Mission First: Montreat College’s Bold Vision for Christ-Centered Education
In this episode, Dr. Paul Maurer shares the extraordinary transformation of Montreat College during his tenure as president. Once on the brink of closure, the college experienced a dramatic turnaround sparked by a timely and unexpected financial pledge—what Dr. Maurer describes as nothing short of divine intervention.
At the heart of Montreat’s revival has been a renewed, Christ-centered identity that brought clarity, unity, and purpose to its mission. Under Dr. Maurer’s leadership, the college has not only rebounded but flourished, achieving record enrollment and earning national recognition, especially in the field of cybersecurity.
Listen as we reflect on the power of resilience in higher education and how unwavering commitment to core values can breathe new life into an institution.
What You Will Learn:
- President of Montreat College, Dr. Paul Maurer, emphasizes a strong commitment to Christ-centered education and its implications for institutional identity.
- Under Dr. Maurer's leadership, Montreat College has experienced record enrollment and significant academic program developments, particularly in cybersecurity.
- The college's mission clarity has been pivotal in its recent growth, fostering a unique niche in the competitive landscape of higher education.
- The story of Montreat College's turnaround includes miraculous financial support that facilitated its survival during a critical period.
- The institution aims to combine rigorous academic standards with spiritual formation, preparing students for careers and meaningful lives.
Resources:
Visit our website: https://www.naccap.org
Email us: Office@naccap.org
Visit The NACCAP Annual Conference: https://naccapconference.org
Transcript
Welcome to the Higher Ed Higher Purpose Podcast, a podcast designed for NatCap members, prospective students and their families.
Speaker B:Hello again, everyone.
Speaker B:Welcome to another edition of the Higher Ed Higher Purpose Podcast.
Speaker B:My name is Phil Cook.
Speaker B:It's my privilege to serve as the president of NatCap.
Speaker B:And we're thrilled today to have one of our NACCAP institutions here with our podcast and the president of Montreat College, Dr.
Speaker B:Paul Maurer.
Speaker B:Dr.
Speaker B:Maurer, thanks for being with us today on our podcast.
Speaker A:Great to be with you.
Speaker A:Thanks for having me.
Speaker B:Well, we want to give the formal intro, of course.
Speaker B:And Today's guest is Dr.
Speaker B:Paul Maurer, President of Montreat College in North Carolina and one of the longest serving presidents among the state's independent college universities.
Speaker B:With more than 30 years of leadership experience in nonprofit and higher education, Dr.
Speaker B:Maurer has led Montreu to national recognition in cybersecurity, education and workforce development.
Speaker B:During his tenure, the college has seen record enrollment, which is great news for NatCap and what we do.
Speaker B:New academic programs, major campus upgrades, a renewed focus on Christ centered education.
Speaker B:He's also a published author, scholar of the American presidency, and fun fact, he cuts his own hair and so do I.
Speaker B: llen, have been married since: Speaker B:Proud parents and grandparents.
Speaker B:Thanks again, Dr.
Speaker B:Mao, for being with us today.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Great to be with you.
Speaker B:So I was in the Southeast for a long time, was very familiar with Montreat and their story.
Speaker B:But I'm pleased to maybe start with going back to Montreat 11 years ago.
Speaker B:What were the key changes or convictions that you saw that began to shape Montreat's future?
Speaker A:Yeah, thanks, Phil.
Speaker A:The Montreat story is a 109-year-old story.
Speaker A: Now, when I arrived in: Speaker A:It had come very, very close to closing.
Speaker A:Enrollment had declined for enough years to make the budget really untenable.
Speaker A:College had gone into merger conversations with another faith based school in the region.
Speaker A:A year of that conversation ended in no merger.
Speaker A: In early: Speaker A:Close or have God show up in a big way.
Speaker A:It was right at that time that one of our adjunct faculty members reached out to someone who had visited their church nearby a year and a half earlier.
Speaker A:And that couple had anonymously begun to give them the church unsolicited, out of the blue, very large gifts, $50,000 checks, $100,000 checks.
Speaker A:And a year and a half later, this adjunct faculty member, who's a dear friend, now reached out to this couple and said, you've been incredibly generous with my church.
Speaker A:We don't actually have a lot of needs.
Speaker A:But Montreal College, the last fully Christ centered four year liberal arts college in the state of North Carolina, is in desperate straits.
Speaker A:Might you consider helping?
Speaker A:And over email, six weeks of email exchanges, no visits, they never met a trustee, they never talked to a faculty member other than our adjunct.
Speaker A:They made a $6 million pledge to the college to restart and give hope to the last Christ centered institution in the state of North Carolina.
Speaker A:I came on a few months after that hoping of course, to have met that person before saying yes.
Speaker A:I was denied that ability.
Speaker A:And the first thing we did was, and you might think the first thing you do is go hunt for money and grow enrollment and all those things were necessary.
Speaker A:But I said to the board of trustees, I think the most important thing that we can do for now, for midterm and for long term is to clarify our Christ centered identity.
Speaker A:Our statement of faith had, was not as strong as I thought it could be.
Speaker A:The language of infallibility and inerrancy had been taken out of the Statement of Faith some years before I arrived.
Speaker A:I have a Master of Divinity from Gordon Conwell Seminary, so I've got theological education as part of my background.
Speaker A:And I said to the board, we just need to be crystal clear about who we are theologically, because if we're going to be a Christian college, we ought to be meaningfully clear about what it means to be a Christian college or a Christ centered college.
Speaker A:And so we formed a task force.
Speaker A:That task force worked for two and a half years to message the direction to our faculty, to our staff, to our alumni, to also write a community life covenant that affirmed that we believe that God's design for marriage is exclusively between one man and one woman, that life begins at conception.
Speaker A:These are not political stances.
Speaker A:These are theological stances that we believe are taught clearly in a scripture that we hold to be fully authoritative in all matters of life and conduct.
Speaker A: And so in: Speaker A:And we had, as I said, had a two and a half year run up to that.
Speaker A:Lots of transparency, lots of public meetings, lots of small group interactions, lots of drafts of documents.
Speaker A:There was no Bloody Thursday.
Speaker A:There was no cutting.
Speaker A:We said to people, you have time.
Speaker A:If you're not a good fit, then you have time to find something else if it's not a good fit for you.
Speaker A:But what we're going to do is we're going to ask you, as an act of conscience to say, yes, I can affirm and support these, I believe these as a condition of employment.
Speaker A:We knew that there would be some people that would do it, that would affirm and support out of convenience, not wanting to change jobs or move.
Speaker A:And we think that happened.
Speaker A:And within a few years we had unity around those documents which we consider to be really the core documents of our institution.
Speaker A:They really define who we are and create our identity.
Speaker B:Dr.
Speaker B:Maurer, I'm not a student of presidential US presidential history, but I'd like to think I'm becoming one on faith based Christ centered campuses of which NatCap serve.
Speaker B:And I love that you're starting that.
Speaker B:Eleven years ago, two things you said.
Speaker B:One was God was already working in terms of the fundraising before you got here.
Speaker B:And then secondly, that you focused on the Christ centerpiece of it.
Speaker B:Talked to some presidents, they talk about the fundraising and enrollment.
Speaker B:But I just want to dig in a little bit more there and kind of get you to just share a little more about God's providence in bringing you to Montreat and the work that was being done and then how he blessed this initial decision because it was quite prescient, as it were, because the mission clarity then becomes an important part of institutions that are thriving 100%.
Speaker A:And you know, my coming to Montreat was, frankly, against my will.
Speaker A:I said no twice.
Speaker A:I'd been president of a college before.
Speaker A:I had been asked to do a turnaround at that institution.
Speaker A:We had the three largest enrollments in that college's history.
Speaker A:And I got fired.
Speaker A:And I got fired over a personnel decision that was unpopular and we couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together.
Speaker A:The board fatigued and said, we're not going to renew your contract.
Speaker A:And so I wasn't really eager to.
Speaker A:To get back into another situation that felt like the first one.
Speaker A:In all honesty, I said to the Lord, lord, can you not do better than Montre College?
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:Like, that was my.
Speaker A:I felt like I was in the Psalms, just praying very, very transparent pleas with God to say, please don't do this, please do not do this.
Speaker A:And in the end, and I'm not a mystic, I'm reformed in my theology.
Speaker A:I've never heard a voice.
Speaker A:In the end, what I discerned was the Lord saying, this is the door I have opened for you.
Speaker B:Well, that's not a joke that comes to mind, but what do you get?
Speaker B:A podcast.
Speaker B:When a reformed theologian and a recovering Pentecostal get together to talk about leadership and Christian higher education.
Speaker B:I'm so thrilled with your candor and your transparency about what you're describing here.
Speaker B:You said there was no Bloody Thursday, but I imagine there were some battles.
Speaker B:You said some folks stuck around.
Speaker B:But when you're doing this mission, clarity and defining Montreat's future in that regard, were there tough conversations?
Speaker B:How do you handle those conversations?
Speaker B:Leadership, faculty, community?
Speaker B:Were there those?
Speaker B:And how did Paul Maurer handle those?
Speaker A:Yeah, of course there were.
Speaker A:And part of the narrative was this is the direction we're heading, and we are doing it slowly and we want to give everyone enough time because we know this is a major life decision.
Speaker A:If you're going to change, if you're going to leave this college because you're not a fit for the direction that we're heading, we want to give you time to do that.
Speaker A:We're not pushing you out the door.
Speaker A:Secondly is there were people who at the very end chose not to take the option of stepping away, and they openly fought what we were doing.
Speaker A:And so they went to the press.
Speaker A:Pretty predictable.
Speaker A:And of course, the media loves this sort of thing.
Speaker A:And we had a protest on campus.
Speaker A:We had a student protest on campus, and the local television news came out to film the protest.
Speaker A:The protest at its height that day had three students.
Speaker A:And mostly it was one or two students out in front of the library on the lawn.
Speaker A:And as you can imagine, it was the top of the news at the 11 o' clock news, having three students protesting on the lawn.
Speaker A:And, you know, you just.
Speaker A:It's the climate in which we live.
Speaker A:And it's funny.
Speaker A:And honestly, it's also boring because in the end, we are who we are.
Speaker A: st of: Speaker A:My email and phone blew up for 30 days, and then it didn't.
Speaker A:And you realize when you take bullets, when you get shot at, you realize that it doesn't necessarily kill you.
Speaker A:Like, you can take the shots, you can take the bullets, the heat goes away.
Speaker A:And this is part of how we grow as human beings.
Speaker A:This is part of how God made us, is every act of courage that we engage in strengthens us to take the next act of courage.
Speaker A:So part of the resilience and grit that we want our students to learn, we've gone through that process too, as adults, and we've gone through it here at the college, and we're able to narrate it with joy.
Speaker A:To say, this is part of life and you can do this, too.
Speaker B:Excellent leadership lessons for those professional members of our organization, which are very helpful in terms of how you've navigated leading Montreat and NatCap exists to serve enrollment.
Speaker B:So those changes can be great.
Speaker B:You can feel good about it, but at the end of the day you've got to have students and you gotta.
Speaker B:And you've seen growth, so you've seen remarkable growth when institutions are struggling.
Speaker B:What has driven the growth at Montreat?
Speaker B:Why have you been so successful in your tenure as president?
Speaker A:Well, what I've just narrated is the most important part in my estimation, our clarity as a Christ centered institution.
Speaker A:We are not.
Speaker A:We, we know who we are.
Speaker A:We're comfortable in our theological skin.
Speaker A:It is what it is.
Speaker A:And we don't attempt to be all things to all people.
Speaker A:I believe that every college president should rightfully understand their own institution as a niche institution.
Speaker A:I think Harvard is a niche institution.
Speaker A:I think North Carolina State University is a niche, niche institution.
Speaker A:Montre College is a niche institution.
Speaker A:So we don't try to be all things to all people.
Speaker A:We think that there is a market for faith based higher education that takes academics very seriously, but also takes spiritual formation and career development seriously also.
Speaker A:And so I've been doing this for 25 years in Christ centered higher education.
Speaker A:And as I've watched some of my fellow institutions step away from biblical orthodoxy, historic biblical orthodoxy, tenants, I mourn that.
Speaker A:And I think part of what happens is not only do they step away from biblical orthodoxy, but when they do that, they kind of instantly become vanilla in the marketplace.
Speaker A:Like what distinguishes them from Joe institution down the road?
Speaker A:Nothing.
Speaker A:And so I think that agility, entrepreneurship, flexibility, courage, convictions, strong academic programs.
Speaker A:It's not enough to be a Christian college.
Speaker A:You've got to be a Christian college that's serious about academics.
Speaker A:So we have leaned heavily into recruitment standards.
Speaker A:We have dramatically lowered the number and percentage of students that come in on academic probation.
Speaker A:We have raised the admission standards, we've raised the academic standards in the classroom.
Speaker A:We've added new majors in market friendly areas.
Speaker A:We're not afraid to mix the liberal arts with pre professional programs.
Speaker A:We think you can do both at the same time.
Speaker A:So we teach to the liberal arts competencies in cybersecurity, we teach to the liberal arts competencies in pre med.
Speaker A:It's possible to do this.
Speaker A:It's what Nathan Hatch called many years ago, former president at Wake Forest, an evolving understanding of the liberal arts.
Speaker A:And I think his language was right on target a decade ago when he said it.
Speaker A:And I've embraced that, that understanding of how we mix the two.
Speaker A:You're listening to the Higher Ed Higher Purpose podcast.
Speaker B:Excellent.
Speaker B:We're talking to Dr.
Speaker B:Paul Maurer, the president at Montre College, on the Higher Ed Higher Purpose podcast.
Speaker B:You said it.
Speaker B:One of our questions that we have ahead of time is the balancing of the liberal arts.
Speaker B:And from what a lot of folks in the Christian higher education space know of Montreat having success in cybersecurity.
Speaker B:So the.
Speaker B:The liberal arts, outstanding, technical, market driven programs like cybersecurity are not mutually exclusive, exclusive, and they're thriving at Montreat.
Speaker B:How have you been able to do that and why have you been so successful in that regard?
Speaker A: What we said in: Speaker A:We're in our 13th year of cyber.
Speaker A: ed, and then my first year in: Speaker A:A full bachelor's of science in cyber.
Speaker A:We knew quickly that we had to get the legitimacy of what we otherwise would call accreditation or major specific accreditation.
Speaker A:In this case, it's with the National Security Agency.
Speaker A:And the designation is a CAE designation to become a center of academic excellence.
Speaker A:So the NSA is not technically an accrediting body, but they are the de facto gold standard of accreditation in cybersecurity in American higher education.
Speaker A:We knew that we had to get that and get it fast.
Speaker A:So we achieved that.
Speaker A: We had that in: Speaker A:So back then there were maybe 150 schools that had that.
Speaker A:Today there are about 450 schools across the country that have achieved that.
Speaker A:And I knew nothing about cyber when I walked in the door here.
Speaker A:And a year later, I said to my cabinet, I'm reading about cybersecurity three or four days a week on the front page of the New York Times.
Speaker A:Maybe we've got something here and maybe we should swing for the fences.
Speaker A:And so we made a decision in late 15 to swing for the fences.
Speaker A:And that means investment resources, my time.
Speaker A:I hired a lobbyist.
Speaker A:We went to D.C.
Speaker A:beginning in January 16th, David and I were in D.C.
Speaker A:every 60 days for five years, no exceptions.
Speaker A:We spent.
Speaker A:We built relationship relationships.
Speaker A:Relationships.
Speaker A:What's true of life is true of government relations.
Speaker A:It's true of everything we do.
Speaker A:It's all about relationships.
Speaker A:And if you have trust, if you have credibility, if you bring value, those relationships blossom and they can become something very, very special.
Speaker A:And so we became very externally facing.
Speaker A:We began to build major partnerships.
Speaker A:And the NSA invited us around a very small table of educators nationally to help shape the future of cyber education for the nation.
Speaker A:So we've been around that table for a number of years now, and so it's become our second largest major.
Speaker A:We've hired industry experts as our cyber faculty.
Speaker A:They're not easy to find, but we're not hiring academicians per se.
Speaker A:We're hiring people with master's degrees in information security or cybersecurity or some related field.
Speaker A:But we're hiring people that worked 80 hour weeks and were the ones up at 2 o' clock in the morning solving the breaches.
Speaker A:That's who we hired.
Speaker A:And I said to our team, I don't really, if they have a PhD, that's fine, but I actually don't care.
Speaker A:What I want is, I want the real life live fire experience to teach our students how to be ethical cybersecurity professionals, how to build trust inside their environments and how to do the best technical work of anyone among their peers.
Speaker A:We do that combination, we're going to lead.
Speaker A:And that's what's happened.
Speaker B:It's the truth.
Speaker B:And so observing from an external perspective, both for many years, being in the Southeast myself, and now leading here with NatCap, the time flies by.
Speaker B:I mean, I could listen to it all day, but I've got just two more questions.
Speaker B:One more looking back, and it wasn't on our prescribed.
Speaker B:We talked about it beforehand.
Speaker B:But you know, certain things come a long ways that become opportunities and particularly North Carolina.
Speaker B:And your part of the country was really devastated by floods.
Speaker B:But so can you talk about what Montre has been through in the past year or so regarding the floods and how that's become kind of a.
Speaker B:The blessing the Lord's providing for you?
Speaker B:But the floods, what's going on on your campus?
Speaker B:How is Montreat emerging after the flood?
Speaker A:Yeah, thanks, Phil, appreciate the question.
Speaker A:Well, we were having a great year until Helene hit.
Speaker A:We had the largest freshman class in the college's 109 year history and we were off to a great start.
Speaker A:I was actually in Seoul, Korea at the Lausanne 4 gathering and I was literally on the flight home when my phone started blowing up.
Speaker A:And I learned about it on the flight home and I couldn't get back here into western North Carolina for about 36 hours once I landed because all the roads in western North Carolina from every direction were compromised.
Speaker A:And it literally was an island for about 36 hours.
Speaker A:You could not get in or out of western North Carolina.
Speaker A:Every major, every artery was compromised, every single one.
Speaker A:And so I finally got back, that was a Friday night.
Speaker A:I Got into Charlotte and it was late, late Saturday night when I got into western North Carolina.
Speaker A:We got hit pretty hard.
Speaker A:Ten buildings were damaged.
Speaker A:Nine of them we were able to fix in a relatively short period of time.
Speaker A:Thankfully, we had good insurance and we have flood insurance because we do have buildings in flood zone.
Speaker A:We're built in a mountain cove.
Speaker A:Literally, we're set against a mountain.
Speaker A:And so there are streams that run through our campus and those benign little streams, one of them became a raging river that completely destroyed our gymnasium.
Speaker A:I mean we literally today that little stream is about 4 inches deep.
Speaker A:It's a babbling brook right next to our gymnasium.
Speaker A:And on September 27th, it was a five foot deep, raging river that was running through our gymnasium.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:The amount of water was surreal.
Speaker A:The videos are absolutely astonishing to watch even now.
Speaker A:And so the gym was destroyed, except it was structurally not compromised.
Speaker A:So it's structurally sound.
Speaker A:We, it's a 68 year old building.
Speaker A:They don't build them like that.
Speaker A:They used to.
Speaker A:There's I beams about every six inches apart from each other in the basement of the building.
Speaker A:It held it together.
Speaker A:And between good insurance and we think fema, we're actually having a really good experience with fema.
Speaker A:I've heard all the horror stories, but we've had a really good experience so far with fema.
Speaker A:Between the two, we think that we'll have a brand new McAllister gymnasium by January 1st.
Speaker A:It was not on a renovation schedule.
Speaker A:And it looks like we're going to have a beautiful, spectacular, completely new, modern, updated gymnasium for, you know, maybe a little bit of out of pocket money.
Speaker A:But, but at this point, might be, might be, I don't know, a couple hundred thousand dollars that we have to figure out.
Speaker A:So no one died?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:No one was seriously injured.
Speaker A:And you can fix buildings.
Speaker A:And so we got off easy, thank the Lord.
Speaker B:Obviously, out of the flood emerges a lot of good reports and good news.
Speaker B:And, and I.
Speaker B:The last question for me, of course, being an enrollment guy and, and looking, we've been talking about the past and the transformation that's happened in Montre, but looking to the future.
Speaker B:What are you fired up today about the future.
Speaker B:And then particularly a word to prospective students and families of why they should enroll at Montre College.
Speaker A:Yeah, we've learned how to grow.
Speaker A:We've had record enrollment, nine in the last 10 years.
Speaker A:This year was, as I mentioned, the largest freshman class in the history of the college in 109 years.
Speaker A:And if the numbers today are an indication of what's going to happen in the fall.
Speaker A:We're 25 deposits ahead today over last year at this time.
Speaker A:So we're on target for another record enrollment.
Speaker A:And I think that what we've learned is that we know how to grow and that families in our region want our combination intellectual strength, spiritual formation, preparation for calling, a career.
Speaker A:We will challenge your sons and daughters intellectually.
Speaker A:We will.
Speaker A:They will grow.
Speaker A:Today, just today, we had our senior convocation.
Speaker A:We interviewed three of our seniors who are going out the door.
Speaker A:And I cried through the whole thing because you're.
Speaker A:You're listening to stories of transformation.
Speaker A:These are lives that are completely changed and transformed during their time here on campus.
Speaker A:It's boys, boys become men, girls become women.
Speaker A:This is what higher education was for most of American higher education's history.
Speaker A:And now the wheels have come off of most of American higher education, and we are the remnants.
Speaker A:And I've come to realize that the wealthy and elite institutions are no longer great.
Speaker A:And so we aspire to be one of the great institutions of the country because there's a gap in the greatest institutions in the country today.
Speaker A:And I would say by delivery of education and culture, we are great by biblical standards.
Speaker A:We have people who are great.
Speaker A:We have a delivery.
Speaker A:We deliver an outstanding education that's life transformative, helps them get the job, but helps them understand that their lives have meaning and purpose way beyond a paycheck, and that they leave here often with an understanding of and a vision for how to change the world for Christ.
Speaker B:Well, truly an encouragement to our listeners, to our leaders across the country that listen to us, prospective students, families, and the leadership at NatCap.
Speaker B:Dr.
Speaker B:Paul Maurer, thank you so much for spending time with us today.
Speaker B:A lot of great things happening at Montreat in North Carolina, and we recommend it to you all.
Speaker B:Thank you, Dr.
Speaker B:Maurer.
Speaker A:Thank you, Phil.
Speaker A:Great to be with you.
Speaker A:Appreciate the time.
Speaker A:Be sure to join us next time for the Higher Ed Higher Purpose podcast.
