40 Years Day #31 Career #4 – Trevecca & Higher Education…

I left EMI in October 2009 with grand plans of bicycling down the Natchez Trace, visiting friends and enjoying some time off.? Little did I know that 3 days after leaving EMI I would tear my Achilles tendon in my right foot.? Suddenly I wouldn’t be doing anything if somebody wasn’t driving me!

Shortly thereafter I was sitting at home, watching every episode of White Collar, when I received a phone call from someone at Trevecca telling me that their CFO had suddenly resigned on 12/1/2009.? Short story – I interviewed and was hired to start work on 1/1/10.

I had no experience in higher education but I did have a lot of history with Trevecca as my father moved us from LA to Nashville so he could teach here and both me and Sherry had graduated from there.? Also refer to Day #16 and know that I had attended the campus church since January 1975, so I was very familiar with the “hill”.

Dan Boone has been president of TNU since 2005 and is the most genuine honest Christ like person I had ever worked for.? He assumed I would figure out higher-ed and left me alone to manage the non-academic side of the campus.? I had much to learn but thankfully had Chuck Seaman to ask every question imaginable.? I met Dan years before when, as a part of the Trevecca Community Church board, we “naively” asked him to become our pastor when the church finances were “ugly”.? At the age of 22 when at Touche Ross I refinanced the TCC bond debt with Commerce Union Bank – never thinking that it was unreasonable to ask a bank SVP to seriously consider my loan application on behalf of the church.? Basically, we did refinance, Dan & Denise did come to TCC and we established a strong friendship.

My first question in 2010 was why our PA program (first Physician’s Assistant program in TN from the 1970’s) only had ~35 students in a cohort when they had ~600+ applicants annually.? Thus, Steve Pusey (provost) and I (on crutches) went to visit with “Doc” Murdoch, the MD over the program to inquire.? Doc had a simple answer…his classroom only had 35 seats.? My answer was plainer still…next year he would have a larger classroom.

Higher Education was a foreign land to me.? Mind you Trevecca was “progressive” compared to the majority of what I found.? We expanded Doc’s classroom, and the PA program enrollment grew.? It was and continues to be a high-quality program graduating amazing students who work in a wide variety of medical fields in Nashville and the world.?

I told Sherry I was only going to work at Trevecca for a year before I found another job…