- Cathy Cox's remarks during the Board of Laity Luncheon at the 2009 Annual Conference Session
Cathy Cox's remarks during the Board of Laity Luncheon at the 2009 Annual Conference Session
Laity Day Luncheon/North Georgia Conference of the UMC
June 18, 2009
Remarks by Cathy Cox
June 18, 2009
Remarks by Cathy Cox
It’s great to be back in Athens and at the North Georgia Conference. You gave me the chance to speak here a number of years ago – as Georgia’s Secretary of State.
I can assure you it never crossed my mind in those days that I’d be back here as the leader of a United Methodist institution. But the Lord works in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?
I want to share with you some details on what I believe really is one of the bright spots in Georgia today – and that, of course, is Young Harris College. Now in our 123rd year of operation, Young Harris College is building and growing toward an even stronger next 123 years.
Our Trustees looked at today’s trends, and saw that private two-year colleges were becoming sort of the “dinosaurs” of higher education. Students who are headed to college today know they need at least a four-year degree, a bachelor’s degree, if not graduate and professional school afterwards, to truly succeed in today’s global society and global economy. (50 years ago you could teach with a 2-year degree; you could go into business. It was a great foundation for success).
But today, even when you can offer students generous scholarships to a two-year school, many students will say, “Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want to start over as junior looking for scholarships, having to learn a new campus and leave my friends behind.” So it has become harder and harder to recruit students to a two-year private college.
Back in April 2007, the Trustees of Young Harris College voted to grow the college into a four-year college – some of you may know that when the college was founded in 1886, it WAS a four-year college. Around in the 19-teens, it was changed to a two-year college and has been ever since. So, in many ways, we’re going back to our roots.
For a few months after that April 2007 vote, our Trustees sort of joked that they’d done the hard work by VOTING to change the school’s mission. They said, you know, we might have to build A building. We might have to hire a few faculty.
Fast forward two years – and by July 1, we will have hired almost 30 new faculty, representing more than a 50% increase in our faculty within two years!
We’ve also hired numerous staff positions in athletics, student development, and other areas. This year alone, with new faculty and staff hires, we will have hired 40 new employees this year – can you think of any other business in north Georgia that has hired 40 people this year?
Instead of building A building, we now have three buildings in design or construction, totaling about $80 million in cost, with millions more on the drawing board: (DESCRIBE BUILDINGS) – Residence Hall, Recreation & Fitness, Campus Center (new dining facilities, library and student center), 12-court Tennis Court complex
· We hope to grow our enrollment from about 700 this fall to 1200, maybe 1500 – not trying to be the UGA of the mountains; we think what we do as a small liberal arts colleges is what we do best.
· Many things will NOT change – Our small residential liberal arts college, walkable campus, small enrollment, small classes, personal touch and attention, spectacular mountain views
· Methodist affiliation will not change – only be enhanced – we have a new campus minister after Rev. Fred Whitley retired following a distinguished 28-year ministry with Young Harris, and he will be growing a four-year religious life program that challenges our students in their faith walk.
· We will be taking our United Methodist connection into the classroom -- “Ethics across the curriculum” in every discipline -- We can have the robust discussion of ethics, of moral integrity, that public schools have to dance around.
I cannot tell you how much fun I am having leading this process of growing Young Harris College. Everyone involved wants to do this the right way – to grow a great little college into an even greater four-year liberal arts college.
But while I share this exciting news about Young Harris today, I have to remind myself that two years ago, I was out of a job!
For about 14 years, I served in political office in Georgia, and, especially from 2004 to 2006, I devoted every ounce of energy, every waking hour that I had, to trying to become Governor of Georgia. As you know, it didn’t work out like I’d planned and I lost the election in 2006.
It is no fun to lose an election. You not only feel like you’ve let yourself and your family down, you know you’ve disappointed thousands and thousands of your supporters. And it’s all very public – you can’t hide, you can’t go anywhere, without people knowing what has happened to you.
After I lost that election, I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do for a living. I am a lawyer, so I started talking to law firms in Atlanta. I had about six months left in office as Secretary of State after the election was over, and you might be amused to know that my chief of staff and I came THIS close to enrolling in real estate school! (Only when we thought about our faces appearing on a calendar or billboards did we throw out that idea!!)
Then one day in the fall of 2006, I got a card in the mail from a woman I knew, not a close friend, but a woman I’d met through politics. And the card said this on the front, “When my life didn’t turn out the way I hoped, I asked God for help.”
Inside it quoted a Bible verse that took on a new significance for me – Jeremiah 29: 11:
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
I taped the card to my bathroom mirror so that every morning when I got up, no matter how depressed and disappointed I was, I would rely on my faith, and on my God, who I firmly believe doesn’t close one door without opening another for us.
I went on for several months without knowing what in the world I was going to do, come January, when my term as Secretary of State ended. But thanks to this acquaintance, I had a new level of peace that somehow, someway, it would all work out.
Then some very strange things happened. Dean Rebecca White, here at the UGA law school, called one day out of the blue and asked if I would teach for a semester in a special chair named for Gov. Carl Sanders. Shortly thereafter, one of the Trustees at Young Harris College, Bert Lance, called and asked if I’d consider applying for the job of president.
Now I will tell you – never in all of my life had I considered teaching or working at a college. It just never, ever occurred to me. Two of my three sisters are public school educators, and they are very good at it – but I never saw that as my gift.
I remember praying, “Lord, are you trying to tell me something with these unexpected opportunities? Is there something you want me to do at a great little United Methodist College? Do you believe I could really succeed in a college environment?”
I had a lot of doubts, but I ultimately put it all in the Lord’s hands – and I will tell you, I’ve now had two of the best years of my life, doing things I never envisioned I was capable of doing, and loving every minute of it!
I share this with you today, as the Laity of our United Methodist Church, because of the role my acquaintance played in this scenario. She was a lay person who sensed that I was hurting, that I needed to turn my problems over to our Lord, and her actions made a huge difference in my life. She was not a close friend – but she had obviously taken time from her own busy life to consider what was going on in mine.
In sending me that card, she refocused my disappointment on possibilities – and she ministered to me in a very important way at a very low point in my life.
Her ministry, simple as it was, is exactly what we, as the laity of the United Methodist Church, ought to be considering at this time of the greatest economic upheaval most people today have ever experienced. In Georgia alone, more than 463,000 people have lost their jobs and are looking for new ones. Thousands upon thousands of Georgians have lost their homes. They are struggling to pay bills. Like I found myself in 2006, many, many of our neighbors today have no idea now what they will do to support their families and make a living.
It’s time for us all to recognize how important our ministry is and can be to those who are hurting. It doesn’t have to be complicated – a simple greeting card, a note sharing an important Bible verse, a listening ear, can offer hope beyond measure as our friends, our neighbors, struggle through some very dark days.
But to do that, we must take time from our busy lives to consider the needs of others. I highly recommend a new book to you by Barbara Brown Taylor entitled “An Altar in the World,” in which she suggests that we all slow down the hectic pace of our lives to consider what is around us. To stop and actually look people in the eye. To be sensitive to the sounds of birds or the sight of a sunset or the cool feeling of earth beneath our feet.
That kind of sensitivity is necessary for us to see the pain our neighbors may be feeling. That kind of sensitivity is necessary if we are to meet the Lord’s challenge to be his eyes and ears and hands and feet in the world today.
In these tough times, in these times of great anxiety and stress, we need to be the messengers who can say, “I believe the Lord has plans for you, for all of us – plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
We need to tell those in crisis to “Let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
We need to be the daily reminders to our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues at work, that “I have strength for anything through Him who gives me power.
These are messages we all need to hear today, and they’re messages in this economy that can be the saving grace for thousands of our neighbors.
At Young Harris, the Lord has given me a challenge I’d never have found on my own. My hope is that in opening my life to new possibilities, He can use me to build an even brighter future for a venerable United Methodist college, and in turn, educate new generations of students in the great Wesleyan tradition of a “warm heart and a trained mind.”
In United Methodist congregations – if we, the Laity of the church – are open to the ways in which the Lord can use us; if we are sensitive to the needs of others, if we can stop long enough to sense the hurt and pain and anxiety of others, we can bring new hope and new possibilities into the lives of everyone we meet.
We are called to do no less.
God is good – all the time!
Good things happen when the Laity of the church respond to the Lord’s call. Good things are happening at Young Harris, too, – so come to see us, and send us your high school students! Thank you for serving our Lord as the Laity of the United Methodist Church.