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Unruh Takes Well-Deserved Top Teaching Prize
By Elaine Lau, Class of 2005
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Unruh first came to ORU as a business administration student in 1973. He was also a baseball player at ORU.
"The story I like to tell when students find out that I played baseball here is, the year before I came was the first year they ever made it to the NCAA playoffs," said Unruh. "The year after I graduated was the only year they've been to the World Series. The four years I was here, we were laying the foundations."
A week after graduation, Unruh married his college sweetheart, Kim (Clift-78), and then went on to obtain his MBA. He taught in a small school in Wichita, Kan., for two years before coming back to ORU in 1980 to teach as an adjunct accounting professor. Currently, Unruh teaches Cost Accounting, Intermediate Accounting, Advanced Accounting, and MBA Managerial Accounting courses. Not only that, he serves as the NCAA Faculty Athletic Representative, which is "a communication vehicle between the faculty and the athletic administration."
In addition, Unruh is the chairman of the Athletic Advisory Council, which makes "sure that the athletic department is operating according to the principles of the university." He also chairs the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, which, he said, "is a vehicle that allows student athletes to voice concerns and also to communicate information." Unruh is responsible, too, for certifying the continuing eligibility of student athletes based on their academic performance at ORU.
This is not the first time Unruh has been named Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year. He received the award for the School of Arts and Sciences in the early 1980s and the all-university award in 1991. In 1991, Sears (the department store chain) teamed up with ORU and provided the cash prize that went with the honor.
"It (the 1991 award) was quite an honor because my father was still alive at that time and he had worked for Sears for 31 years," said Unruh. "My parents were very proud to be able to come over and share that day."
Unruh only has good things to say about his colleagues, those who thought of him so highly as to choose him to be the recipient of the award.
"I know what great teachers we have in this university, because I've sat under their instruction," said Unruh. "To be selected among those kinds of folks is a humbling experience for sure because I know that there are 40 or 50 people who are more deserving than I am."
When Sears canceled its participation in the awards program in the mid-1990s, business professor Dr. Eugene Swearingen stepped in. This man for whom the award has been renamed was famously known at ORU as the dollar-a-year man (referring to the salary he had insisted upon), who "had always been successful in whatever he did" according to Unruh. He said Swearingen always wanted to pour into the lives of people with the best that God had given him. Unruh said if he is even able to do a fraction of what Swearingen accomplished, he considers that success.
Unruh's dedication and love for teaching and the students are evident in his life. In all 24 years that Unruh has taught at ORU, he said he has only missed one day of class because of sickness.
"I love what I do," said Unruh. "I don't ever not look forward to coming to teach. Teaching is always a pleasure for me. [...] It's exciting to be able to influence the lives of wonderfully gifted and motivated students, and I really believe teaching is fulfilling the call in my life. There are days I don't feel well when I come to school, but somehow when I walk into the classroom, all that disappears."
