Engaging energy
UCA’s new associate VP credits mentors
Shaneil Ealy said she hasn’t stopped to “breathe” in the past few weeks. It’s easy to see why. In July, she was named associate vice president for the Division of Outreach and Community Engagement at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. She’s also director of the Conway Area Youth Leadership Institute and secretary of the Conway Public Schools Foundation Board. She’s integral in new initiatives at UCA, such as the Women’s Leadership Network, which she helped found.
And that’s just the beginning. She has a part-time catering business — Ealy’s Edibles — plus her church work. Her husband, Taft Ealy III, owns two businesses, and the couple have a cattle farm in Twin Groves. They also have two active boys, Henderson, 9, and Jase, 4.
Ealy is up for the challenge. A bundle of energy, she said she gets up between 3 and 4 every morning and starts her day with prayer.
She said her strong work ethic and
faith are things she learned from her mother, Carolyn Phillips, and grandmother Casterene Henderson, 90, both of Conway.
Ealy said her mother was a single parent until Ealy was in college, when her mother married the Rev. Odie Phillips. Ealy said her mother worked two jobs to support her and her two brothers, including working 27 years at the Conway Human Development Center and at a nursing home.
“Talk about work ethic, my goodness,” Ealy said, recalling that her mother often worked on holidays, too.
Ealy spent a lot of time at her grandparents’ house in Conway while her mother worked.
“My granny taught me how to cook during that time, and that’s where I get my passion for cooking. She would let me stand in a chair and let me help stir whatever she was cooking,” Ealy said. “In high school, I wanted to own a restaurant. I love to cook.”
Ealy attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville for her business degree, which she thought would come in handy if she owned a restaurant. After she started taking business classes, she liked the human-resources track.
After graduating, she went to Kansas City, Missouri, and worked for Hallmark as production-section manager. She was just 22 or 23 years old, managing 37 employees.
Ealy was in the party department, “which was fun,” she said. She got to see the Disney products — plates, napkins, etc. — before the movies were released.
“I still love Hallmark and the people,” she said. Ealy had no intention of moving.
“I wasn’t going to UCA, never [intended to live] in Conway,” she said.
However, her grandfather, L.V. Henderson, died in 2002, and Ealy moved to Conway to be closer to family.
She lived with her grandmother and started working on her master’s degree.
“My granny was working on her GED while I was working on my master’s,” she said. “At night, I’d be working on my MBA; she was working on her GED at like 77. She’s amazing.”
Ealy planned to go back to Kansas City, but she started dating her now husband, whom she married in 2004.
After she earned her master’s degree, she could not find a job, Ealy said. She worked temporary jobs, including at American Management Corp., where she sent faxes eight hours a day.
“I was the fax lady,” she said, laughing. The company offered her another job, but she declined.
“I knew there was something better,” she said. There was.
In 2003, Ealy got a job in UCA Academic Outreach, now Outreach and Community Engagement, as professionaldevelopment coordinator.
At the time, the College of Business had a grant to host the Insurance Education Institute, training teachers how to teach insurance in the classroom.
Ealy said she coordinated professional-development training for teachers.
“I loved program development and just really fell in love with higher ed,” she said.
Ealy has spent 15 years in the Division of Outreach and Community Engagement, serving as assistant vice president for the past two years. When Associate Vice President Shelley Mehl retired, Ealy was named interim for two weeks before being named to the position permanently, beginning July 16.
UCA Chief of Staff Kelley Erstine, to whom Ealy reports, said in a news release that Ealy has “a long history with the division and has spearheaded many initiatives over the years. Her experience, education and vision for the division made her the right choice for the job.”
The division Ealy oversees “connects the campus to the community,” she said. The division’s comprehensive programs include continuing education, event-planning services, and nontraditional and customized training for the community and campus. Ealy said the job also involves working with service learning and nonprofits. “We send out students to work with nonprofits, and they get credit.”
Ealy said she went from dealing with programs and all the details as an assistant vice president “to now advocating for what we do, everything. … We have the Arkansas Coding Academy and UCA Downtown, community economic development, the Community Development Institute, professional development, noncredit online and, something people don’t know, business outreach and training.”
She said the business outreach and training includes customized classes on leadership, customer service and conflict management.
Ealy said talented employees lead those areas, making her job easier.
“I really want to live up to the leaders who have sat in this chair before — Shelley, Kristy Carter and Kim Bradford,” Ealy said. She also mentioned that Elaine McNiece, former dean of the Graduate School, was a
role model. Ealy was a graduate assistant under McNiece.
“This job is much more than me. There are 25 individuals, 30 [including] grad assistants, who are counting on me to advocate for them. I just want to do really well at this,” Ealy said.
Mehl expects her to. “Dr. Ealy is an extraordinary woman,” Mehl said. “She brings vision, experience and intellect to this new role. I look forward to celebrating her success.”
Kristy Carter, marketing director for the Division of Outreach and Community Engagement, called Ealy “a staple” of that division. “She’s very dedicated to the division and wholeheartedly believes in its mission. I am very happy that she was appointed to the position.”
Ealy said that among her other mentors and role models is Angela Webster, UCA’s associate vice president for institutional diversity and inclusion and associate professor of leadership studies.
“She was a great advocate and encouragement for me during my [doctoral]-dissertation phase and continues to be a source of light and energy,” said Ealy, who earned her doctorate in education in highereducation administration from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
As a proponent of mentors, Ealy helped establish the Women’s Leadership Network at UCA, which is now partnering with another new initiative, Women in Networking, or WIN. Women’s Leadership Network has a mentorship program, Ealy said, and mentors are needed for fall.
“We’re looking for seasoned women who want to share and give back,” she said. “It’s not just one way; the women will be co-mentors. That option will be available this fall.”
UCA Downtown, which will celebrate its second anniversary in January, offers a variety of classes for the community.
“I said, ‘Hey, let’s have a culinary class,’” she recalled. “We get to dream up all these fun things. This fall, we will have 15 amazing classes; we will partner with different people. From cubs in the kitchen, kids to grandmas — we have something for everybody,” she said.
Making a positive impact on young people is another passion of Ealy’s.
She was in the first Faulkner County Youth Leadership Institute class in 1995, and now she’s director of the group, renamed the Conway Area Youth Leadership Institute.
“It’s come full circle for me — I’m really excited to lead those kids. We have 30 kids this year, one of the most diverse classes ever in terms of race, ethnicity, socioeconomics. We have home-school, public-school kids. We’re pretty proud of that class. That’s one [organization] I’m very passionate about.”
Ealy said she has many goals in her new position at UCA.
“My immediate goal is learning to say ‘no’ so I can step back and learn this position,” she said.
She wants to continue internal education to let UCA’s faculty and staff know about the division’s resources that are available to people on campus, not just the community.
“I foresee opportunities to increase workforce development through our online noncredit programs and the Arkansas Coding Academy; opportunities for education and training for nonprofits and their boards; regional training for communities; opportunities to expand culinary team-building challenges; rebranding of the Conway Area Youth Leadership Institute; and the collaboration of the Women in Networking with UCA’s Women’s Leadership Network.”
Also, she said the Arkansas Coding Academy has a new location on South Donaghey Avenue, which will allow UCA to house both part-time and full-time classes, staff and instructors, and enable it to expand technology offerings.
While juggling all her responsibilities, Ealy said, she has adopted “Breathe” as her mantra.
After she earned her doctorate in education two years ago and was named Nonclassified Employee of the Year in 2017, Ealy said she wondered what was next.
“I thought, ‘Why can’t I just breathe?’”
For her 40th birthday in January, she bought herself a bracelet engraved with the word “Breathe.”
“The bracelet serves as a physical reminder that it’s OK to take time and be present, to say ‘no’ to things so I have time to breathe and relax, to take a breath when my patience is running thin with the kids in the morning or at bedtime, and to stop and enjoy the air God allows us to breathe and allow him to fill my heart with his love and grace.”
Ealy said she also teaches vision-board workshops at UCA. Her own vision board has a photo of her mother and grandmother “and the word ‘Breathe’ in huge letters,” she said.
The board hangs in her bathroom, and she sees it in the wee hours each morning before she starts her day.
“Finding that breathing room will be up to me — finding that balance,” she said.
So far, so good. tkeith@arkansas online.com.