NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — Bob Agee has announced his retirement as executive director of the International Association of Baptist Colleges and Universities. The move will become effective at the association's June 2007 annual meeting or “as soon thereafter as a new executive director can be named.”
Agee, 68, has served as executive director of the 51-member association since 1998. A former president of Oklahoma Baptist University, Agee also served as executive director of the Consortium for Global Education, a sister organization that promotes partnerships between association members and more than 80 colleges and universities worldwide.
James Netherton, IABCU board chair and president of Carson-Newman College, announced then he would appoint a search committee to seek a new executive director.
“Nine years ago we faced some amazing challenges,” Agee said in his resignation letter, mentioning challenges involving raising money, relating to schools previously served by the Southern Baptist Convention and providing enough benefits to schools to encourage them to join.
The association promotes Christian education in colleges and universities with a Baptist heritage. Although it was founded in 1948, it assumed the functions of the former SBC's Education Commission when the commission dissolved at the end of 1996.
“I am pleased to report that for the most part, we have risen to the challenges we faced as an association,” Agee said. He has battled hairy-cell leukemia for the past 16 years and is currently in his fourth remission.
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