This story originally appeared in the fall 2013 issue of The RECORD under the title “Man For All Seasons: Presenting President Ivan Filby.”
The motorcade that took Ivan Filby through city streets in Mexico signaled the arrival of a dignitary.
The year was 1998, and Mexico’s President-elect Vicente Fox had invited prominent experts from around the world to address university teachers. Filby, then director of international student affairs for Trinity College, University of Dublin, would speak to a crowd of 5,000.
Though the grand motorcade was a personal first for Filby, he was no stranger to the international stage. He regularly represented Ireland at embassy receptions in Dublin and London and met with statesmen farther afield in Argentina, Brazil, China, India and Russia. He helped governments reform their education policies and announced educational exchange partnerships at press conferences. When Ireland’s President Mary McAleese visited China to launch a partnership he had developed, Filby joined her.
Of all his travels abroad, however, a trip completely devoid of high profile engagements dramatically changed his world. In 2004, Filby and his wife, Kathie, visited Greenville College where he interviewed for a position as professor and chair of GC’s management department.
If he had relied solely on first impressions, Filby would have dismissed the thought of a future with GC after the first day.
“After our first night in Greenville,” he recalls, “we wished we could have quietly snuck out of town.”
The urge to exit diminished the next day though, as the college community drew the couple in.
“We started to meet people,” explains Filby. “We saw people who loved the Lord; we saw students who were trying to figure out how they might serve Him in their professions. We started thinking we could actually do something here. We felt this was where the Lord was calling us.”
In the end, divine summons trumped prestige and pay. Filby knew from experience that God’s faithful provision would ease the doubts and fill the gaps that accompany change. Obedient, he chose Greenville College.
In short order, Filby’s choice ushered in a season of growth for the College in several areas.
Filby’s choice to work at Greenville College also ushered in a personal season of growth. He engaged his talents in an area that had previously remained out of reach for him – the place where faith intersects with higher education.
“In Europe, we really don’t have anything like Greenville College,” he explains. “You have secular universities and you have theological colleges, but there is nothing like a liberal arts college where you think about your discipline through faith.”
The separation of faith from the discipline of business had particularly impacted Filby. Though he held multiple degrees from universities in the U.K. and Ireland, he felt under-prepared when it came to sharing his faith on the road as a “missionary-businessman.” To compensate, he earned an additional degree in missions and evangelism from Cliff College, Sheffield.
Years later at Greenville College, he developed a speaker series that would bring management students and successful executives together for conversations that often included business and faith—just the kind of discussion that might have benefited him in his undergraduate days.
Since assuming GC’s presidency this past July, Filby has engaged the College’s faculty and staff in revisiting the place where faith and learning intersect. He freely shares his enthusiasm for the book Roaring Lambs by Bob Briner ’56 and quotes Briner’s charge for Christian colleges to produce graduates that “confidently carry their faith with them into the marketplace so that our very culture feels the difference.” Examples of how to do this, Filby believes, begin on campus where excellence is modeled in all ways possible.
Pictured above, the launch of GC's Briner School of Business in fall 2015
A brisk walk down College Avenue may pale in comparison to a stately entrance by motorcade, but – with campus on the verge of autumn splendor and classrooms humming with the start of a new school year – President Ivan Filby knows of no other walk he would rather take.
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2013 issue of The RECORD.
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