181 1 ), PF.OPI.F. ROSS COCHRAN B_y Megan Ledbetter I Photo b_y Mac)' Pate D1: Ross Cochran, prefessor ef Bible, was chosen by the student body as the 2 0 I 7 Petit J eanyearb ook dedication recipient. After graduatingji·om Harding in 19 79, he spent 18 months in Dublin, Ireland, as a missionary, but returned to the United States and married Nita Allen in 1981. He came back to Harding as a member ef the Bible faculry in 1986 and began vo lunteering with Nita at Camp Tahkodrzh where he became director in 2004. H e served as director fo r eight years and has been on H arding's Biblefacul ry fo r 31 years. After her cancer returned for the second time, Nita passed on May 31, 2016. D espite the heartache and pain that Cochran and his f amily endured, he never waveredf ro m his dedica tion and responsibilities to his students. T his yeai; Cochran not only taught students ab out scripture, but he sho wed them the power ef scripture through his endurance. Megan Ledbetter Why do you love your job? Dr. Ross Cochran There is nothing I would rather teach than the gospels. There is no one I would rather teach than freshmen. I am with them e\'cry day and I get to know them. I feel like students arc my friends. I have always had great relationships with students. but there is something ahout being older. l thought I would lose touch with them, but it has not been that way, and I don't think they arc just feeling sorry for me because I lost ;\"ita. T hey know I 10\-e them. ML: \ Vherc did you find yourself as a student at Harding? RC I didn't know what I wanted to major in. After my sophomore year I went on a seven-week campaign to Brazil. I found myself in a church one Sunday there. [Thcrcl was a group of Christians gathered under a little shelter, and I led singing in Portuguese. I did some other things that were ministry related, and I thought, 'This fils me. I enjoy this kind of thing.' I declared a major in Bible that summer and that's what I did. That \\·as a 'find me· kind of experience." ~1L How has the Harding community helped you and your family through the past year? RC. People lose people all the time. \\'e all do it, but it is a gift when people who·\'e been through what you have been through arc willing to let you go through the process and not say ·Hey, it's going to be alright. Hey, I've been there, done that. It's going to be OK.' That really doesn't resonate too much, but j ust to let you go th rough your process and walk beside you that·s been really good. [.. .] l\·e often said, and Nita did too, 'I don't know how people get through this without a community.' I really don't. It's too much. It's too overwhelming, and it's not as if the crisis creates the relationship. lt's that the relationship is there so that when you fall or you need someone to catch you, those people arc there. ML: \ Vhat is one lesson you want to teach all the students who come through your classes? RC: I often say if I could inject everybody with one principle, it would be this: what if everybody did what I did? l\lore formally known as the universal imperative - act in such a way that you wish it he made mandatory for everyone to act as you do. That's it. [...] If \1·c conducted ourselves the way that we vvishcd everybody would, what kind of world we have? If I were saying a second thing I recommend to people, it would be to step into your discomfort, because some things that make us nervous should make us nervous. It might be danger, and we need to figure that out, but sometimes it's things I'm not comfortable with. \Ve ha\'C to push ourselves to do new things - to have conversations we haven't had before with people we haven't had them with before. I just find that everyone wins when we do.
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