White worked under Patterson as the Director of Student Life from 2001-2005 at Southeastern Baptist Theoogical Seminary and as both the Director of Leadership Development (2004-2006) and the Vice President for Student Services at Communications (2006-2013) prior to becoming CU's President. Under White's leadership, the university has completed an extensive renovation of the Jeremiah Chapel, built new science laboratories, established two additional graduate programs, and founded the Center for Biblical Apologetics and Public Christianity. Yet, President White has also been embroiled in controversies. In December 2013, twenty-year Cedarville professor Joy Fagan resigned, saying she did not fit the changing policies, including the new restriction of only female students allowed in the Bible classes taught by female professors.> White claimed that his policies were in line with past values and Scripture, and were "not a new shift," although many alumni remember Ms. Jean Fisher, Associate Professor of Christian Education, who taught male and female students in the department under Pres. Dixon. In early 2014, White said that university was preparing to codify their complementarian stance concerning gender roles and re-wrote the school's doctrinal statement to reflect that change. Although egalitarian faculty existed, some felt they were no longer welcome. According to "100: Cedarville College, A Century of Commitment" by J. Murray Murdoch, Ph.D., the first doctrinal statement adopted by then-Cedarville College made no mention of gender roles or complementarian theology. White also said he was eliminating layers of leadership so that the presidential cabinet would have direct authority over the university. In April 2014, President White and Vice President of Student Life Jon Wood took copies of "The Ventriloquist", an independent student newspaper, during its unauthorized public distribution; the publication had previously reported alternative perspectives about the institutional changes and published LGBT-sympathetic content. Per the Ventriloquist website, the paper recognized that they were outside the university life and chose to publish online. Similarly, in the spring of 2017, immediately after the University earned re-accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission, Pres. White and then-Academic Vice President Loren Reno instituted what they called the "Philippians 4:8 Policy," which they claimed provided biblically consistent guidelines for faculty to follow but which some professors claimed amounted to censorship and the loss of academic freedom. They later changed the policy title to the "Biblically Consistent Curriculum (BCC) Policy," after two veteran Bible professors objected to this interpretation and application of Philippians 4:8.