President of Oral Roberts University
On January 28, 2009, the Board of Trustees of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, elected Rutland as the 3rd President of the institution. Rutland's selection came about after he was recommended by the university's presidential search committee to the Board of Trustees. The committee had been formed following the resignation of the school's former president, evangelist and son of the institution's namesake, Richard Roberts, in 2007. Roberts' resignation came on the heels of a financial scandal and a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by several former faculty members of the university, as well as numerous claims of misuse of funds and impropriety directed against his wife, Lindsay Roberts. Rutland's election marks the first time in the history of Oral Roberts University that a person not a member of the Roberts family will hold the office of president.
Rutland was selected from a pool of more than 130 applicants to lead the university and he assumed the office of the President on July 1, 2009, taking the reins of the institution from Interim President Dr. Ralph Fagin, who was appointed to the position following the resignation of Richard Roberts in 2007. Although Oral Roberts was not personally involved with the selection process, Rutland is reportedly the only person he seriously considered to take over the presidency of the university. Rutland initially told ORU he was not interested in the position, and would not even submit a resume, but was eventually persuaded to accept the post by ORU board chairman Mart Green. According to an Associated Press report, Rutland will be making a yearly salary of $275,000. Rutland has stated that his main goals as president will be to expand the university's enrollment, as well as work to restore trust between the university and the public with a "level of transparency, authenticity, and being straightforward as possible." In keeping with his goals for the university, Rutland decided to take on the responsibility for preaching at nearly all of the school's chapel services himself. It has been reported that Rutland hopes to be able to increase enrollment from its current level at just over 3,000 to as much as 6,500
Read more about this topic: Mark Rutland
Famous quotes containing the words president of, president, oral, roberts and/or university:
“What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I see the first lady as another means to keep a president from becoming isolated.”
—Nancy Reagan (b. 1923)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me, for no good reason at all.”
—Martin Goldsmith, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Al Roberts (Tom Neal)
“Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place.”
—Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)