President Joe Stowell announced today that Ed Dobson, former Calvary Church senior pastor, will be the first Cornerstone senior vice president for Spiritual Formation and Marc Fowler, chief financial officer, will be the first senior vice president for strategic initiatives and assistant to the president.

This announcement was made in chapel as a part of Stowell’s First 100 Days Report.

Fowler, who has worked at CU for eight years as the vice president of business, then as the vice president of operations and, since spring 2006, as the chief financial officer, thinks this will be a “new adventure.”

“I am deeply humbled that God has orchestrated this opportunity for me to serve him,” he said.  “I look forward to partnering with Dr. Stowell and the cabinet in this new season.”

Fowler’s new position will primarily be to carry out strategic initiatives instigated by the office of the president.

“To really take the university forward, we’re going to be launching several major initiatives,” said Stowell.  “It’s important to have somebody working out of my office that tracks these initiatives and brings them to completion.”

Fowler was chosen because of his knowledge of the university, relational ability and wisdom.

“He knows every nook and cranny of the university, and has worked with every major division,” said Stowell. “I could not be happier that Marc Fowler said ‘yes’ to this position. He is the perfect fit for this job, and I feel that God has given the university a gift in giving us Marc Fowler for this position.”

Fowler will continue to oversee many of the operational divisions on campus in his new position, but administration will seek a replacement chief financial officer.

The appointment of Dobson as senior vice president for Spiritual Formation will rearrange the current organization of Student Development and Spiritual Formation.

 “I think we’ve kind of done it upside-down,” said Stowell. He explained how Student Development is currently over departments such as Residence Life, Commuter Life and Spiritual Formation.

“Student Development is really about spiritual formation in every aspect of our lives,” said Stowell.

The plan is flip the organization to make Spiritual Formation—not Student Development—the umbrella over all student life activities including Residence and Commuter Life.

This is to ensure “that all of Student Development will really be driven out of a desire to have this campus become spiritually contagious,” said Stowell.

A spiritually contagious atmosphere created by the rearrangement of Student Development is just a part of the first of four major “distinctives” for which Stowell wants Cornerstone to be known.

In addition to rearrangement of Student Development to make campus spiritually contagious, administration is hoping to make changes in the chapel program.

“There will be a concentrated effort to provide a significant worship experience for the CU community,” said Stowell.

Though no concrete decisions have been made, the president mentioned they are exploring the possibility of a 10 a.m. chapel time, and “a couple times a month we will bring the whole community,” he said. “Staff, faculty, students … really pour it on.”

The second of Stowell’s goals for CU is to help to foster a community of academic excellence. Part of that, he said, is the program review that has been happening in each division.

“We’re working with the faculty right now, having them isolate what they need for resourcing,” he said. “We need to raise money to resource our academic program in order to take it to the next level.”

Stowell said funding for endowed chairs, resourcing faculty and putting pay scales where they need to be are all part of the school’s pursuit of academic excellence. The administration is also exploring the possibility of building a media/fine arts/chapel building.

The third goal he mentioned was to be financially strong “so we can say ‘yes’ to our dreams.”

Funding is hoped to begin coming to Cornerstone through a “huge” capital campaign that will begin in the near future. “We’re going to try to go out and fire people up about the university,” said Stowell.

The fourth objective Stowell named in his 100 Day Report is to make Cornerstone a place where people can thrive and are enthusiastically proud to be a part of.  This includes the development and hiring of someone to create a sophomore experience similar to that of Leadership Journey for freshmen.

Hiring Fowler as the senior vice president for strategic initiatives and assistant to the president is part of his fourth distinctive to make Cornerstone a place where people are excited to be.

“So,” said Stowell, “I’m committed to these four signature dynamics for this season.  How we flesh them out is what we’re now working on together.”

Stowell focused on his first goal of spiritual contagiousness by appointing Dobson.

“I was quite excited about the possibility,” said Dobson, referring to when he heard about Stowell’s desire for a senior vice president for Spiritual Formation.

Dobson said he and the president have been friends for years.  It was out of a casual conversation about the future of CU that the job possibility arose in mid-March. “I said, ‘You want the job?’” said Stowell of the conversation. “I was shocked he said, ‘I might love that job.’”

Dobson, who has a degree in higher education and worked as the director of student life at Liberty University for nearly 15 years before becoming the senior pastor at Calvary Church, said he that he had conflicting ideas about whether he would end up in higher education again.

He said he was thinking, “No, in the sense that I am really a pastor at heart,” he said, “but yes in the sense that I felt at some point I would use my degree and background in some way.”

Though Dobson said he has no specific plans for his first days as a senior vice president, he knows he will use his ability as a pastor to lead the Spiritual Formation division.

“I approach everything from a pastoral point of view,” said Dobson. “Even if I am in higher education, I would approach it from the point of view that you need to love people and teach the Bible.”

Dobson and Fowler will begin their full-time positions today.