UA System president awards first service medal to Scharlau

Charles Scharlau, former chairman and chief executive officer of Southwestern Energy Co., is the inaugural recipient of the University of Arkansas System President’s medal for service.

UA System President Donald Bobbitt presented Scharlau with the medal Wednesday at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The discretionary award will not be given out annually, and the system president and his cabinet will determine recipients based on their “distinguished and sustained commitment to helping the UA System carry out its mission to the state through their time, knowledge and philanthropy.”

Scharlau, 90, served on the UA board of trustees for a decade, ending in 2007, and has also served on boards for the University of Arkansas Foundation, Inc., the Razorback Foundation and several other advisory boards. The Mountain Home native has also donated to several UA System campuses, creating endowed chairmen in Hematological Malignancies Research and Cancer Research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, and a professorship in the chemistry department at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

Most recently, Scharlau donated $5 million to create an endowment to support the UA System president in 2015.

“I have a firm belief in the mission to better the lives of all Arkansans,” Scharlau said in a statement. “The best way I know to do that is through an educated workforce and promoting a healthier society, both of which can be accomplished through the many diverse units of the University of Arkansas System.”