I use the above phrase a lot with my students, who hopefully understand it to mean that what I'm about to say reverberates throughout the historical experience we're about to discuss—that the circumstances of the end are in some way visible from the very beginning. That is how I best understand my Ouachita story. I knew nothing of the campus, candidly, before meeting my wife Lori. I had no reason to. I matriculated from a first-tier public research institution, and that's what I expected to seek when I entered the job market in 2005 as a not-quite-yet-finished doctoral student. Lori had occasionally mentioned the possibility of applying to teach at OBU in years past; I entertained the notion in front of her, only to dismiss it later. I didn't think Ouachita would be a good fit for me. She had sung its many praises several times, and we had even visited for Homecoming in 2004, but I remained unconvinced.
One thing graduate students quickly learn while in school: jobs are scarce, and tenure-track opportunities are solid gold. I put myself on the market prematurely in 2004, having learned about a potential tenure-track position at OBU in European history. At the time, that was my field. I applied, only to discover later that the university had ended the search for a lack of funding. I shrugged it off and turned back to my work. In 2005, the job listing appeared again, except as an open field, tenure-track search. Ironically, I had in that time made a major change in my field of expertise, shedding European history to become a women's historian. I reactivated my application, and we scheduled another trip to Arkadelphia during Homecoming to allow me to put a face with the paperwork. I had an appointment with the chair of the department, Dr. Tom Auffenberg, and the next-seniormost professor, Dr. Trey Berry. I arrived expected a handshake, some small talk, and then we'd go about our own ways. Instead, I was treated to the luxury of an hour-long conversation with three of the five members of the department, and found myself quite comfortable in their midst. My excitement for the prospect of working there began to build. I found the campus attractive, both for its aesthetics and for its smallness—I had had my fill of universities large enough to be cities unto themselves. I began to reevaluate my assumptions about Ouachita—the more I studied the university, the more I realized that something special was happening there.
Suddenly, I was a finalist for the position, and came to campus for a two-day whirlwind visit in February 2006. The end of my dissertation—and graduate career—was in sight, and in additional conversations with Drs. Berry and Auffenberg, my enthusiasm for Ouachita had become pronounced. I had long held the understanding that, as a member of the Academy, I would have to earn my way to what I considered my ideal professional environment—"earn my stripes," so to speak. No one gets everything they want in their first position. And yet, as I reflected on the place I wanted to be in at the end of my career—a small, liberal-arts university where teaching excellence is paramount, the students are more than ID numbers on a spreadsheet, and the faculty enjoy authentic and collegial relationships while pursuing scholarly excellence—I recognized that Ouachita offered all of it. It
was my ideal professional environment. I told Dr. Berry as much on the telephone when he asked why I would want to come to Ouachita. By then, the only question relevant to me was: why would anyone in his/her right mind NOT come to Ouachita?
God blessed me with the opportunity to teach and learn at OBU. My fellow faculty are not only my colleagues, they are my friends. I am in love with the campus, and seek to get on it every opportunity I get. I am a mad aficionado of OBU athletics, as just about everyone will acknowledge. But the students...they are my life's blood, sustaining me, driving me, frustrating me, pushing me, exhilarating me, and reminding me that I have great responsibility to properly mold and equip the leaders of the future. I have said elsewhere that I am wholly dispensable to the success of Ouachita, but my students are indispensable to mine. We think together, we laugh together, and occasionally, we cry together. They bring me joy, largely because I am able to know them as human beings, and they are able to know me as someone other than a distant figure prowling at the front of some massive auditorium-style classroom. I am a part of something here—a community that prizes intellectual growth in a way that honors God—and while we faculty all have our own discipline-specific endeavors, we recognize a common mission to prepare our students for the lives that await them beyond our classrooms. I struggle to focus my thoughts about Ouachita because there is no limit to its many virtues—only to my ability to adequately communicate them. Here's what I will say instead: I am one of the lucky few in this world who, at the beginning of my career, has been given everything they could ever want for the whole. This is a unique place, with extraordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things. I'm here to stay.
Kevin C. "Casey" Motl, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of History, 2006-Present
Until August 6, 2011. That's when I got the call that a helicopter had been shot down in Afghanistan. We had reason to believe my cousin Rob was on that helicopter. They told me to pray. I did. A few minutes later we got confirmation. Rob was on the helicopter. All 31 on board were lost.
