Ouachita Stories

Suzanne Spillyards, a 2005 graduate of Ouachita Baptist University, has been named a Ouachita development officer for Northwest Arkansas.

Spillyards majored in business administration with an emphasis in finance at Ouachita’s Hickingbotham School of Business. She previously served with the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce and in the office of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as executive assistant to the Director of Boards and Commissions and Intergovernmental Affairs.

Terry Peeples, Ouachita’s vice president for development, described Spillyards as “a fairly recent Ouachita graduate with an ideal personality and background” for the development position.

Spillyards is a member of the Hickingbotham School of Business Alumni Advisory Board. She also serves on the Lights of the Ozarks Committee in Fayetteville and participates annually in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and the Juvenile Diabetes Walk for a Cure.

“The goal is for her to be the representative for Ouachita in the Northwest Arkansas area, to connect alumni in a special way with Ouachita and to build fund-raising in that area,” Peeples added. “The whole purpose is to build relationships and make people aware that Ouachita is a positive option for Christian higher education.”

Ouachita has been ranked by U.S. News & World Report for the second straight year as the No. 1 Baccalaureate College in the South.  It also was ranked this year as the No.1 “Great Schools, Great Prices” Baccalaureate College in the South.

Ouachita, which reported a 4 percent enrollment gain this year, also is in the midst of a $45 million campus construction project, including a state-of-the-art Student Village that will house more than 500 students.

by OBU News Bureau