Cedarville Stories Podcast: Dixon's 50-Year Legacy

by Clem Boyd, Communication Content Manager – July 29, 2021

50 years ago, the Dixon name became synonymous with Cedarville University. And the impact of this one remarkable person is still visible everywhere on campus.

50 years ago, the Dixon name became synonymous with Cedarville University. The impact of this one remarkable person is still visible everywhere on campus. And most noticeably, the influence of this individual is felt in the lives of countless students.

Yes, Pat Dixon, has left quite an impression on Cedarville University. She was here seven years before Paul, who became president in 1978, and currently serves as chancellor.

Pat was a well-respected public school teacher in the city where she grew up, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Then she received a call from then-Cedarville president Dr. James T. Jeremiah.

Would she join the education department faculty? The answer was yes, and this began a 25-year teaching career in the English education program.

Pat shifted from her faculty role in 1996 to serve as assistant to the president, namely her husband. This position was more a labor of love than a job. She applied her stylish eye to the interior and exterior look of the University’s buildings.

Using her tremendous sense of balance and beauty was a great blessing, but pouring into students has always remained her number one passion. She led teams of students on missions trips to Hungary and China and was always seeking the Lord for that person He was calling her to invest in.

“As young girl growing up, I went to camp one year, and this college student was my counselor, and she just poured herself into me as a 14-year-old,” Pat shares during the podcast. “She just told me how to have devotions; she poured into me spiritual truth. I always valued that, and I always said to myself, ‘I want to do that to others, pour myself into a student.’"

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More to the Story

Pat loves to pray. In a 1982 article for the Torch, she shared about her habits of prayer and what she loved about prayer.

Located in southwest Ohio, Cedarville University is an accredited, Christ-centered, Baptist institution with an enrollment of 4,550 undergraduate, graduate, and online students in more than 150 areas of study. Founded in 1887, Cedarville is one of the largest private universities in Ohio, recognized nationally for its authentic Christian community, rigorous academic programs, and retention rates, accredited professional and health science offerings, and high student engagement ranking. For more information about the University, visit cedarville.edu.