Presidents of the Past—David W. Wright (2013-2022)
A Global Dream
By Malachi Nutter
David Wesley Wright was born in 1955 to Wayne and Virginia Wright inside a mission hospital in a depressed area of the Philippines. The Wrights were serving as missionaries with the Wesleyan Church’s Department of World Missions at the time and decided it was best to stay in the field for their son’s birth. As he grew up, David fell in love with the Philippines. His parents’ mission work, coupled with his experiences growing up as a third culture kid, would go on to define many aspects of his life.
When David was nine, his family returned to the United States for a year of home ministries in Indianapolis. For David, this was not a return home but rather a departure from it. “That year in Indianapolis was really my first experience in any kind of formal school,” he later remembered. “I was homeschooled before that by my mother, but I don’t recall many details of that. What I do remember is being taught through third grade by two Bible school students, who had teaching experience… Mostly, I remember being confused most of the time when we were in Indianapolis.” Trying to adjust to a country not his own and to a school system he was unfamiliar with was difficult for David, although the fact it was for just a year provided at least some comfort.
When the Wrights returned to the Philippines, David began to attend the Faith Academy boarding school–an institution of about 300 students started by and for missionary families. The boarding school was located five hours from his family’s home, and it was the location where David went to school from fourth grade through ninth grade. When he was in seventh grade David’s parents moved to Manila and he was able to live at home. In 1970, David’s father Wayne Wright accepted a position at the Wesleyan Church’s World Headquarters in Marion, Indiana. For fourteen-year-old David, this came as a crushing disappointment. “I wanted to stay in the Philippines. Coming to Marion was such a culture shock. I didn’t know anything about central Indiana or much about the United States, even though I was a US citizen,” David later said.
Despite American friends at his school in the Philippines, David knew nothing about Marion and lacked context to base his expectations for Marion High School on. The fact no one in Marion, Indiana seemed knowledgeable about life in the Philippines just made the cultural divide David felt upon his arrival wider. In addition, Marion High School contained 850 students—almost triple the size of his previous school in the Philippines.
“I’d never been a good student because my education experience had been so choppy,” David said. “I was also dyslexic, but they didn’t know that back in my younger days, so it really was my mother who discovered what was keeping me from learning to read. My eyes were going right to left across the page instead of left to right. My mother devised a physical system with my hand to actually train my eyes to go the other way across the page. Once I learned to read, I read a lot, but I really was not a good student.”
David later said the reason he made it through Marion High School was because of the youth group at his family’s new church, and because of a teacher who took an interest in him. “I took an English class with Mrs. Lelia Dawalt. She was the first teacher, I think, who made me her project, and it changed my life. She taught me how to write a paper. Mom and Dad were engaged in their ministries, and I don’t think they really expected me to go to college,” David later said. Mrs. Dawalt also helped the Wrights to arrange for David to receive the maximum amount of the financial aid. Although his sister was already going to Marion College, Lelia Dawalt’s help proved vital in improving David’s chances of being able to afford college.
After attending a missional convention at his family’s church where a missionary from Sierra Leone was speaking, David began to feel a strong calling towards mission work weighing on his heart. Nonetheless, due to his life experiences thus far, it was difficult for David to discern at first what the true origin of this desire was. “Over the years, missions were the only thing I knew, and I was a third culture kid, so I always wondered–was that really the Lord or was that just me returning to something that was familiar? Nevertheless, the Lord used that calling.”
After also developing an interest in aviation, David asked his parents about taking flying lessons at Marion Airport. Wayne Wright said David could, if he could find a way to pay for them himself, and so during his senior year of high school, David worked at a hardware store and at his family’s church cleaning so he could pay for one hour of flying lessons per week. “I really thought I would be a missionary pilot,” David later reflected.
Before he could enroll in the aviation program he wanted, however, there were several other courses he needed to complete elsewhere, first. Although David visited United Wesleyan in Allentown, Pennsylvania, he was uninterested in moving to another part of the country after spending the past few years getting accustomed to Indiana, knowing he would not attend this first college for long. As such, Marion College was the only option he ever considered very heavily. Luckily, David was able to get scholarships from Marion College, making attending possible for him.
“My plan was to come to Marion College to get the Bible training, and then I would transfer to the missionary aviation program at JAARS,” David later explained. “But then I ran into Dr. David Thompson, a religion professor at Marion College. His Bible classes were so fascinating and powerful for me that the Lord used that experience to reorient my thinking.” Through these classes, David began to believe he should stay at Marion College for his entire college career. While continuing to attend his parents’ church, David met a young woman from Kentucky named Helen Cox, the daughter of two farmers who worked for the Kentucky Mountain Bible Institute. David learned Helen came to the area to pursue a nursing degree at Marion College. Over the course of the next few years David and Helen became closer, before beginning to date the summer before their senior year. By winter, they were engaged.
In 1977, during President Luckey’s inaugural year, David Wright graduated with a Bachelor’s in Christian Ministries and Biblical Literature while Helen graduated as part of the third ever nursing graduating class. During the fall of the same year, the two brand new alumni were married. At the time, the Wesleyan Church required pastoral experience for all missionaries, despite the fact Wright felt called to missionary work but not pastoral work. Even so, he spent a year pastoring the Northside Wesleyan Church in Fort Wayne, before moving to Portland, Oregon to attend Western Evangelical Seminary (now Portland Seminary of George Fox University) for his master’s degree. Once his degree was finished, he once again moved back to Marion where he served for two more years as the pastor of Back Creek Wesleyan Church.
After their time at Back Creek, the Wrights and their young daughters, Christin and Andrea, were able to begin their missional work, taking ten months of French language training in Quebec before traveling to Haiti for three years. While there, David reopened a Bible College and helped it to get back on its feet with an almost entirely Haitian staff, so it could stand on its own rather than relying on the Wrights. Helen, meanwhile, served in the Wesleyan Clinic in Petit Goave. During their second year, the government the Wrights arrived under crumbled, with the country never completely recovering. While David was never forced to leave, Helen and their two daughters were, for a period, with both food and fuel difficult to come by at the time.
During the period when the Wrights were scheduled to return to the United States for home ministries, David took the opportunity to attain his doctorate through the University of Kentucky, which he completed in 1990. Following this, Wesleyan World Missions next sent the Wrights to England. While the denomination wanted to start a college there, a lack of both people and resources made this impossible. As such, Dr. Wright worked on creating a program which could lead to ordination for pastors there without requiring a full university’s resources. Meanwhile, Helen did home-care nursing and worked as a nurse in the Range Rover factory. Christin and Andrea, eight and ten when they arrived, spent the next four years in the English education system, with the Wrights wondering whether it would be best for them to spend high school in England or the United States. It was decided the best decision was to return to the United States for a few years before going back to England.
Dr. Wright was encouraged to apply for a position with IWU’s adult education program, which was still relatively new. After a long-distance interview with President Barnes, Wright was hired–the only time Barnes ever felt confident enough to hire an employee without an in-person meeting. By the time the position was fully created, it now included a split between work in the religion department with the Master of Ministry program, and work for the Division of Adult and Professional Studies.
Not long after, Dr. Wright was asked to move to the Division of Adult and Professional Studies full time as the associate dean. Just two years later, he was made the vice president of the division. “Dr. Barnes asked me if I wanted to be a candidate. I told him I didn’t think I knew enough to head the division. I had only been here two years and there were a lot of changes during that period… Jim basically said, ‘you can train your boss or you can be the boss,’ so I agreed to give it a try.”
Over the next few years Wright helped Barnes with securing Lilly Endowment funds, restructured the Master of Arts in Religion program, and then moved to a faculty position within what later became the School of Theology and Ministry. While in this more laid-back role, the graduate school of Azusa Pacific University was brought to his attention, with Wright hearing they wanted someone like him for the dean’s position. Feeling he had done everything he could in his current role at IWU, Wright agreed. During his first year at Azusa Pacific, however, IWU’s new president, Henry Smith, paid him a visit and asked for Wright to return to IWU as its first ever provost.
Just starting at Azusa Pacific, Wright did not want to leave them as soon as he arrived, so he turned the position down. After three years at Azusa Pacific, however, Wright called Smith about the position once more, the timing proving better on his end. With the position still open, Wright was able to take it on just as Smith hoped two years prior. When he took on the role of first Provost and Chief Academic Officer, Wright expected to hold the job for several years before retiring from it. While he was not worn out, he was nearing sixty, with both of his daughters grown and three grandchildren to spend time with, and as such he was becoming used to the idea of retirement. When President Smith decided to retire from the presidency at the end of the 2012-2013 academic year, however, Wright knew that changes were coming.
While various people had suggested him for presidency throughout the previous decade, Wright never felt called to the role. “I never thought I would enjoy being a college president; that didn’t seem like what I had been called to do for an institution. But when I realized that I had been nominated, I probably talked to fifteen people, mentors, presidents, and provosts to get their sense about what I should do. Most of them said I probably should get ready to leave IWU. They told me internal candidates for presidencies don’t do well. Secondly, they said, if you don’t become president, the new president will most likely want his or her own provost, so you probably are not going to stay long. So either way, you probably need to get ready to move,” Wright later reflected. “That is not really what I wanted to hear because, as I’ve said, I really like this place and feel this is where I have been called. So that was tough to work through. But at the end of the day, all I sensed the Lord telling me was to just be available and if I wasn’t selected, He would either work it out for me to be here or provide me another place to serve. That is what I did. I went and made myself available and much to my surprise, I was chosen. It was a tremendous honor.”
The Board of Trustees’ decision to make David Wright IWU’s next president was unanimous, with Dr. Wright soon agreeing. “This is a place I love dearly, and have given many years of my life,” Wright said in a speech not long after the Board’s decision. “One time along the process here, I told Helen, ‘You know, it really feels a little bit like them considering giving the keys to the whole place to the little kid that used to run around the yard, playing.’”
On July 1, 2013, Wright officially stepped into the office of president, with the expansion of IWU’s international footprint as one of his main goals. Although it was something he knew would take time, he began to expand IWU’s programs not just on campus but globally as well. While 2014 brought with it an economic downturn, Wright was able to help the university focus on careful budget reductions to ensure financial stability and minimize negative effects. IWU was listed as a top online college this same year, however, providing an appreciated if small amount of recognition for the school’s continual growth in the online education field since its start in 1996. The first update to the design of mascot Wesley the Wildcat since his introduction in 1989 also occurred during this time.
Most crucially for President Wright himself, however, 2014 brought with it the arrival of Dr. Lena Crouso as director of the TACL program. TACL, or Transition to American College Living, was created for incoming IWU students who, like both Dr. Crouso and President Wright, grew up in another culture–often the mission field–by giving them an earlier start to their freshman year during which to get acclimated to the American college setting, gain an understanding of what expectations and situations they might encounter, and create bonds with other students who share their experiences. Given how difficult his transition to the United States school system was, this was a project which mattered a great deal to President Wright, and which provides an invaluable resource to the students impacted by it.
Sadly, during the summer of 2015, both of President Wright’s parents passed away within just a little over a month of each other. Wayne and Virginia Wright’s impact on their son was large, but even larger was their impact on the global church through their missions work. While David Wright continued on with his presidential responsibilities, the next several months were marked by the shadow of grief, nonetheless. The following February brought celebration, however, as IWU’s sister institution in Sydney, Australia, Excelsia College, experienced its grand opening, with President Wright in attendance. Though they were gone, Wayne and Virginia Wright’s passion for the church’s global mission still lived on within their son and the IWU community. Spring brought with it the demolition of Shatford Hall, a partnership with Zhejiang Normal University in China, and Wright’s attendance at the Fifth Annual President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge at the White House in Washington, DC–the sole representative of a Christian university there. Last but not least, 2016 also brought with it the approval of IWU Football and the arrival of its first sixty recruits, Wright making his predecessor’s unfulfilled dream a reality and giving Marion its first collegiate football team since the pre-Marion College days of A. Jones. Soon, IWU also added a marching band and an engineering program.
This proved a prosperous time for IWU–particularly in terms of its global outreach. The previous year saw IWU present diplomas to seventy-seven students in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and by the end of 2016 Wesley Seminary’s classes in Bogota, Colombia were proving a success. A partnership with a Christian school in Hong Kong to offer graduate counseling degrees there and new programs in Zambia and Indonesia also served as just the next in a long list of international academic programs IWU either ran or partnered with other universities to run.
Wright’s focus on global programs did not lead to neglection of IWU’s Marion campus, however, as the 2017-2018 academic year saw a record-breaking Admitted Students Weekend with 483 on-campus admitted students visiting well in advance of the start of the semester–a sign which boded well for student investment in the upcoming year. A second familial tragedy for the Wrights struck near the end of the year, however, as Helen’s brother-in-law, David, passed away. “About a year ago the doctors told him he had stage four cancer and the beginnings of Parkinson’s disease. He lived his last months with quiet and uncomplaining dignity. On Christmas Eve, he laid back on his bed and with a few deep breaths slipped over to spend Christmas with the Lord he loved and served so well,” President Wright later stated. “At his funeral, a few days after Christmas, I thought about what really matters in life. We are bombarded these days with so many voices telling us how we should think, what we should believe, how we should live. I’ve never known a time when it seemed so easy to lose one’s spiritual and moral bearings. I thought of our kids and our grandchildren sitting there in the pews. How will they find their way into the deep spiritual truths that are the only worthy foundations of a good and godly life? Dwight L. Moody once offered some homespun wisdom about this. He said, ‘The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it.’ I have to admit that I am tempted to argue or to denounce the misguided ideas that seem to me to be such unworthy ways to live. Somehow, I hope that by making the best case for the Christian life, those I love will be convinced to follow the Jesus I love. There is a place for careful explanation of the great hope we have in Jesus.”
The following September, on the first of the month, the first official IWU football game was held. While it was not quite the same multi-year dream for President Wright as it was for Smith, this day stood as a powerful and memorable occasion for the university, with the school’s athletic future now brighter than ever. Indeed, as the school made its way through the end of 2018 and 2019, new programs like football looked strong and Wright began to work on plans for the university’s 2020 Centenary celebrations, as the school approached the end of its first century as an institution. In the months leading up to the end of the calendar year, hopes for IWU’s centenary were high and there were many plans devised across the entire school. Unfortunately, the reality of the following calendar year was far from what anyone anticipated. Rather than guiding Indiana Wesleyan University through a triumphant celebration of its past amidst a bustling and prosperous present, President Wright instead found himself contending with the COVID-19 pandemic and navigating the school’s reaction to it. While the Centenary celebrations still occurred, many were altered, and some were pushed back to the following year as the only viable response to the unexpected global crisis. Summer also brought with it concerted efforts from Wright to address issues of racial discrimination and injustice in Indiana.
In the fall, President Wright launched a podcast entitled Practicing the Art of Faithful Presence, with the intention of telling the stories of individuals, sharing ideas, and inspiring listeners to practice the art of strong and healthy faith in the world. Given the state of the university at the time, it was one of the few meaningful ways in which President Wright could reach out to students or other community members. While COVID-19 and global responses to it were still drastically impacting the school, the fall also brought with it 12,858 students enrolled across all branches of the school.
Once normalcy returned the following year, the leadership team at IWU were able to bring in $15,000,000 in grant money and $11,000,000 in contracted grants were secured through 2025, the endowment growing to $229,000,000 and the annual budget met or improved on for its seventh consecutive year. Wright also began to push for increased innovation in Wesley Seminary’s approach to Spanish-speaking programs, further championing a more globally diverse perspective. President Wright was also able to resume hosting dinners in his home for students. One such student, also a member of the TACL program, recounts finding these dinners particularly meaningful, reminiscing about both the meals and the way Helen Wright purchased gifts for each student.
Current mayor of Marion, Ronald Morrell, also fondly remembers Dr. Wright’s support when he was beginning his scooter business–one which continues to thrive today thanks in part to Wright’s support during his presidency. When he stepped away from the role of president at the conclusion of the 2021-2022 academic year, it was with the context of twenty-five years of service to IWU as a faculty member, associate dean, vice president, provost, and, most of all, president. When he first arrived at the school as a student in the 1970s, the notion he would leave it for the final time almost fifty years later would have sounded absurd to him.
Looking back on his presidency near its end, Wright stated “Helen and I have attended over seventy commencement ceremonies. I’ve shaken the hands of over 18,000 graduates and read the names of over 5,000 more. Over 30,000 have graduated from the online programs that were one of my very first projects at IWU back in 1996. We have watched Wesley Seminary, the School of Health Sciences, Excelsia College in Australia, the Ron Blue Institute, Wildcat Football, Wildcat Marching Band, and now IWU Engineering come to life and thrive. These are just a few of the great blessings we’ve watched God pour out on IWU. We’ve celebrated the achievements of amazing graduates who fill places of great responsibility across the world, brilliant faculty who serve with distinction, and administrators who have guided IWU through the highest of highs and the sternest of challenges in recent years. Helen has hosted over 3,600 guests in the President’s House. As Helen and I close the door on this wonderful chapter of our lives, we offer up to our Lord Jesus Christ the sacrifice and service we have given to the best of our abilities, and we pray that Indiana Wesleyan University will always be a place that points all who come here to Jesus, the world’s one and only source of truth and goodness, the best and greatest hope this world will ever know.”
Not long after becoming president, Wright wrote in an issue of The Triangle, “Officially, I am the ninth president of the University. But if you include the acting presidents whose photographs hang there, it turns out I am actually the [twelfth] person to hold this job. It is humbling to picture myself in the company of the [eleven] bold servants who built the great, sprawling house to which the Board has decided to hand me the keys… Isaac Newton, the great scientific genius, once wrote, ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ I stand surrounded by reminders of the giants of IWU’s remarkable first century.”
