. For example, he says as a teenager he was employed at a photo studio, and once, when the owners were off, he pocketed some money from a customer. That’s not the worst of it. He never told his parents, never really atoned. But if there’s valuable humility in lessons like these it’s that he brings that memory to bear whenever he’s faced with a student disciplinary situation.
“I was a trusted-type individual,” he says, “never did anything wrong. I was student body president senior year — people just assumed I was always going to do the right thing.”
Burks is also an elder at his local church — College Church of Christ, though it hasn’t any affiliation with the university — so here’s one lesson from the master. A perfect record can be an imperfection. Everyone must confront the fallen nature of man.
Here’s another example. At the end of his doctoral work at Florida State University his weight, through inactivity and inattention, ballooned up to almost 300 pounds, and he started feeling a sharp pain in his right hip. He couldn’t walk from his office to chapel, was popping a dozen pain pills daily. Three orthopedic specialists told him he needed a hip replacement, but a friend not yet out of medical school gave him the honest-to-God truth of it: “‘David, if you’d lose 60 pounds that’d help. It’s all called wellness. Who’s talked to you about this?’”
The next day he started a diet, lost 60 pounds, and the pain subsided. Now, he says, he jogs 30 minutes every day but Sunday.
Because it’s the Lord’s day, right?
“No, I just choose not to.” Here’s another lesson: Yes, we are spiritual beings in the eyes of God, but that doesn’t mean fitness and health are an incidental part of His plan.
THE LONG VIEW
When Burks took over, the school had only a couple of graduate programs, in education and Bible, and the student body was about 9-to-1 undergraduate. He has added a slew of graduate programs — notably a master’s of business administration and a number of health professional advanced degree programs — and today the ratio of undergrads to graduate students is perhaps 6 to 4.
Similarly, when Burks came on, the school had a single study-abroad program, in Italy. He has shepherded expansion of the offerings to Greece, Australia, Zambia, Chile and other countries. When he was in school, studying abroad was an adventure and accolade. Today, it’s expected.
These curricular additions are substantial, says his former vice president for academic affairs, Dean Priest, but he’d like to recall an oldschool initiative that he says honors Burks more.
When Burks was a faculty member and dean of the business school he founded a course on Christianity and business. Even authored a text called The Christian Alternative for Business.
It was a popular success, and when he became president, “it was obvious to me” that Burks wanted Priest to look at other programs wherein instruction on Christianity and professionalism could be applied.
“Not that [another department] had to have a course like he did, but that every degree — no matter if you were a graduate in art or business or physical education — that you will have had these strong biblical principles oriented from your area of academics.”
When Enron and World-Com and similar business scandals wrecked public confidence in the business and accounting industry in the early part of the aughts, “I never ever heard him say a word about [his curriculum]. He could have gone around saying, ‘See there? I told you we needed this.’ He didn’t do that. But for me, I was thinking, ‘Ah-ha!’ It’s good Harding has this bedrock of ethics.”
A Harding undergraduate takes a Bible course every semester. In effect, every Harding graduate minors in Bible. But Burks says there can be a disconnection between knowing your Bible on Sunday and bearing it out on Monday.
“Our Christian worldview is a perspective, and you want to teach every course from the Christian worldview. Whether it’s education or biology or nursing or business, it’s taught from the perspective God lives. God exists. God is active in your life. That’s why most students choose to come here. Not every one, but most.”
In the summer, Burks transitions from the position of president to chancellor, a post much closer to emeritus status than one by the same name in the University of Arkansas system. He’ll be involved in promoting the university, fundraising, steering special projects through to fruition, but he will no longer steer the ship.
“I don’t necessarily sense that he is sad,” his son says. “He feels a sense of peace about it, that he has done the best job he could.
“I’m still pleased he is very well-received by students, by administration, by faculty. He is still very popular among those groups, which sometimes, when you reach 10 or 15 years, people are ready to help you pack and see you on your way — that is not the case with him. If he agreed to stay another five years I think everyone would be happy.”
SELF PORTRAIT
David Burks
PLACE OF BIRTH Ava, Mo., on April 13, 1943.
FAMILY Wife, Leah; sons Bryan (Laura) and Stephen (Jeanne), and six grandchildren.
WHEN I WAS YOUNGER, I MODELED MYSELF AFTER my dad.
I COLLECT bison statues [the mascot of Harding University].
HARDEST OF THE COMMANDMENTS TO OBEY Well, loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, though that’s more from the New Testament.
MY FAVORITE MOVIE It’s a Wonderful Life.
IF A PERSON READ ONLY TWO BOOKS HIS ENTIRE LIFE, THE SECOND WOULD BE I Believe Because by Batsell Barrett Baxter.
CHIEF AMONG VIRTUES Honesty.
A TERRIFIC ATTRIBUTE A PERSON CAN HAVE Serving others when no one knows you’re doing it.
GREATEST STRENGTH AS A UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT Commitment to seeing Harding develop as a leader in Christian higher education. The question is, how do you get that done? I would say it’s a commitment to strategic planning.
MY FIRST BIG PURCHASE IN RETIREMENT A riding lawn mower for my wife.
ONE THING I NEVER DID GET DONE WAS the establishment of a Harding branch campus in Florida.
THREE PEOPLE I’D INVITE TO MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and James A. Harding.
THE ONE THING EVERY MAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT EVERY WOMAN They think differently from men in every aspect of life.
ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Driven.
High Profile, Pages 33 on 01/13/2013