FAYETTEVILLE : UA begins shuffle of pivotal positions
Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008
University of Arkansas System campuses in Northwest Arkansas will start the summer with a number of departing and arriving academic administrators.
Officials at UA-Fayetteville announced Tuesday they’ll conduct a national search to replace current dean Donald R. Bobbitt of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, the campus’s largest academic unit.
UA-Fayetteville also announced the selection of Bill Schwab as interim Fulbright dean on Tuesday.
At UA-Fort Smith, leaders have filled three new dean positions as part of a reorganization that the growing four-year university first announced in June. They also replaced a dean.
UA-Fayetteville leaders also need to replace Greg Weidemann, the dean of the Dale Bumpers College of Food, Agricultural and Life Sciences, who has taken a similar job at the University of Connecticut.
UA-Fayetteville is gearing up a national search for a new provost / vice chancellor for academic affairs. That job will open July 1, the start of the state fiscal year, when Provost Bob Smith returns to teaching.
“Inevitably there are changes when you have a change in administration, but in this case I think it’s probably more coincidental,” said G. David Gearhart, who will succeed John A. White as chancellor on July 1.
Schwab is the chairman of UA’s sociology and criminal justice department, a post from which he will step down as he enters his new position.
Schwab’s served as a Fulbright College associate dean from 1993-98 and two times chaired his department, most recently from 1998 to the present.
Fulbright College’s 19 academic departments serve nearly 7, 000 of the university’s 18, 500 students.
Bobbitt will become provost / vice president for academic affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington on July 1. He currently earns $ 186, 961, a figure that includes his Fulbright dean’s salary and his position as the Fayetteville campus director for the Arkansas Biosciences Institute, a consortium of tobacco-funded research universities.
Schwab’s salary as interim dean hasn’t been decided, said UA spokesman Steve Voorhies.
Schwab said he expects to serve about 18 months as interim dean, a time frame that will ensure the new provost can hire the new Fulbright dean.
“I made it clear on the front end that I would not be a candidate for the permanent job,” he said, adding that he plans to return as a professor when he finishes the interim job.
Weidemann will become dean and director of Connecticut’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources on July 4. A faculty member since 1983, he has served as Bumpers College dean since 2002 and was interim dean beginning in January 2001.
The new job will offer Weidemann broader responsibilities, including UC’s Cooperative Extension Service and its Agricultural Experiment Station. At the Bumpers College job, where he earns roughly $ 179, 000 in salary, he supervises just academics.
No decisions have been made on the scope of the search for a new Bumpers dean or an interim replacement, Voorhies said.
At UAFS, the summer will bring four new academic deans, three of them new positions, “as the university continues to grow in enrollment and academic degree choices,” said spokesman Sondra LaMar.
“The decisions came after a year-long national search and on-campus interviews by faculty, staff, students and administrators,” she said.
The three new dean positions are being financed by the campus’s education and general funds. The posts resulted from the June 2007 reorganization, which divided the College of Arts and Sciences into three separate colleges to accommodate UAFS’ growth: Mark E. Arant will become dean of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, earning $ 115, 000.
Joe Hardin will be dean of the College of Languages and Communication, earning $ 108, 000. Henry Rinne will be dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, earning $ 108, 000. He previously served as an interim dean for UAFS’ College of Arts and Sciences. Steve Williams will become dean of UAFS’ College of Business at a salary of $ 156, 300, La-Mar said, $ 130, 000 of which will be paid from education and general funds and the remainder from the privately endowed Joel R. Stubblefield Chair Fund.
Williams takes over a job held by Roger Roderick, who retired in June 2007.
Officials at UAFS have said it is on a trajectory to become a full-fledged regional university. Before January 2002, the school existed as Westark College and granted two-year degrees. After it merged with the UA System, it began adding four-year bachelor degrees.
It has brought the percentage of faculty holding doctoral degrees from just under 20 percent to about 50 percent, and also is incurring costs as it transitions its athletic programs to NCAA Division II status.
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