FORT SMITH : University determined to flourish
Posted on Monday, October 6, 2008
FORT SMITH — Since joining the state’s largest university system six years ago, the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith has left the Westark College name behind and become a four-year college with ambitious goals to become a regional academic force.
From just one bachelor’s degree offered among mostly technical certificates and associate degrees, the university now has established 32 bachelor’s programs in eight academic colleges, roughly doubled its annual budget, added on-campus student housing and is moving its 10 men’s and women’s sports programs out of junior college play into NCAA Division II status.
“We’re not really a hybrid anymore,” Chancellor Paul B. Beran said, as the campus’ clock tower chimed in the distance while he led a golf-cart tour around the ©-acre campus. “We’re a true regional university.”
It still offers a mix of degrees, and even its Web site describes the campus as a “unique hybrid.” This year, for the first time, UAFS awarded more bachelor’s degrees than associate’s degrees, but it still offers a significant number of programs that take two years or less to complete.
Enrollment is 6, 773 this year, up 2. 5 percent from last fall. The Fort Smith campus enrollment is about 10 percent larger since it officially joined the ranks of Arkansas’ public four-year universities on Jan. 1, 2002. Since fall 2000, enrollment has risen nearly 30 percent.
The university’s primary service area is Sebastian, Crawford, Logan, Franklin, Scott and Johnson counties in Arkansas and LeFlore and Sequoyah counties in Oklahoma.
Those outside the Fort Smith community may wonder why the school seems determined to keep growing into a full-fledged university, especially since it’s about an hour’s drive from the state’s biggest campus, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
But insiders know the school has evolved from the start, tailoring its offerings to the community and attracting strong, grass-roots support in the form of private dollars for the past two decades.
In November 2000, then-Westark College President Joel Stubblefield said Westark’s board had pored over 13 years ’ worth of community surveys before concluding the people of western Arkansas wanted more four-year degree programs. One of the surveys found the Fort Smith area lacked competitiveness for bringing in new business because it didn’t have a four-year college. Strong local support and an equally strong local need for home-grown degrees justify its continued growth as its own regional university, Beran said. Since it was established as Fort Smith Junior College in 1928, the school has evolved from an extension of the local public school system. Following state and national trends in higher education, it morphed into a true junior college by 1950 and later transformed into a community college.
BY THE NUMBERS The last budget prepared for Westark in 2002 totaled $ 28. 3 million, with $ 24. 7 million of that funded by tuition and state appropriations. This fiscal year, the total budget is nearly $ 61. 4 million, $ 51. 4 million of which comes from tuition and state dollars. The faculty has grown from 155 six years ago to 216, with the number holding doctorates nearly tripling, from 34 to 94.
Its endowment began in 1989 with grass-roots community fundraising support and ended that year with a $ 267, 721 balance. The endowment more than doubled from $ 21. 7 million in fiscal 2002 to just more than $ 46 million in this year.
The campus, which still has a community college look and feel, has added 37 acres since 2002 and now is home to 44 academic buildings.
“We now provide on-campus housing for almost 500 students,” said spokesman Sondra LaMar. “We usually have a waiting list at the start of each semester.”
On its way to becoming UAFS, Westark took things step by step as well, gradually transforming itself.
The former two-year college first received the Legislature’s blessing to offer selected baccalaureate-degree programs requiring up to four years to complete with the passage of Act 971 of 1997. It later received approval from the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
In December 2000, the UA board of trustees approved Westark’s merger with the UA System.
Then on July 1, 2001, Sebastian County voters overwhelmingly approved a tax switch supporting the merger plan, discontinuing the property tax that had supported the college in favor of a one-quarter percent sales tax to cover capital expenditures, maintenance and operations.
Later that fall, the coordinating board removed a cap of nine bachelor’s programs, but with one catch: That Westark, the future UAFS, remain a hybrid with strong two-year degree offerings.
About six months after the merger, in July 2002, UAFS began adding academic colleges, LaMar said. A reorganization that occurred between June 2007 and April brought the number of colleges from six to eight, when the College of Arts and Sciences was split into the College of Languages and Communication, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
UAFS built Sebastian Commons, forgoing traditional dormitory rooms for a student apartment complex. It opened in September 2003 and an expansion completed in August 2007 means it can accommodate roughly 480 students. There is talk of building more student housing in the next year or two, LaMar said.
UAFS got its first four-year degree, a bachelor’s of science in manufacturing technology, off the ground before joining the UA System and awarded its first 38 bachelor’s degrees by the end of the 2002-03 school year.
The university’s 32 bachelor’s programs range from liberal arts, biology, chemistry and mathematics to nursing, business administration, applied science and various information technology disciplines.
For certificates and degrees in general, UAFS trains aspiring dental hygienists, welders and automotive drive-train specialists. Those seeking a liberal arts education in English, history, music, studio art or theater also can find a major. This year, UAFS awarded 403 bachelor’s degrees. Certificates for one-year programs numbered 76 this year compared with 120 in 1999. There were 225 “certificates of proficiency,” for programs that take less than a year to complete, awarded this year compared with 208 in 1999.
GROWING A CAMPUS Looking ahead, the university is working on a new strategic plan that Beran wants ready for distribution by April, and is in the midst of a transition phase with its athletic programs. UAFS is on track to meet a second year of provisional criteria so it can begin competing in NCAA’s Division II by fall 2009, the chancellor said. This first year of competition is a probationary year when teams compete during the regular season but not for post-season championships, he said.
“We’ll be playing schools that look like us,” Beran said, adding that while UAFS doesn’t have football, its Lions have a long history that includes basketball, baseball, volleyball, tennis and golf.
As far back as the early 1990 s, students paid a $ 2 per credithour fee supporting athletics, La-Mar said. After several increases over the years, the fee is now $ 10 per credit hour.
As Beran shepherded the golf cart around campus, he pointed to buildings constructed using private funds or the former Sebastian County millage the school drew back during its Westark days.
One example is the student union, the Smith-Pendergraft Campus Center, dedicated in April 2002. The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation provided a $ 14 million grant, which funded most of the building’s $ 14. 6 million cost, LaMar said.
The oldest existing campus building is the Ballman-Speer Building, circa 1956, which houses art programs. A bell tower structure housing a clock and tower — the Donald W. Reynolds Plaza, Tower, and Campus Green, dedicated in 1995 — sits on a large expanse of lawn in the center of campus.
The Pendergraft Health Sciences Center building opened in 2004. It houses UAFS’ College of Health Sciences, which is in its early years. It has awarded 37 bachelor’s degree diplomas — in nursing, imaging sciences and imaging sciences sonography — in the past four years, but administrators have a lot of hope for the college’s potential to churn out graduates in a number of health-related fields they believe the community will need.
As Beran toured the center, a few students remained in its labs.
Assistant professor of nursing Jamie Flower was running a simulation involving a patient dummy for a handful of students in the associate degree in nursing program.
Flower was behind a curtain with a laptop computer, programming a heart and vital signs monitor for the dummy.
“He’s just right out of surgery,” Flower told the students. She simulated medical emergencies that might arise in a postoperative recovery and the students responded with treatment options.
“I learned to just breathe and take it step by step — not to get ahead of myself,” Chanda Crumby of Greenwood said after the exercise. “You can get overwhelmed. If you get flustered, if you get ahead of yourself, you’re going to make mistakes.”
In five to 10 years, Beran said, UAFS will still offer associate’s degrees, although he’s not sure how much focus they’ll have.
“We’re not growing them as much as stabilizing what we have,” he said, and there’s always the possibility that market changes or technological advances will create a need for new two-year programs.
“What’s growing, in some cases, or staying the same are the associate of applied science degrees — what I would call the work-ready degrees,” Beran said. “They are not tailored to particular companies, but they are tailored to particular job skills.”
He spoke of the four-year programs with more certainty: “I would say our bachelor’s programs are definitely going to grow.”
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