Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701
479-575-2000

Hello, I'm Dave Gearhart, and I have the privilege of serving as chancellor of the University of Arkansas beginning today, July first.

As a native of Fayetteville, I was born and raised in the shadow of Old Main, and it instilled in me a profound respect for this university and its traditions. I hold two degrees from the University of Arkansas, and my name has thus been inscribed twice on Senior Walk. Also inscribed on Senior Walk are the names of my wife, Jane...my son, Brock...my father and three brothers...uncles, aunts and in-laws...numerous cousins...well, you get the point.

This is our university and we are very proud to be a part of the university family and want nothing less than for it to thrive.

I feel quite prepared for the challenges that lie ahead, and have a strong sense from day one about the upward direction in which the university is headed.

In the coming months and years, with your help, I intend to build on the great gains the university has made - due in large part to the success of the Campaign for the Twenty-First Century and the work of the faculty and staff in helping to build a superb institution of higher learning.

Above all, we need to put students first by removing obstacles to their success. I want to move students to the very heart of what we do, and support them every step of their journey through college. If we accept a student into the university family, we should do everything possible to ensure their success in obtaining a degree and even continuing their education in graduate or professional school. We need to help launch our students on a meaningful pathway to society.

We owe it to our state's future to grow our enrollment and lead the effort in pulling Arkansas from it's last-place ranking among the states in the number of adults possessing a college degree.

Along those lines, we must increase our campus diversity, expand our research capacity, and bolster the faculty in key areas that have seen heavy enrollment gains.

We need to extend our presence across the state through distance education programming like the University of Arkansas Global Campus.

And we must do everything possible to continue to eliminate any administrative waste through a concerted, aggressive campus-wide cost saving effort. Doing so will benefit our students by helping to keep the cost of a University of Arkansas education an affordable value, and will help us to better allocate the resources we have available to help the university reach new heights.

Fundamentally, a great university is nothing without great people making it work. We must ensure that our people are paid competitive wages, which are currently below-market.

To this end, we need to work harder at convincing our leaders in state government that public higher education is not only a valuable road to personal opportunity, but also a solution to many of society's problems, the wellspring of creativity and innovation and the foundation for economic growth and competitiveness.

I can't do any of this, or even begin to plot new courses toward achieving our vision, without your help.

In the coming days and months, I will reach out to our students, our staff, our faculty, our alumni, and all our stakeholders across the state. I will be soliciting your ideas, your opinions, and your aspirations for the University of Arkansas. As the state's flagship university, it's our university, and we all have a say in shaping its course.

Together, we can make this great institution even greater.

I look forward to doing so with your support and input, and I will continue to update our progress and chart our course with the community via this medium in the days and months ahead.

I'm ready to get to work on this vision, and know the university community is ready to join me. Thank you.