He was Centre's first president who was not a Christian minister, and he led the school until his resignation in 1888, at which point he taught for two additional years before his death in 1890.

[2][3] His father was a circuit court judge and a member of the Kentucky General Assembly for the Whig Party; he ran for election to the House of Representatives, unsuccessfully, in 1838.

[3] In his youth, Ormond attended the Franklin Academy, located in Washington, Kentucky,[4] and he departed home for college in 1832.

[2] He joined the junior class of Yale College and attended six lectures per week for a total of seven months, all taught by Silliman.

[2] In addition to teaching, Beatty was the Smithsonian climate observer for Boyle County during the American Civil War and is credited with having recorded the official weather observations for the Battle of Barbourville, in September 1861,[9] and the Battle of Perryville, in October 1862.

[10] In 1863, Abraham Lincoln appointed him to be a visitor to the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.

After he served in the interim role for two years, the board of trustees unanimously elected him president of the college and professor of metaphysics and political science on September 1, 1870.

[18] The Ormond Beatty Prize was created by students and alumni in his honor in 1886, the fiftieth anniversary of his first year teaching at Centre.

In an effort to retain him as part of the faculty and prevent him from retiring from the college altogether, the trustees elected him to be professor of metaphysics.

[2] However, they only required him to lecture for one hour per day in order to keep him for as long as possible; this desire stemmed from his longstanding association with the college and both his skill and care as an educator.

[25] Beatty was selected as a delegate to the first and second General Councils of the Presbyterian Alliance, held in Edinburgh in 1877 and in Philadelphia in 1880.