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President Emeritus Agee to Deliver Hobbs Lecture Oct. 22

October 13, 2003

His lecture, "Christian Education: The Right Choice," will be the second Hobbs Lecture Dr. Agee has delivered. He first presented the Hobbs Lecture in the Spring of 1993.

President of Oklahoma Baptist University 1982 to 1998, Agee is currently executive director for the Association of Southern Baptist Colleges and Schools.

In his OBU years, he led OBU through a period of steady growth in enrollment, financial resources and facilities. Student enrollment increased by more than 70 percent during his presidency, reaching a record 2,440 in the fall of 1994. During his tenure, the university built 11 new buildings, renovated 12 buildings and saw endowment grow from $11 million to more than $55 million.

Effective with his retirement on Sept. 1, 1998, Dr. Agee became president emeritus, continuing to assist the university with the transition to new leadership and with fund raising and alumni relationships.

In December 1997, Dr. Agee was elected as executive director of the Association of Southern Baptist Colleges and Schools (ASBCS), a position he assumed June 1, 1998. ASBCS is an association of 65 Southern Baptist-related seminaries, colleges, universities, Bible colleges and academies.

Under Dr. Agee's leadership, OBU consistently received national recognition for the quality and value of its academic programs, having been on the U.S. News & World Report's top ten list among liberal arts colleges in the West each of his last six years.

Dr. Agee is a charter member and a former chairman of the Cooperative Services International Educational Consortium, an organization which provides educational assistance to Third World and developing nations. He led OBU to begin international service projects in China, Russia, Hungary, India and Brazil.

A native of Brownsville, Tennessee, Dr. Agee was raised in Memphis. He holds a bachelor's degree from Union University, master's and doctoral degrees from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Ph.D degree in higher education administration from Vanderbilt's George Peabody College for Teachers.

He served Union University from 1975-82, ending his tenure as vice president for religious affairs and special assistant to the president for institutional planning.

The Herschel H. and Frances J. Hobbs Lectureship in Baptist Faith and Heritage is OBU's first endowed scholarship. Friends of the late Dr. Hobbs, who was pastor of First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City, and of the late Mrs. Hobbs, created the endowed fund in honor of the couple's years of outstanding Christian service.

The Hobbs Lectureship program sponsors an annual series of lectures on the OBU campus or other selected sites. The lectures deal with Baptist theology, Baptist history, studies of the Bible and other related themes.