UAPB sets forum on search for chief

Faculty, staff seek input from public

The search for a new chancellor to run the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff is taking its first public steps this week.

The UAPB senate, a group of university employees, is sponsoring a forum Friday on “the desired characteristics and profile of the next Chancellor at UAPB,” according to Sederick Rice, an assistant professor of biology and vice president of the UAPB senate.

UAPB faculty and staff want to get their ideas to University of Arkansas System President Donald Bobbitt before he moves forward with the search. Bobbitt will recommend someone to the University of Arkansas board of trustees sometime next year.

Usually, a consensus on the characteristics of a new chancellor is the first task of a university’s search committee, which traditionally has representatives made up of students, faculty, staff and civic leaders. Bobbitt will choose the members of that committee.

Lawrence A. Davis Jr., 75, announced in March that he would resign as UAPB chancellor on May 25. Davis’ resignation came after an internal audit that resulted in an investigation by the Arkansas State Police and Davis firing four employees. The state police investigation is continuing, according to an agency spokesman.

UA System auditors discovered $700,000 in payroll and purchasing transactions that violated university spending controls at the Harrold Complex, a dormitory on the UAPB campus.

Davis was in his 21st year as chancellor of the historically black university. He had been the longest-serving top administrator of any public university in Arkansas at the time of his resignation.

His departure shortly before the end of the fiscal year, which closes out on June 30, forced Bobbitt to find an interim chancellor to run the university through at least the 2012-13 academic year.

Bobbitt chose Calvin Johnson, 71, a former member of the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which is a governor-appointed panel that works with the Arkansas Department of Higher Education staff.

Johnson used to work at UAPB.

The forum on a new UAPB chancellor is scheduled from 1-3 p.m. in the J.M. Ross Theater of the HathawayHoward Fine Arts Center on Friday.

Bobbitt is scheduled to attend the UAPB forum “to help engage the campus community further in the process,” said UA System spokesman Ben Beaumont.

He said that Bobbitt has visited with UAPB campus and community representatives but has not yet formed “an advisory search committee.”

He said that no ads have been placed seeking a chancellor, and no search firm has been hired yet. Bobbitt does not plan to serve as the search committee chairman, Beaumont said.

“We are still in the early stages of the UAPB search,” Beaumont said.