Posted: 9/03/04
| Leland Harden (left), director of communications at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, visits with Forrest McMillan, dean of students, as they walk across campus. Harden came to the HSU staff after 20 years as an entrepreneur in the tech field. (Ferrell Foster Photos) |
Two Hardin-Simmons staff go from marketplace to campus
By Ferrell Foster
Texas Baptist Communications
ABILENE–Thousands of students graduate each year from Texas Baptist universities. Years later, some of them come back.
Jimmie Monhollon and Leland Harden are two such graduates. After years in the marketplace–one in the world of high-level federal economic policy and one in the realm of high-tech entrepreneurship–both followed God's “call” to return.
Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene got them both.
Harden, the entrepreneur, came back to his alma mater. Monhollon, the economist, came back to Baptist academia a little further down the road from his alma mater, Wayland Baptist University in Plainview.
Their stories are similar, yet different.
Harden, 41, returned to Hardin-Simmons this year after a 20-year sojourn to Manhattan and San Francisco. Monhollon, 71, came to Abilene in 1995 after almost 40 years in places such as Richmond, Va., Charlotte, N.C., and Baltimore, Md.
Monhollon is teaching business and economics to a new generation of achievers. Harden is helping the university develop an integrated marketing strategy.
During the past 20 years, Harden helped start several companies, including Media Link, Cybernautics, Giftcertificates.com and New Canoe.
“I started companies, went after my dream,” he said.
But his first start-up happened in his hometown of Abilene. While a student at Hardin-Simmons, Harden began a lawn-mowing company and hired his friends. At one point, he was supervising five crews and was clearing $4,000 a month. After graduation and the demise of the lawn mowing company, his income actually declined.
Entrepreneurs are “never seeing difficulty, but always seeing opportunity,” he said.
“That's what entrepreneurs instinctively do.”
That same spirit of entrepreneurship led Harden to write three books about marketing using leading-edge technologies, including a business bestseller, “New Results: Web Marketing that Works.”
He saw a new opportunity earlier this year while back in Abilene to receive Hardin-Simmons' Outstanding Young Alumni Award. He felt God calling him to return to Abilene to help his alma mater develop an integrated marketing strategy to “get the message about Hardin-Simmons out.”
Harden believes all of his experiences in business have prepared him for what he's doing now. His wife, Elise, helped him see in Psalm 23 how God had been at work. Harden now looks on the past 20 years as “God leading me in round-about paths to get me at the right place.”
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| Jimmie Monhollon teaches a business class at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene. He came to the university after a career as a research economist in the Federal Reserve banking system. |
After four months on the job, Harden calls his work at Hardin-Simmons “the most rewarding experience in my life. … I've done well before. Now I have the opportunity to change lives.”
Monhollon did well in the business world, as well. He didn't plan on a career in the Federal Reserve System; he planned to teach.
After graduating from Wayland, Monhollon earned an interdisciplinary master's degree from the University of Wyoming, and he became enthralled with economics. That led to a doctorate in economics from Vanderbilt University.
“My intention was to go into academic life, preferably at a Baptist school,” Monhollon said. But he “couldn't find exactly the school I wanted.”
A friend suggested he spend a “couple of years” as a researcher in the Federal Reserve system. He followed that advice, but a couple of years stretched into 34 years, minus a one-year stint teaching at the University of Illinois.
As a research economist, he helped “formulate and execute monetary policy” for the nation.
Eventually, he moved into management as senior vice president in charge of operations at the Fed's Charlotte branch and then to the same position in Baltimore. Then, in 1980, Monhollon became first vice president and chief of operations for the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, one of 12 scattered across the country.
His retirement from the Fed in 1995 finally led to Monhollon doing what he planned 35 years earlier.
Dick Maples, a “college buddy” and longtime Texas Baptist leader, connected Monhollon with Craig Turner, then academic dean at Hardin-Simmons and now president.
Monhollon loved what he saw at the university and, in the fall of 1995, became a professor of economics and finance. He became dean of the business school in 1999, a job his son, Michael, took over about a year and a half ago.
The senior Monhollon, however, stayed in the classroom teaching.
He has two objectives with his students. First, he teaches, “you've really got to be competent.” Second, he seeks to convey the importance of a “sense of calling.”
“You can be called to the business world as well as to being pastor of a church,” Monhollon said. “There's a real opportunity for Christians in the workplace.”
Both Monhollon and Harden have illustrated that understanding. Now both are trying to help a new generation of students prepare for the workplace.
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