Ian Cosh of Arkadelphia
OBU official recommends international experience for all young people
Ian Cosh is a world traveler. What else would you call someone who was born in Northern Ireland, raised in Africa and from there moved to Arkadelphia? Yet, traveling around the world and helping others do the same are also a large part of his job as vice president of community and international engagement at Ouachita Baptist University and director of the school’s Ben M. Elrod Center for Family and Community.
“International travel is at the heart of what I do,” Cosh said from his office at the Elrod Center on the OBU campus. Every year, I travel for international education.”
As vice present of community and international engagement at OBU, Cosh helps provide Ouachita students an opportunity to study abroad. He said OBU has partnerships with universities in 13 countries for students to travel and study for a semester at institutions of higher learning as varied as Salzburg College in Austria and Senan Gakuin University in Japan.
There are also shorter summer trips, such as the European Studies Tour, along with other programs that offer students classes that support their studies while they experience another country and its people.
Cosh also recruits students from all over the world to come to Arkadelphia and study at OBU.
“When I travel, I often have to explain what an American liberal arts education is like,” he said. “Unlike a lot of the big universities and colleges who will make a recruiting pitch in a large auditorium to hundreds of prospective students, I meet with students in smaller groups in their homes or churches, often with their parents.”
A third part of Cosh’s job is community service. He is in charge of Tiger Serve Day, through which students, faculty and staff from Ouachita Baptist volunteer for projects throughout the Arkadelphia community, such as leaf raking, window washing and small repair jobs.
“The success of Tiger Serve Day over the years has been driven by two powerful forces,” Cosh said. “One is the ongoing desire of college students to serve the community in meaningful ways, and the other is the affirmation by those served regarding the effectiveness of the service offered.”
Earlier this year, Judy Duvall, who works with Cosh as assistant director of the Elrod Center, talked about the importance of the service work to the community.
“Many of the people and nonprofits that we help on Tiger Serve Day are not able to do the work themselves,” she said. “It’s a huge cost savings and a great help to these people, and a beautiful way to act out our faith in very practical and relational ways.”
In recent months, Cosh has traveled around the world.
“In the spring, I went to the University of Costa Rica with two of Ouachita’s Spanish teachers,” Cosh said. “We send many of our students who want an intense study of Spanish there, and I wanted the teachers to see the quality of training the students receive.”
This summer, Cosh’s passport picked up a few more stamps.
“I went to South Africa, recruiting students in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town,” he said. “I talk about the merit-based aid we offer and the support international students receive from the university. I tell them it is a safe and nurturing environment, and of the Southern hospitality of the community, which is reassuring to the parents.”
Cosh also visited Australia looking for recruits, as well as visiting Murdoch University in Perth on the coast of the Indian Ocean as a school that will soon be taking OBU students.
“I went there with Dr. Tim Knight (dean of Ouachita’s J.D. Patterson School of Natural Sciences),” Cosh said. “They have an extensive program on the natural sciences, and we have some of our first students there trying out the program.”
Cosh said the university sends 12 to 15 students to study in one of its 13 international studies programs each semester. In the summer, as many as 60 students take part in study-abroad programs that last from two to four weeks.
“That number can easily double if one of our choirs goes on tour in the summer,” he said.
Cosh said his goal is for OBU students to spend some time studying in another land while earning a degree from the university.
“I would like to see every student have an international experience,” he said. “They come back with a living knowledge of another culture and its people, and perhaps more importantly, with even better insights into their own culture. The students gain a lot of maturity from being on their own more in a different environment.”
He said a returning student told him a story about the intangible benefits of living abroad.
“One young women came back from studying in England and said that her father had always treated her as a child,” Cosh said. “When her parents visited her during her studies, she was the adult in the group, knowing how to get around and how things were done in different ways than in America. After that, she said, her father treated her as a responsible young woman.”
All five of Cosh’s daughters have studied outside the U.S. as they attended OBU.
“They all rank it as one of the most important experiences in their lives,” he said.
The recruiting trip went well this year, Cosh said. Along with his own campaigning for the university, he said, each international student who comes to OBU returns home as an effective ambassador for the school.
“Many of the international students who come here know a friend or someone who has either gone here or is currently a student here,” Cosh said. “Each student from a country draws more here. Then there are the missionary kids (the children of Baptist missionaries around the world) who come here to attend the American university where their parents went. That happens a lot.”
Cosh himself came to Arkadelphia to study as a missionary at Ouachita Baptist in 1984. He said he arrived 30 years ago in August with his family. By then, he was already well-traveled.
My father was in the Royal Air Force during World War II, serving in Singapore and Burma,” Cosh said. “After a few years in rainy Northern Ireland, we left and moved to Southern Rhodesia that is now Zimbabwe. They were still trying to get people in the United Kingdom to move there at the time.”
After meeting and marrying his wife, Sharon, the daughter of an American Baptist minister, he moved to South Africa. Although born in Rhodesia, Sharon was an American citizen. Cosh had studied engineering in Zimbabwe and was working for a high-tech company in South Africa.
He first learned about OBU from some friends in South Africa who had attended the university.
“That was my connection to Arkansas, and I left to retool my career with thoughts of going back to Africa as an engineer,” Cosh said.
After studying in Arkadelphia and earning a Bachelor of Arts degree, he earned a Master’s Degree in business administration at Louisiana Tech in Ruston.
“I was then talking with the Baptist International Mission Board about returning [to Africa] as a missionary, Cosh said. “Then I got a call from OBU President Ben Elrod asking me to come back to the university to run the Baptist Student Union.
From there, Cosh got involved with the school’s community-outreach programs and then was involved in international studies and was made director of the Elrod Center when it opened in 1997.
“With my work, here, I feel I have fulfilled that call to mission work. I have just done it in a different way,” Cosh said. “I have taken students on mission trips and provided other opportunities for them to travel.”
As head of the Elrod Center, Cosh said, he is excited that the center will move next year into its own building.
“After its conception 17 years ago, the center will have its own custom-built, cutting-edge building,” Cosh said. “It will be a symbol to the community and the college about our commitment to service, both near and far.”
The new building will be on the corner of Sixth and Cherry streets, opposite from the current center. Cosh said the groundwork is underway, and construction will start in a matter of weeks. The new center is scheduled to open next year.
“It will give us room to grow,” he said. “I see it as a tool to take our service to a new increased level, which is my dream.”
Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or at wbryan@arkansasonline.com.