CONWAY, Ark. – (Oct. 7, 2008) Hendrix College has received a $1 million gift from the Fort Smith-based Miller Foundation to establish an on-campus center enhancing students’ future career decisions and spiritual callings.
The Miller Center for Vocation, Calling and Ethics, created through the foundation organized by Bob and Nadine Miller of Fort Smith, will provide programming, staffing and leadership to assist Hendrix students through challenging life decisions.
The Miller Center will continue and enhance traditions of the college’s Hendrix-Lilly Initiative, a program designed with similar intentions at Hendrix seven years ago and sustained through a five-year implementation grant and a subsequent three-year sustainability grant from the Lilly Foundation. The Miller Center will officially replace the Lilly Initiative in the fall of 2009.
Bob and Nadine Miller are pillars in the United Methodist Church, serving as lay leaders in both local and national Methodist organizations, and have been responsible for numerous philanthropic actions within their Fort Smith community. They have been active supporters of the First United Methodist Church of Fort Smith for decades as well as advocates of the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith, a new emergency room and center at a local hospital, and other service-related organizations.
Hendrix College has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church for more than a century.
“This gift will be life-changing and life-enhancing for countless numbers of current and future Hendrix students,” Hendrix President J. Timothy Cloyd said. “To say this gift is monumental in the life of Hendrix College would be an understatement.”
The Center will continue to provide programming to guide the spiritual callings and vocational inclinations of Hendrix students – from service-based internships, personal growth retreats, mission trips, and academic exploration of vocation – while providing opportunities for the expansion of these programs, according to Dr. Peg Falls-Corbitt, the current director of the Hendrix-Lilly Initiative who will also direct the Miller Center.
“The Miller’s generosity allows Hendrix to continue, and to build upon, the best of the programs for theological exploration of vocation originally seeded by the grant from the Lilly Endowment,” Falls-Corbitt said. “That’s great news for our students, over 50 percent of whom already participate in a Vocations Initiative program before graduating.”
Recognizing the diversity of the Hendrix Community, the Miller Center will continue to provide programming appropriate for students of any religious heritage and those with no religious tradition at all. In honor of the religious tradition of the College, however, many elements of the Miller Center are designed specifically to assist those students exploring a Christian vocation, whether through professional ministry or active lay leadership.
“We honor Bob and Nadine Miller not only as wonderful stewards of their church and community, but for their loving commitment to the lives of our future generation of community, church and lay leaders,” said Ellis Arnold, Hendrix’s Executive Vice President and Dean of Institutional Advancement. “Their gifts will be seen through the lives of so many future Hendrix graduates.”
Hendrix, founded in 1876, is a selective, residential, undergraduate liberal arts college emphasizing experiential learning in a demanding yet supportive environment. The college is among 165 colleges featured in the 2008 edition of the Princeton Review America’s Best Value Colleges. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. For more information, visit www.hendrix.edu.
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