The 2011 Legacy Banquet

One Another Mindset Award Jearl Ward ’81 As a student in the late 70s, Jearl was intentional about building friendships with Cedarville leadership, professors, staff, and students to help increase awareness of the differences and needs of minority students at Cedarville. Since leaving Cedarville, he has arranged several trips back to campus with minority students interested in seeing a Christ-centered college campus. From 2002–2005, he served on the African-American Advisory Council to help frame the organizational direction for Cedarville’s multicultural activities. During those years, he worked on multiple committees and was a consultant to Dr. Dixon’s team regarding issues of student recruitment, admission and retention, trustee appointments, faculty and staff hiring, and chapel programming. He has served as a member of Cedarville’s alumni council since 2005, and has chaired the alumni council diversity committee since 2010. The committee’s mission is “to help expand the scope, thinking, and planning efforts of the Alumni Association toward actions that facilitate increased diversity of membership, connection, support, and participation at Cedarville sponsored activities.” Last November, Jearl helped plan a men’s retreat with the leadership of a majority Caucasian church in the Annapolis, Maryland, area. The focus of the retreat was to increase understanding for cultural diversity and to model diverse church worship. He sponsored several Cedarville students to fly from Ohio for the weekend, housed and fed them, and worked with all worship team members from churches in Maryland to create a culturally diverse worship team. Jearl and his wife, Jessica, reside in Maryland. They have four daughters: Jerica ’09, Jernelle ’11, Jerielle ’14, and Jervonne.