Broadway visit at Lions Club

The Malvern Lions Club welcomed Shane Broadway to speak at their April 25 meeting, held at First Baptist Church’s Family Life Center.

Broadway has an accomplished resume, previously serving as Director for the Arkansas Dept. of Higher Education, Co-director of the Saline Co. Economic Development Corporation, and holding seats in both the Ark. House of Representatives (1997-2003) and the State Senate (2002-2010).

Broadway is currently the Vice President for University Relations with the Arkansas State University System and visited the Lions Club that Tuesday to share the latest news and developments for the ASU System, specifically, ASU Three Rivers.

Broadway began by voicing his excitement for the city of Malvern and the success of the high school’s football team, sharing that his father was part of that environment at the school in Bryant, and that association bred a love and appreciation for school athletics in him and his family.

“We’re excited for Malvern winning the State Championship here this year,” he said. “I know it was fun to watch, and I know it was great to be a part of— it’s great for a community. I lived in Bryant my whole life. My dad helped build the Bryant football field.”

“Sports has always played a big role in my life,” he said, adding that’s why he is thrilled about the new and exciting developments coming for athletics at ASUTR.

Broadway mentioned that the ASU campus in Newport is adding softball and basketball, noting that Logan Nutt will serve as head coach in basketball. Nutt is part of a broad family legacy of winning football and basketball coaches, including his uncle and former Razorback football coach, Houston Nutt, and his father Dickie, led ASU all the way to the NCAA.

“Just as Chancellor Rook has to remind everybody that yes, the main mission of ASU Three Rivers is still academic. We’re just creating another opportunity for students to come to our campus, and that is through athletics,” Broadway said.

Many in the education system know that athletics at a school can be an appealing draw to many students, donors and patrons.

“Dr. Welch, President of the ASU System, oftentimes likes to joke, when you’re talking about people and bringing in money to a campus, athletics is the front door to the campus. That’s what they see the most, that’s what they experience the most, that’s what gives them a desire to be involved and engaged, and contribute,” Broadway said.

Broadway is happy for the growth and opportunities that will undoubtedly come to the ASU campus in Malvern, with the addition of sports to the long list of amenities available to ASUTR students.

“We’ve never had anybody come in and offer to pay the light bill, or the water bill, but they will give to athletics, or they will give to scholarships for athletics, and so, it creates synergy, it creates opportunity on a campus,” he said. “Very excited about that, and what it’s going to bring.”

Broadway then shifted gears to highlight the new facility ASUTR will be building to expand their nursing program, and he expressed heavy gratitude to U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-ark.) for helping the campus receive $8 million in federal funding to build a new health science building.

“He and his staff are awesome to work with. He is truly an advocate for our state and for our institution, and for obviously, nursing. Healthcare is a huge issue, not just here,” he said, noting that hospitals all over Arkansas are hurting for nurses, some even resorting to bringing in healthcare workers from overseas.

“Trying to encourage people after a pandemic to go into healthcare fields and trying to get them into programs, that’s why Senator Boozman’s support of the new nursing facility on our campus is huge, it’s a game changer for this campus,” he said.

Broadway also focused briefly on the college’s ongoing restoration of the Historic Ritz Theatre in downtown Malvern.

“To see that project come to fruition is certainly a feather in the cap to everybody in this community, and everybody who’s been involved in that, to preserve the history of a community. And I think it’s important for economic development, to draw people into the community,” he said.

Broadway touched on Arkansas politics, noting that the state legislative session would be ending officially at noon on Monday, May 1, and spoke of his time in office and experience that those sessions.

“Every one of them is different, every one of them is unique,” he said, noting he’d dealt with issues under Govs. Huckabee, Bebe, Hutchinson, and now, Sanders. “Every governor is unique in terms of their style, their backgrounds.”

Broadway said Sanders has focused on K-12 education, prison reform and income taxes. “All of those passed, all of those seemed like it was going to take forever before we ever got there,” he said, adding that the real work now begins because every passed legislation will take time and effort to follow through.

“A lot of times, I spend my day not dealing with issues with ASU, and actually this session, we did not have a lot of Higher Ed issues,” he said. “We did one for ASU Three Rivers, to give some flexibility for making the decision to change from a technical college to a community college. Had a few other smaller things in terms of personnel, stuff that’s kind of ‘inside baseball’ I guess, is what I would say.”

Broadway spoke about the nuances of public office and how difficult it can be to work productively with other legislators to get things done for the state, and for each politician’s individual constituents.

“That’s the challenge of a session, and it’s kind of hard to explain because so much of it is inside baseball, and that’s an often-used term, but that’s really what it is when you’re trying to drive legislation, when you’re trying to deal with 135 people who have 135 different ideas,” Broadway said. “I mean, that’s what they always said about the Senate—the Senate is 35 senators who think they should be governor.”

Another challenge Broadway cites is weeding through legislative ideas to find the freshest and most innovative solutions, which can be next to impossible to find.

“It’s very rare that I ever see a new idea, it’s just the same idea that was done 20 years ago or 15 years ago, but a different way, or called something different,” he said.

Ultimately, states around the nation all deal with similar issues that boil down to a few basic needs, and common items that always need addressing.

“I’ve always said states educate, medicate, incarcerate and create,” Broadway said. “There’s not a lot of new ideas or new concepts that are out there, so it’s going to be interesting to see how all this kind of flows over the next several weeks.”

Broadway noted that one issue administrators are looking at for ASUTR is a Dual Diploma plan, to bring more attention and opportunities for students in the pursuit of both professional and technical training. He said “having an opportunity to have a different track” encourages students to continue their education, which will greatly improve their earning potential.

“When you have less than half of your high school graduates every year enrolling in college of some form the next fall, that’s about 15,000 kids who only have a high school degree, a high school diploma at best,” Broadway pointed out. “If you look a those kids five years later, they’re making minimum wage, where if they had a little bit more coursework or went into a training program or went into a trade program for six months, a year, two years, they can double their money.”

Broadway also mentioned the two marble statues Arkansas has among the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

The state is currently represented by statues of Uriah Milton Rose, a prominent attorney born in 1834 who practiced in Little Rock, and former governor and senator for the state, James Clarke. These statues will soon be replaced with replicas of Arkansas natives, Johnny Cash and Daisy Bates.

“Most people have no clue who they are,” Broadway said of the current models, as he well knows from his stint as a political intern for David Pryor and Capitol tour guide in the early 1990s.

“There’s been a push nationally to encourage states to change out their statues, and Arkansas did that kind of before that trend started, the legislature took it upon themselves, the legislature has to be the one who makes that decision.”

Daisy Bates was a staunch Civil Rights activist who started a newspaper with her husband in Little Rock in 1941. “In 1957, Bates helped the Little Rock Nine become the first to attend the allwhite Central High School in Little Rock,” according to the National Park Service.

Both statues will be around 8 ft. tall and will replace the current figures in D.C. after their completion, after which officials will need to decide where to house the old statues and how to best move the them, as the larger of the two is approximately 14,000 lbs. in weight.

“It’ll be a great thing, I think, for Arkansans to be proud of when they go to the U.S. Capitol,” Broadway said.

More info is available online pertaining to all the topics discussed during Broadway’s Lions Club visit. For more information about all the latest developments at ASU Three Rivers, go to www.asutr.edu. For more information about the Arkansas legislature, go to www.arkleg.state.ar.us. And for more info on the statues housed in the National Statuary Hall, visit the Architect of the Capitol website at www.aoc.gov.