Sandra Stotsky's Ceremony Leads Article on University's Evolution
Posted on 3/6/2008
This article was published on Sunday, February 24, 2008, edition in the Special section.Constant evolution hallmark of state’s flagship university
FAYETTEVILLE - In a small ceremony on the ground floor of the Graduate Education Building, Sandra Stotsky was honored Jan. 16 as the University of Arkansas’ 59th endowed faculty member.
As the first 21st Century Endowed Chair in Teacher Quality, Stotsky is part of the three-yearold department of education reform in UA’s College of Education and Health Professions.
Her appointment and the department’s creation with a $20 million endowment in January 2005 are just a fraction of the changes that have taken place on the Fayetteville campus over the last two decades.
As the largest university in the state, UA is in a constant state of evolution.
Enrollment has grown from 13,856 in 1987 to 18,648 in fall 2007.
UA has grown its academic programs, begun new ones, expanded research and raised academic standards among its students and faculty.
In 20 years it has seen two chancellors, construction of more than 12 buildings on its main campus, and renovation of several others.
Just in the past year, the university has completed the 75,000-square-foot Willard J. Walker Hall graduate business building, the 110,000-square-foot J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. Center for Academic Excellence, the 22,830-square foot Sigma Nu House and the Maple Hill Residential Facility, now home to 700 students.
Collis Geren, vice provost for research and dean of the graduate school, first came to UA as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1976.
“The physical plant has dramatically improved,” Geren said. “This university in my mind has evolved into a real university.”
Dan Ferritor led the campus’ “renaissance” during his 11 years as chancellor from 1986 to 1997, UA System President B. Alan Sugg said.
Ferritor pushed private fundraising as a means of ensuring UA’s long-term future and led efforts to renovate Old Main. Built between 1873 and 1875, the building was closed from 1981-91 because it had become dilapidated and was considered unsafe.
“Old Main had a fence around it when he became chancellor,” Sugg said.
Today the five-story brick building with its two towers - the north one slightly taller than its southern counterpart - stand as a symbol of UA’s progress and endurance.
“This does not look like the same campus I attended as an undergraduate,” said Don Bobbitt, dean of UA’s Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences who studied at UA as an undergraduate in the late 1970s.
$1 BILLION CAMPAIGN
John A. White took over the chancellorship in 1997. On June 30, he will hand the reins to G. David Gearhart, who was unanimously approved as UA’s chancellor-elect by the UA Board of Trustees on Jan. 25. White announced Jan. 9 his intentions to retire as chancellor at the end of the fiscal year.
Gearhart, vice chancellor for university development, is considered the architect of the Campaign for the 21st Century, which raised $1.046 billion between July 1998 and June 2005.
Money from the campaign has helped UA increase its endowment to $876.8 million. The money serves as a sort of longterm savings account for the Fayetteville campus. The money is invested and a portion of annual earnings is used to pay for scholarships, faculty, facilities and academic programs.
The scholarships and endowed faculty positions created as a result have helped UA attract high-performing high school graduates, and recruit and retain top faculty.
During White’s tenure the average ACT score of incoming freshmen has risen from 23.5 to 25.8 and the average high school grade point average has gone from 3.4 to 3.59.
UA’s Honors College was founded with a $200 million gift from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation in 2002 to serve the new crop of highperforming students coming to the university. The college is an umbrella for all UA honors programs and bridges gaps between its six colleges.
The university has developed several interdisciplinary programs, including nanotechnology and bioinformatics, to appeal to students drawn to a variety of subject areas, Bobbitt said.
Campaign funds also created 75 endowed faculty positions at UA.
Endowed chairs are created by gifts of $1.5 million to $3 million, and endowed professorships are created with a minimum gift of $500,000. The money is invested and a portion of annual earnings goes to professors to pay for research and supplement their salaries.
Ten endowed chairs and six endowed professorships across campus remain unfilled.
Stotsky, who was an independent researcher and consultant in Massachusetts after serving as senior associate commissioner of that state’s Department of Education from 1999 to 2003, said she was drawn to UA by the opportunity to pursue research of her choice.
“For the first time in my career I am in a setting where I can have open conversation with colleagues about the issues that vex our education system today,” she said after the Jan. 16 ceremony. “I was free to do whatever I wanted.”
The graduate school has grown enrollment from 1,961 in 1997 to 3,137 last fall. New research awards have increased from $41.2 million to $57.6 million.
Geren said the school has added six doctoral programs in the 16 years he’s been its dean.
“These changes are going to be felt by the university for generations to come,” Bobbitt said. “We would not have been able to attract the people we have without the resources provided by the campaign.”
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
UA has made slow progress in attracting members of minority groups to the Fayetteville campus.
Of the 18,648 students enrolled at UA in fall 2007, 1,023, or 5.5 percent, were black and 527, or 2.8 percent, were Hispanic.
Geren said the campaign created the perception that UA has all the money it needs.
“The general population of the state thinks ‘You don’t need any money now,’” Geren said. “But that money went for very specific things. It didn’t pay for the everyday business of running the University of Arkansas.”
As a result, UA faculty salaries remain about 10 percent behind peer universities, Don Pederson, vice chancellor for finance and administration said, in a June interview.
“We’ve struggled for years to get salaries up, and lots of decisions every year keep us from really gaining on the curve,” he said.
White has long contended that UA is underfunded by about $36 million annually. In October 2006 he dropped to his knees in front of state legislators to ask for more money.
“What attracts good students is top faculty and nice facilities,” Geren said.
“This small Southern university has always had better faculty than it deserves and than the state of Arkansas pays for.”
During a Jan. 23 joint meeting of the Campus Faculty and Faculty Senate, several professors from the Fulbright College complained that the college has lost about 30 full-time faculty even as student enrollment has increased by about 4,000 students.
This decrease in faculty has meant many students, particularly freshmen, haven’t always been able to enroll in the core courses they would like when they need them.
But the one constant throughout UA’s history has been the strength of its faculty, Bobbitt said.
“As we grow we always are susceptible to losing sight of those things that make the University of Arkansas special,” Bobbitt said. “What hasn’t changed is the faculty’s dedication to the students.”
To contact this reporter: cpark@arkansasonline.com
Information for this article was contributed by Tracie Dungan of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
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