UALR’S Chancellor Anderson leaves legacy of education and leadership
June 20-26, 2016
By Becca Bona
Chancellor Joel Anderson has called UALR his home for over forty years. During that time he’s served as an assistant professor, dean, provost and vice chancellor, and eventually chancellor.
If you ask him to pick a place to start, or even a favorite activity, you’ll be met with a smile. “I can’t,” he says. “Anything that I think about – somebody else had a major hand in making it a reality.”
Even though Anderson has given so much of his life to the university, he didn’t start out there. Born in Swifton, Ark., Anderson showed leadership qualities from a young age. He was involved with the 4H Club, and served as president of his student body high school class.
His involvement with basketball would give him his first glimpse of UALR.
He remembers, “I was a junior in high school, and our basketball team was really quite good that year and played here in the state finals in the field house, which now seems like a very old and outmoded facility, but it was big and impressive to a kid from Swifton at that point in time.”
He attended Harding University and studied politics. He became set on becoming a college professor, thus, he got his Master’s at American University and then traveled to the University of Michigan to get his Ph.D.
Becoming a Trojan
Towards the end of his Ph.D. program, Anderson began to consider options for job placement. He had been keeping up with the news in Arkansas, as he took the Sunday edition of the then-Arkansas Gazette, and had watched Little Rock University become the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
He remembers a particular editorial on the new institution, and says, “I read that with much interest. In fact, I saved it, and I’ve still got that editorial. I said to [my wife] after I’d read it, that if we ever went back to Arkansas I thought – that’s the institution that I would like to go to.”
Dr. Cal Ledbetter’s presence at the school was influential in Anderson’s interest. He remembers, “As a political scientist I was interested in good government ... and I very much identified with the government reform and initiatives that I saw.”
Plus the school was going to greatly expand its offerings. He adds, “This was going to be a young and new university ... that was attractive to me.”
Later Dr. Ledbetter would ask Anderson to interview for a position and eventually would offer him a job within the department.
Serving the university
Anderson truly enjoyed his time teaching students, and in fact remained in the classroom, up until he became chancellor in 2003.
He says, “I loved political science, and it was fun to introduce students to all of the important subjects that political scientists deal with.”
He particularly enjoyed teaching the younger students, because often those classes had a more diverse mix of majors. He says, “The nice thing about teaching the freshman class was that I had a spectrum of students that covered the whole campus. I had music majors and journalists and biologists and nursing students – and I always liked that it kept me in touch with the whole student body better.”
After a while, Anderson became Dean of the Graduate School, and was very involved with the school’s push towards new master’s programs. His period as Dean saw seventeen new grad programs instated.
He says that UALR was working to fill a gap in Central Arkansas.
“It was one of the deficits that was part of Central Arkansas ... Little Rock was where the biggest professional communities were and the area needed a whole bunch of graduate programs and professional programs to support it.”
During his time as provost and vice chancellor, Anderson remembers, “UALR moved over the doctoral threshold [at that time.] ... By doing that we were also strengthening the research foundations of the campus.”
The first doctoral program was launched in 1992, and a few short years later in 2000, UALR was designated a research university, which shows just how hard everyone involved was working.
Also during his time as provost, public radio became a reality on the UALR campus. A partnership between the school district, which then had KLRE, was established with UALR, who had KUAR. A financial crunch for the school district was the next step in switching KLRE over to UALR as well.
“I feel like we’ve done a really good job with it – we’ve had some very good people at the stations,” he says.
Looking back
During his time at UALR, Anderson has seen the campus transform not only physically, but also in a myriad of other ways. The introduction of online classes has been an integral part in the university’s push forward as well as community engagement. The recent restructuring also continues to propel the institution forward.
Anderson thinks, however, that UALR is continuing to do what it has always incidentally done well, serve the people who really need it.
Even when UALR was first created, females and minorities were heavily represented in the student body. He says, “UALR was really a breakthrough institution in terms of responding to female and minority students and they continue to be highly valued here and very well served by the institution. That’s something I’m proud of,” he says.
UALR has also done well in serving non-traditional and traditional students alike. He continues, “We have a diverse student body. Diverse, not only in terms of race and ethnicity, but also male/female, young/old, working/nonworking, on-campus resident/commuting – all of those dichotomies.”
The creation of the Institute of Race and Ethnicity was a big step that Anderson is also particularly proud of.
But looking back, he will miss working with the diverse faculty, staff, and student body the most. “It’s the people. UALR is full of just wonderful and interesting people,” he says.
(Photo by Lonnie Timmons III/UALR Communications)
