JBU Emphasizes Faith First

Administrators at John Brown University bristle when they hear the school referred to as “the best-kept secret in higher education in Arkansas.”

“We don’t want to be the best-kept secret,” said Patricia R. Gustavson, vice president for finance and administration at the private college in Siloam Springs.

Gustavson said the school’s administrators have decided to begin a campaign to raise awareness of JBU and make sure it is no longer the mysterious educational enclave on the Oklahoma border.

“JBU is a high-quality private collegiate institution in the backyard that recruits from 46 states,” said Jim Krall, vice president for university advancement.

Founded in 1919, JBU has been cited by U.S. News and World Report as one of the best bargains for a good private-college education in America. With tuition of only $12,464 for the upcoming school year, who could argue with that?

JBU has 1,200 full-time students, assets of $95 million, annual revenue of $30 million and an endowment of $40 million. It has satellite classrooms in Springdale, Fort Smith and North Little Rock, where Arkansas’ First Lady Janet Huckabee is polishing off her bachelor’s degree.

JBU also has the well-respected Center for Marriage and Family Studies and Soderquist Center for Leadership and Ethics, which brought former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to campus last year (even though Netanyahu admits he was an adulterer but says he has changed his ways).

But people from across Arkansas — even as close as Fayetteville, 30 miles to the east, where 14,000 University of Arkansas students roam freely from bar to bar — often know little about the unique campus on College Hill in Siloam Springs.

Quirky JBU

JBU has given us several important Northwest Arkansans. Fayetteville residents are probably most familiar with two JBU alumni: former Fayetteville Alderman Randy Zurcher, 31, who lost his job with the Arkansas Department of Human Services in 2000 after admitting he had been surfing Internet porn sites at work; and the self-proclaimed virgin-’til-I-get-married Lucas Roebuck, 27, former managing editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times of Fayetteville and a candidate for state representative from District 97.

The quirkiness of JBU can’t be denied.

It’s an interdenominational Protestant-based college where students are required to attend chapel twice a week and must take four classes on Christianity: Old Testament Survey, New Testament Survey, Essentials of Evangelical Theory and Christian Life.

If they’re not already sopping wet by the time they get there, students at JBU are indoctrinated into Christian theology in a sink-or-swim plunge. Smoking and drinking are prohibited, which explains why JBU students can be found in Fayetteville bookstores and other tame hangouts on the weekends. It’s their version of partying.

But administrators say that doesn’t mean it’s a close-minded campus. JBU students are open to hearing about beliefs that don’t mesh with their own, Gustavson said. Last year, in fact, a Muslim student attended JBU.

“The founder wrote it into the charter that we could never exclude students who were not of the Christian faith,” Gustavson said, but she noted that the Muslim student probably spent a lot of time defending his beliefs at JBU. “It’s tough. I think it’s hard for them to go to school in this environment. Our faith is going to be a very overt and integral part of everything we do.”

Elward Christian Soldiers

That founder was a flamboyant fellow named Elward Brown. Born in 1879 in Oskaloosa, Iowa, Brown decided as a young adult that it wasn’t fitting to have only two names, so he adopted his father’s first name John.

Brown was a rapscallion of a kid who was known for practical jokes and his ability to call a good square dance, according to “John Brown of Arkansas,” a book by Ralph C. Kennedy Jr. and Thomas Rothrock. Brown once jumped out of a school window when his teacher caught him playing the harmonica for the rest of the class.

Brown dropped out of school at the age of 11 to work and help support his family.

When Brown decided to move to Rogers with one of his brothers, his father said, “That boy will never amount to anything. We’d just as well let him go.”

Brown got married in 1900 and eventually had six children.

While hanging out with friends at a Rogers cafe one night, a singing Swede banging on a bass drum lured Brown off the porch and down a rainy street to God, according to Kennedy and Rothrock.

Ensign J.M. Olson was a Salvation Army crusader who wandered the streets of Rogers singing and proselytizing. Brown soon found himself doing the same thing. By the end of his career as an evangelist, according to JBU lore, Brown had led 300,000 people to Christ.

Brown had worked hard all of his life, having a variety of jobs ranging from carny to college president.

As a traveling evangelist, Brown found himself in Vancouver, British Columbia, meeting with students who were looking for a Christian college. So Brown decided to build Southwestern Collegiate Institute, an academy and junior college in Siloam Springs for students who couldn’t afford to pay tuition. Classes began in 1919 with 10 teachers and 70 students from 12 states and British Columbia. Within two years, the school’s name was changed to John E. Brown College.

In 1924, Brown announced that he had basically purchased the entire resort town of Sulphur Springs, about 25 miles north of Siloam Springs, and would build a college there for people who could afford to pay.

In his public announcement, Brown said the new school would have “no jazz associations, no jazz dancing, no jazz dressing.”

He soon discovered that by establishing a five-year, accredited college in Sulphur Springs, he was killing the campus in Siloam Springs.

Brown converted the campus in Sulphur Springs to an academy and junior college for girls. JEBC became an all-male junior college. But that only lasted a few years before he combined the students at JEBC and converted the Sulphur Springs campus to a hotel and resort.

In 1928, Brown began asking all JEBC students to sign a promissory note saying they would pay the college $150 after they graduated and went to work.

In 1934, the school became a four-year school and the name was changed to John Brown University. It consisted of three colleges: academic, Bible and vocational.

With the motto “Christ over all,” JBU was founded on the principles of head, heart and hand, which stand for academics, spiritual growth and practical experience.

Laughing Evangelist

In 1935, JBU graduated its first four-year class, and Brown purchased KUOA, the state’s first radio station, from the Fulbright family of Fayetteville. On a clear night, with the 1,000-watt radio station, which had served the UA, Brown could blast his sermons to listeners several states away.

A tireless traveling evangelist, Brown spent much of his time in California, where his radio show, “God’s Half Hour,” was featured daily in Hollywood and Long Beach.

During his evangelical campaigns of 1920-21, Brown preached frequently in the California Bay Area with William “Pep” Waterhouse, C.L. Virgin and Otis D. Ironmonger, a singing evangelist, as part of his soul-saving team. On opening night in Oakland, they drew 2,500 listeners.

In 1922, at a service in Chattanooga, three robed Ku Klux Klanners burst in like a scene from the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” The masked trio marched to the front of the congregation and gave the pastor a $100 donation in appreciation of the work Brown was doing there and at his college in Arkansas.

In New England, Brown was known as the “laughing evangelist,” although he had a serious side, too.

In the meantime, Brown had started making several business investments. In 1931, he purchased five gasoline stations and a wholesale gas delivery service in California. He also started several businesses in Benton County, including a dress factory and furniture factory. The students at JEBU were required to work at these businesses, providing them with a practical education and Brown with a cheap labor force.

In 1937, Brown took over two schools in California. He opened Brown School for girls near Glendora and Brown Military Academy for boys in San Diego.

The boys school was previously the San Diego Army and Navy Academy and was known as the “West Point of the West.”

Students at the California schools paid their way, and that helped contribute income to JBU. But some of Brown’s followers, who were opposed to war at any cost, criticized him for taking over the military academy.

In 1951, JBU purchased KOME, a 5,000-watt radio station in Tulsa, and Brown immediately canceled all on-air advertising for tobacco and beer. Executives of the Mutual network, with which KOME was affiliated, later sold advertising to a beer distributor, and Brown severed his ties with the radio station.

In January 1957, Brown fell and broke his hip. Doctors operated on him, and Brown died a month later because of a blood clot that developed, according to Kennedy and Rothrock.

Brown’s only son, John Elward Brown Jr., who was born in 1921, carried on in his father’s footsteps and served as president of JBU until 1979.

John Jr.’s son, John E. Brown III, born in 1946, was president of JBU from 1979 to 1993. John III has represented District 34 in the Arkansas Senate since 1995 and is administrator of the Windgate Foundation in Bentonville. He will be ousted by term limits at the end of the year.

After John III’s resignation, George F. Ford and E. William George each had a brief stint as JBU president before A. LeVon “Lee” Balzer was hired for that job in 1994. Balzer has been at JBU ever since.

It was a rainy day when Balzer was inaugurated at JBU. Don Soderquist, chairman of the university’s board, cited an African belief that showers falling on an event are an omen of special blessings.

JBU Today

JBU’s first graduate program, a master of science degree in counseling, began in 1995. JBU now has five master’s programs: three in counseling and two in business. A sixth master’s program, in ministry, is currently being accredited.

The 102,000-SF Pat and Willard Walker Student Center was completed in January. The building, which cost $12.7 million to construct, includes a dormitory, offices, cafe and dining area. The William H. Bell Science Hall is under construction on campus.

JBU’s Campaign 2000 exceeded its goal and raised more than $39 million.

The university’s radio station, KLRC, won a Dove Award from the Gospel Music Association in 2001 for radio station of the year in small markets.

Entering freshmen at JBU in 2000 had an average ACT score of 25 and high school grade point average of 3.5, the same as the freshman class at the UA in Fayetteville.

U.S. News and World Report ranked JBU in its top tier of Southern comprehensive bachelor’s-degree colleges in 2001. But JBU, at No. 12, trailed behind Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia at No. 5 and was tied with the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville.

But not all the emphasis is on academics at JBU. Krall noted that JBU is one of the few schools to remain on The Templeton Guide’s list of “colleges that encourage character” since the list’s inception.

JBU now has students from 46 states and 30 countries (including 60 students each year from Central America and Mexico who are participants in the Walton International Scholarship Program).

Of the 1,100 undergraduate students at JBU in 2000, the majority were from Arkansas (356), Oklahoma (105), Texas (102) and Kansas (70). About 800 students live on campus.

The university’s endowment was about $2 million in 1980, Gustavson said. After JBU’s radio stations (other than KLRC) were sold in the ’80s, the endowment rose to $12 million. That endowment is $40 million today.